Saturday, May 10, 2008

Detroit Lions Compensatory Picks - 2009

You wish is my command, readers mine. Post all the knowledge we can glean about compensatory picks here.

Most of the guys the Lions signed have low enough contracts that they will not count very high against the negative column. And you all forgot one very BIG FA we lost, who signed a MAMMOTH contract... everyone cheer for the man who will get the Lions at least one compensatory pick next season thanks to the Green Meanies. Damien Woody, come on down!!

With the size of the contracts Woody, Duckett, and Bailey got, along with Lehman's contract should more than offset the contracts the Lions paid to eligible players. What do you think??

Lets get the research together, see if we can get a solid guess together, and then look back next year!

Great ideas, keep them coming. I'll add the official "guess the roster?" spot soon. I'm working on linking to additional sites, and will try to upgrade some facets of the site by this summer.

I'll post links you put in the comments as updates here so they are more easily accessible with a single click.

4 comments:

JJLions20 said...

Here is a Link that will give some insight at determining compensatory picks. This guy has developed a formula to predict compensatory picks after trying to predict for the past 7 years now.

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=208336

The first thing is to figure out how many additions and how many losses there were. We could value them now, but how they produce in 2008 for their new team is a key factor in really determining the compensatory pick.

This link shows each teams FA signings as of April 1st.

http://www.ihavenet.com/nfl-2008-free-agent-update-april-1.html

So by my count the Lions lost 5 players:

Boss Bailey
Damien Woody
JT O’Sullivan
TJ Duckett
Teddy Lehman

The Lions gained 4 Players:
Chuck Darby
Michael Gaines
Gilbert Gardner
Brian Kelley

FYI, Dwight Smith was released by Minnesota, so he doesn’t count.

That makes the Lions eligible for one Compensatory pick (rounds 3-6) and maybe a 7th round special compensatory pick due to the value of the 4 they lost compared to the value of the 4 they gained. That’s given they don’t sign anybody between now and the start of camp. Given the Lions Cap situation that probably won’t happen.

So now it’s a comparison of what these guys signed for, and how they produce next season. Somebody can do the research of what the 9 players above signed for, but I’ll take a short cut an just look at Woody. I don’t expect a 3rd rounder, because that would take one of the guys we lost playing 15-16 games, and being selected to the pro-bowl Only Woody has credentials that would remotely indicate he could play at that level, and he hasn’t achieve that level in years. He may be better than he was in 2006-2007 where he played in 18 of 32 games over the past 2 seasons compared to only missing 2 games in the previous 7 seasons. So lets predict 14 games in 2009. Even though he received a pretty big contract ($25.5M/5yrs w/ $11M guaranteed) it was a little more than half of what Faneca got from the same team ($40M/5 yrs w/ $21M guaranteed) So given Woody is not at the ProBowl level to demand a 3rd round compensatory pick, that puts it in the 4th – 6th round area. If Woody does real well it may be a 4th rounder, but most likely it will be a 5th rounder. So I’ll predict we will get a 5th round compensatory pick.

I don’t think the Lions will get a 7th rounder, because I think Darby, Gaines, Gardner, and Kelley will out perform Bailey, O’Sullivan, Duckett, & Lehman. But like I said, somebody can do the research to compare the salaries each player signed for. Given the NFL only hands out 32 compensatory picks, I think the difference would have to be quite sizable.

Hmmm, I wonder if Millen had this figured into the equation when he traded away the 2009 4th rounder to move up and get Avril? Maybe he is planning on getting a mid round compensatory pick. Or am I giving him too much credit.

Anonymous said...

Here's the contract info for incoming and outgoing personnel.

Incoming
Boss Bailey:
5 yr, $17.5M (includes $4.3 signing bonus

Damien Woody:
5yr, $25.5M (11M guaranteed)

JT O'Sullivan:
1yr, $645,000

TJ Duckett:
5yr, 13M

Outgoing
Michael Gaines:
4yr, $10 M

Terms of the Kelly, Gardner and Darby signings were undisclosed from what I could find. Hopefully someone else can have a little more luck that I did though.

My best guess is that the Darby signing was fairly costly since he's a fairly good starter. Kelly's terms probably aren't quite as much, but I would imagine he's getting a pretty decent sized contract as well.

(if someone can find the actual contract information for Kelly and Darby especially, that would be a lot more helpful)

***

Given this, I would say that the outgoing players are still probably getting more contract-wise than the incomers, but not by as much as I originally thought.

Also, you have to figure that both Bailey and Woody will start on their teams while Duckett will get a fair number of carries per game. This is while both Kelly and Darby will get a lot of playing time as starters for the Lions. So again, the outgoing players edge the incomers a little bit, but not by much.

With all that in mind, I would say that jjlions is probably right as far as our future compensatory picks. I think Woody will be a very good contributer and mainly due to his impact we'll probably pick up a 5th rounder, but other than that I don't see us getting too much...maybe a 7th, but it's pretty doubtful. It's really going to be dependant on how well Bailey and Duckett do so keep your fingers crossed on both of them. Don't count on Bailey since the Broncos defense is dreadful, but Duckett may do well with an underrated Seahawks offense that's built to pound the ball.

-StreetWorm

Anonymous said...

OK

Got ya on Smith, I thought he was a free agent. Cory Hulsey would then be the same reason (out of league last year). Obviously Bodden was a trade and wouldn't count.

How about Albert Fincher? FA?

nubs

JJLions20 said...

Nubs,
The saints website does not list Fincher as a FA loss. I can only presume they released him.

Streetworm,
Thanks to our good friend NetRat, and his Cap spreadsheet, it looks like this is what the Lions FA's got:

Darby 3 years $4.7M w/ $1.2 guaranteed

Gaines 3 years 7.8M w/ $1.8M guaranteed

Gardner 1 year $645k w/ 40k guaranteed

Kelley 3 year $7.42M w/ $1.67M guaranteed

So comparing the salaries of those coming in with those we lost, Gardner is about the same as O'Sullivan.

Duckett's deal is better than Kelley's. They look about the same on a per year basis, But Duckett gets about $2.3M more guaranteed.

I'm guessing Gaines contract is probably 2-3 times as good as Lehman's contract. All I could find is Lehman's contract was it was for just 1 year.

Boss Bailey's contract is better than Darby's. Bailey's signing bonus is almost 4 times that of Darby's. Bailey will be making about twice that of Darby.

Then you have Woody with the big $5M per year for 5 years and $11M guaranteed.

So the outgoing FA’s got signed for more money then the incoming. If they perform well there is a decent chance the Lions will get the 7th rounder. I still think a 5th round Compensatory pick is about right for Woody, if he has a great season, but still does not make the pro-bowl, then we may get a 4th. If he misses a lot of games it could be a 6th.