Baxter and Bentley

by AaronD on May 28, 2008 9:44 AM EDT

I think the Browns have been overly generous to thier two injured reserve captains over the past few years and so I am curious what cap hit the Browns would incur if these two were sent packing?

Even though Brodney Pool is terrible, there is no way Baxter unseats him at Safety.
And with the recent play of the OL along with some fabulous signings by Phil (Hadnot) our OL is set for 2008.

Losing Tucker until August is a blow but dare I say it - We finally have depth and good depth!!! within our OL !!!!

So why hang onto these guys?

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We hang on to them because:

Baxter plays somewhere in the defensive backfield. We need to take a look at anyone who can play back there, because we only have 4-5 players that anyone feels comfortable with back there. If one of them goes down, which is likely, we are screwed. If someone sends out a 4 WR formation, we are screwed. If Baxter could play some safety, Pool is versatile enough to play corner, and we would have another DB we could play. Plus, no one has ever come back from Baxter’s injury, and its a feel-good story if it happens. I am sure potential FAs will look at the way we are treating these guys and know they won’t be thrown under a bus if they sign with us.

We are keeping Bently because he is a hometown kid who played at tOSU and dreamed of playing for his hometown Browns. The same feel-goodness of Baxter’s story applies here. If he can come back to full strength, he is a ton better than Hank Fraley, at least in terms of actual blocking (from what I hear, Fraley is good with calling the assignments and the “other” responsibilities of a center). If it came down to it, I would rather have Bently on the bench than another O lineman who has an equally grim shot of playing.

Both guys were good-great when healthy and feel good stories. Plus, if we were going to do something with them it would be June 1, or whenever we have to cut the rosters down, which is a long time away. We owe it to those guys to give them the maximum amount of time to prove that they are healthy again. Cutting these guys now doesn’t make much sense.

by rufio on May 28, 2008 10:24 AM EDT reply actions

I disagree

I guess I disagree because even for a feel good story or a “lets make potential new FA’s feel cozy about the Browns treating thier players nice” it has taken way too long.

Just like in my previous posts about K2. This is a business and each year we hang onto these two the more it hurts our bottom line.

Bentley has been paid a ton of cash since his injury due to the organization holding onto him. Cash that could have been used this year to trade for and give a contract to Lito Sheppard.

Baxter’s injury has never been one where someone has come back from in the past. Shouldn’t that be an indication of what the future holds.

Our secondary is already pretty weak so why chance putting a ‘slow” guy recovering from this injury in the lineup?

Not to mention the “game-time” these two have missed…. They are recovering from devestating injuries which is commendable, but how are they going to come in and not skip a beatwith thier play? They will be far from game ready even when they do get cleared from thier injuries.

by AaronD on May 28, 2008 1:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Why do you care about the Browns’ bottom line so much? The only guy that should care should be Lerner. We are still comfortably under the cap (from what I know). Also, didn’t Bentley rework his contract? Cash only matters if the Browns are in the red or over/about to be over the cap and they aren’t.

If cutting them makes a difference as to getting or not getting a free agent or traded player that we really want, we can cut either one at any time. Keeping them on right now (when there is no imminent deal, and there are no quality free agents to go after) makes sense: let them try to recover while it doesn’t count against us. I am by no means an expert on the salary cap, but I don’t think we need to worry about any of that until the end of the summer at the earliest.

The cap is NOT a reason we would not go after Sheppard. What would we have to give up to get him? Too much. We don’t really have surplus players at any position, except maybe QB, and we have been told 1 bajillion times that both QBs will be on the roster this year. We certainly don’t have draft picks to give up. We had no 1-3 last year, and we won’t have a 3 or 5 this year, and Phil knows that to be a sustainable NFL team, you must build though the draft. We have been good about acquiring a couple of key free agents/making a few key trades per year and Phil knows that those avenues aren’t the way to build a franchise. Any CB we pick in the 1st or 2nd round is going to be better than Sheppard anyway.

I don’t remember any of your posts on K2, but getting rid of him when he can still play at a pro bowl level would be dumb.

Not so long ago, people couldn’t recover from ACL tears. Then sports medicine made advancements and now people come back from them all the time. Then, people had no chance of coming back from micro fracture surgery, and now athletes like K2, Amare Stoutamire, and Jason Kidd have successfully done it. In a rapidly advancing field such as sports medicine, the past is not always the best indication of what might happen in the future.

Neither Baxter, nor Bentley will see the field if they aren’t fit to play, period. Someone within the organization-who has had a lot more contact with both athletes than you-believes that there is at least a chance that these guys can help the team or they would already be cut.

I am not a football conditioning expert either, but if reports are true that Bently is coming back at minicamp I would guess that would give him plenty of time to get back in to being “game ready”. That gives him another month or two of the offseason, training camp, and the pre-season. Sounds like a lot of time to me.

by rufio on May 28, 2008 1:59 PM EDT up reply actions

You are right in that both Bentley and Baxter reworked their contracts and are on small one year deals currently. If they aren’t capable of making the team, they will both be cut with little to no cap hit by the end of training camp. Not something to really worry about

by Roger Dorn on May 28, 2008 9:13 PM EDT up reply actions

Is there a good place online to research player’s deals? The only one I was able to find was USA Today’s salary archive, which only lists last year’s dollar amounts.

by rufio on May 29, 2008 12:36 PM EDT up reply actions

This doesn’t go into everything, but Ian Whetstone’s site is always my favorite resource for salary cap data:

Salary Cap Data for Browns
Salary Cap Notes for Browns

The data was last updated on March 24, 2008.

Dawgs By Nature - Find out why Pittsburgh still sucks.

by Chris Pokorny on May 29, 2008 1:24 PM EDT up reply actions

This is very good, especially for looking at when certain players are due large roster bonuses in the future. Like in 2009, you see that it’s decision time again for Derek Anderson

by Roger Dorn on May 29, 2008 8:09 PM EDT up reply actions