The NFL’s legal-negotiating period is just over two weeks away, and there seems to be a growing sentiment that the Eagles and GM Howie Roseman will be priced out of the Zack Baun market.
Most of the speculation comes from outsiders reading the tea leaves of Roseman’s resume and a demonstrated history at the position.
Of course, Roseman has never watched an off-ball linebacker season like he just witnessed by Baun and projections are coming in lower than you might expect with a first-team All-Pro coming off a monster of a season defined as much by its consistency as the big plays that seemed to come weekly from Sao Paulo, Brazil through New Orleans and Super Bowl LIX.
Over the past few seasons, Pro Football Focus has been the best at contract projections and it has predicted Baun getting three years and $40 million with $26.5M of that guaranteed and an average annual value of $13.33M.
If Roseman’s walkaway number is that or lower you have to believe the evaluation in-house is that others propped Baun up, most notably defensive coordinator Vic Fangio and a dominant interior defensive front led by Jalen Carter, Milton Williams, and Jordan Davis.
The lesser points to downplaying Baun are his age – he will turn 29 late next season – and the realization of career years from a player are not usually followed by better ones the next time around especially when the spike is the clear outlier.
Despite being the best LB in football last season with a top-5 showing in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, no one has Baun reaching the levels of Roquan Smith or Fred Warner for re-setting the off-ball LB market.
Fangio should factor in greatly here in that he’s not only one of the most well-regarded defensive minds in the game but his No. 1 expertise from a teaching and evaluation standpoint is off-ball LB.
There’s also the reality that Nakobe Dean and Oren Burks also played better last season than they had ever done previously under the tutelage of Fangio and ILB coach Bobby King. The idea that a second-year spike should be coming from Jeremiah Trotter Jr. is an understandable projection due to that.
However, this decision should be a pretty simple one for Roseman.
One of the hardest things for NFL teams to do is to be honest with themselves. Roseman has the luxury of leaning on Fangio, whose superpower seems to be honesty.
If Fangio says Baun is worth it, you set the walkaway point at a $15M AAV and don’t lost a minute of sleep over it.
