Unfortunately there isn't $10M per year to pay Wallace so it is a moot point what he is worth.
It is a simple dynamic:
A. Mike, do you want to remain a member of the Steelers? If so, get t camp and sign a similar contract to Antonio Brown.
B. Mike, do you want $10M per year more than you want to stay a member of the Steelers? If so, see you sometime this season and good luck in free agency.
It's not hard and it is totally up to Wallace. All this constant repeating of what he does, how good he is. how he makes others better, etc. etc, is meaningless because the money is the money. Wallace just needs to pick A or B and it is done.
"My team, may they always be right, but right or wrong...MY TEAM!"
for a guy that 'does so much for the rest of the offense', we sure didnt tear up the scoreboard the last couple years with wallace.
are we really willing to say that the rest of our players, ben, brown, heath, mendy, cotch and such are so crappy that wallace carried them to the 21st scoring offense and without him we will fall to the bottom of scoring offense this year if we dont have him? i am willing to bet nobody wants to say all those guys suck. i am also willing to bet that our offense does better than last year statistically even without wallace.
i'm not saying our team isnt better with him(money not taken into account) but to think we cant be competitive(like many here are claiming) is crazy talk. we are not talking about losing a franchise qb and replacing him with a rookie qb or some journeyman qb. we are talking about replacing a 1000 yard, 8 td wr with a 700 yard, 6 td wr............there are 50 wrs in the nfl that can put up those numbers at 4 million a year. i dont think any extra 300 yards and a couple tds are worth an 8 million per cap hit.
Sigh...
Again, my point is missed...
Mike Wallace's first eight games last season might be worth paying $10 million per year...but his last eight games and his playoff game are definitely not...
My "decoy" response is for people who say that Wallace drew the coverage so Brown could succeed...first of all, I don't agree with that notion...I believe that Brown succeeded upon his own merit and hard work...secondly, if that were somehow true, that is not worth $10 million per year either...
is Nate Washington available?
Yeah, our scoring offense last year was crap. We scored only 34 offensive touchdowns last season. Look at where that production came from though...half of those TD's were scored by either Mendenhall (9) or Wallace (8). Neither of those guys are in camp right now (PUP...likely out for 6 weeks...and unsigned RFA tender...may be out for 10 weeks). Outside of those two guys, Redman scored 3 rushing TD's and Clay scored 1 rushing TD. Brown, Sanders, Cotchery, Miller, and Ward scored 2 receiving TD's each with 1 TD catch each for Saunders, Johnson, and Moore. Ward and Moore are already gone, Saunders is suspended for 4 games, and it is still questionable about whether Clay or Johnson might make the team. Just to get up to the crappy 34 offensive TD's we had last year (which sucked, by the way), we need Redman, Brown, Sanders, Cotchery, and Miller to improve upon their scoring prowess BIG TIME in 2012.
Steeler teams featuring stat-driven, me-first, fantasy-football-darling diva types such as Antonio Brown & Le'Veon Bell won no championships.
Super Bowl winning Steeler teams were built around a dynamic, in-your-face defense plus blue-collar, hard-hitting, no-nonsense football players on offense such as Hines Ward & Jerome Bettis.
We don't want Juju & Conner to replace what we lost in Brown & Bell.
We are counting on Juju & Conner to return us to the glory we once had with Hines & The Bus.
Did anyone ever stop to think that if Mike played for most other teams that he wouldn't have these amazing stats? He just happened to have Big Ben who likes to play sandlot football and heave the hail Marys. Think Unibrow from Balimore would have made him look so good?
Woodley and Timmons both fill positions on the field which cannot be easily glossed over/covered by someone else if they are not dominant at their specialty. Mike is one of THREE receivers who can more easily be replaced without as much of a let down on the field. On offense, it only takes ONE guy to get open for Ben to pass the ball to. On defense, every man is on an island and must excel at his assignment for the D to be effective. It may sound cliche, but the saying that wide receivers are a dime a dozen has some truth to it. Look what happened last year when Potsie got old - It only takes one weak link on the D to be exposed over and over.
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