Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

[JUST-PLAIN-NASTY]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

Well we could agree on one thing...We are on to separate ends of the argument when it comes to the importance and talent of Wallace. You make him out to be a kid who should be not even tendered. We will see how the Steelers value him real soon. Hopefully for our sake we don't see how the rest of the league values him.

[flippy]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

I'd love to keep Wallace. The guy is awesome.

I just don't value receivers so highly. I think we should be spending big money on QBs and Defense.

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

I think we should be spending big money on QBs.

We do.

I think we should be spending big money on Defense.

We do this too.

Why do you think we came into this offseason as the team who was the highest over the cap, even though all our young, talented offensive weapons are still working off of relatively cheap rookie contracts?

[JUST-PLAIN-NASTY]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

I'd love to keep Wallace. The guy is awesome.

I just don't value receivers so highly. I think we should be spending big money on QBs and Defense.

I agree with you Flip. We are secure at QB so the money can shift. As far as defense, we have locked up the stars. Problem is we have some big contracts on guys who need to be replaced and "replaced" is in the draft. The cycle will come around on those new faces when their rookie contract expires. That is the cycle we have seen for so long. They keep their own when the rookie contract is up and money just shifts as the contracts come up. 3 years down the road there will be alot of money shifting to the DL. Money at S & OLB will be shifted away so they better start making sure young players are lined up. It isn't an exact science where the money goes...It is a matter of when the money goes to a position when you draft well. We are seeing it that way right now unfold in front of us.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

Arms wide open: Steelers want to keep Wallace in the fold

Friday, February 24, 2012
By Gerry Dulac, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette



Mike Wallace, a restricted free agent, made the Pro Bowl last season, and Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert plans on doing anything he can to keep Wallace on his team.

INDIANAPOLIS -- With an NFL-best 27 catches of 40 yards or longer in three seasons with the Steelers, Mike Wallace has shown that he can run away from just about every defensive back in the league.

But no matter how fast Wallace can run, the Steelers do not plan to let their third-year wide receiver get away from them.

Not according to general manager Kevin Colbert.

"The thing I can say for sure about Mike is that we want Mike to finish his career with the Steelers," Colbert said Thursday at the NFL scouting combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. "And I'm very confident Mike wants to finish his career with the Steelers and play with a great quarterback like Ben Roethlisberger and the other receivers we have."

Wallace, a Pro Bowl receiver who led the team with 72 catches, 1,193 yards and eight touchdowns last season, is a restricted free agent -- meaning he is allowed to talk with other teams and even receive an offer sheet if someone is interested in signing him.

However, the Steelers are expected to offer Wallace the highest tender they can as a restricted free agent -- a move Colbert said will not occur until the Steelers learn what the salary cap will be for the 2012 season.

Once they do, the Steelers will have the right to match any offer Wallace might receive. If they choose not to match an offer, they would receive a No. 1 draft pick from the team that signed him.

But the latter does not appear to be an option.

"We're going to do everything we can to keep Mike Wallace with the Steelers," Colbert said. "We think he's only scratched the surface in what he can do. There's a lot left there that can still be developed. We're anxious to see it happen as a Steeler."

Wallace said in an interview on SiriusXM NFL Radio the other day that he would consider playing for the New England Patrios and San Francisco 49ers -- playoff teams who need outside receivers. Wallace made the comment in response to a question about those teams.

Colbert did not rule out the possibility the Steelers could use the franchise tag on Wallace, Although that seems unlikely because it would mean the Steelers would have to pay Wallace approximately $9 million annually -- a big number for a team trying to get under the salary cap.

Colbert said that determination cannot be made, either, until the salary cap is determined.

"We won't rule it out until we know what we're dealing with and a hard cap number, which we haven't gotten yet," Colbert said. "We have to leave that option open, absolutely."

Meantime, Colbert said wide receiver Hines Ward remains with the team and no decision will be made on him or other players until the Steelers know the final salary-cap ceiling.

The Steelers have been working to shave approximately $25 million off their salary cap. They have already released veterans Bryant McFadden and Arnaz Battle and have restructured the contracts of five players -- Ben Roethlisberger, LaMarr Woodley, Lawrence Timmons, Ike Taylor and Willie Colon.

"Hines Ward is still on our roster. We won't know. ... Again, once we get the salary cap figure, we'll know how much more work we have to do," Colbert said. "We've done some work in form of restructurings. We've done a few terminations. There will be more of both to come. We just don't know what combination that's going to be."

However, it doesn't appear that one of those players terminated will be nose tackle Casey Hampton, who is scheduled to count more than $8 million against the cap in 2012. Hampton, 34, will be coming off surgery to his left anterior cruciate ligament -- the second time he has had ACL surgery on his left knee -- but Colbert said he expects the five-time Pro Bowl nose tackle to be back with the team next season.

Hampton was injured in the playoff loss in Denver and had surgery Jan. 27. Colbert was asked if his return would be delayed as long as running Rashard Mendenhall, who also had ACL surgery after the season and might not be ready for the start of the regular season.

"It's a different position, obviously. You don't have to worry about speed, you don't have to worry about quick change of direction when you're talking about offensive or defensive linemen. And the one edge Casey will have on anybody is that he's been through this twice. He knows what to expect. He knows how to do this. He knows how much work he has to do and he knows how he feels."

Cobert also said the Steelers could bring both backup quarterbacks, Charlie Batch and Byron Leftwich, each of whom are unrestricted free agents. He said Dennis Dixon, who also is unrestricted, will probably sign with another team.

"I hope so," Colbert said about the possibility of re-signing Batch and Leftwich. "I think they're comfortable being part of it and I think they're open to that. I think they want to wait and see what's out there for them. Playing behind a great quarterback like Ben, maybe you want to go somewhere else where there's an opportunity to start."

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[SteelCrazy]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

Wallace has great speed. He is average in route running. He is just above average overall. Let the kid walk and get a 1st rounder for him. You guys not remembering the 2nd and most important half of the football season? He was stopped dead in his tracks in the 2nd half of the season and I dont see it changing.

[Slapstick]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

Mike Wallace is definitely better than "above average"...

Hopefully, we can see how he performs with a QB with two good legs throwing to him...

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

Wallace's one trick is a wonder

Sunday, February 26, 2012
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Over the breadth of his first three NFL seasons, it's been difficult not to be impressed with Mike Wallace, most especially if you are Mike Wallace.

In a league reliably stockpiled with wideouts who are consistently taken with themselves, the Steelers' All Pro defers to few, if any, on the matter of self-worth, it seems to me, so it wasn't to buttress young Mike's confidence that Kevin Colbert happened to mention last week how much the club wanted to keep him around.

That would be utterly pointless, and among the many facets of his standout career at the top of the Steelers' personnel office is the hard truth that Colbert is not exactly in love with the sound of his own voice.

So what's with all the vocal valentines Colbert sent from Indianapolis last week? The "for sure we want Mike to finish his career with the Steelers ... we're going to do everything we can to keep Mike ... he's only scratched the surface of what he can do."

Might be nothing more than what is plain, but there is so much at work in the looming determination of Mike Wallace's immediate future that it's been hard to tell what's real this past week.

Colbert isn't in the least duplicitous by nature, but he's an expert survivalist in the dense forest of off-season politics, as is his top lieutenant, the brilliant capologist Omar Khan.

So when Colbert warbles noises that can sound from a distance like Mike Wallace is a blooming Jerry Rice and that the Steelers love him to death, it's not impossible that the Steelers are trying to drive the price of any offer sheet so high another team wouldn't come near Wallace with it. That way, if someone is callow or obtuse enough to break their bank for him, the Steelers would at worst come away with the knowledge that they've delivered unto some rival a major cap headache, not to mention adding a first-round draft choice in exchange for a player that is not exactly trending up at this point.

It'd be simpler for everybody if we knew where Wallace's career was going, but that's something about which there is no small uncertainty.

On Oct. 23, 2011, Wallace scored on the longest pass play in Steelers history, 95 yards from Ben Roethlisberger on a day when the wideout had only two other catches for 23 yards. He has not had a 100-yard game since.

He did not catch a touchdown pass in Pittsburgh's last five games, including the Jan. 8 playoff loss at Denver.

He's averaged 18.7 yards per catch in three years here, but only 8.8 yards per catch in the postseason. In eight post-season games, he's averaged 34 yards.

On Sept. 25, 2011, at Indianapolis, Wallace had 144 yards against the Colts and his sixth consecutive 100-yard regular season performance, one short of the all-time NFL record shared by Michael Irvin and Charley Hannigan.

But when he failed to tie the record the next Sunday in Houston, all the juice seemed to go out of his game. By the time Tim Tebow ended the Steelers' season that night in the Rockies, Wallace had goat horns out to here, right? Ben threw it to him 10 times, only three of which Wallace managed to catch for a meaningless 26 yards, and he dropped the 52-yard first-half pass that flipped all momentum to the Broncos. Ben needed Jerricho Cotchery just to force an overtime.

That doesn't sound like the kind of player you want to hang a franchise tag on and wind up paying him something in the neighborhood of $9 million.

Mike Tomlin himself has called Wallace a one-trick pony, more as a motivational ploy than a serious assessment, but here's what makes the Wallace issue so complicated: Even if he is a one-trick pony, it's one helluva trick, and the Steelers dearly love it.

Of all the known pony tricks -- the rearing on command, the galloping with people standing on them, the rolling over, the shaking hands, the waving, the bowing, even the attempted-if-always-unsuccessful pony card tricks -- the Steelers love best the one where Wallace scalds a secondary for 40 or more yards on one play, something he's done 11 times.

The next time Wallace and Ben pull that stunt, they'll have done it twice as often as Terry Bradshaw and John Stallworth. Even in the jet-fueled post-modern NFL, only Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne had done that more than Roethlisberger and Wallace, and only once more at that.

When you're in the entertainment business, this is not small potatoes.

Still, the best trick out there is probably the way the NFL makes us pay attention to this stuff seven months prior to kickoff.

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[aggiebones]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

First there are indeed quite a few of quasi-top end WRs out there in FA this year. The list is earlier in this thread.

That means teams will fight for those first since they don't require a 1st round pick. Noone with a top 20 pick would give a 1st rounder (rule is weird as they act as if all 1st rounders are the same value). That leaves about 10-12 teams that 'might' consider it.

There's also only about 2-3 teams in that set who need a WR like Wallace or don't have other needs of equal importance. So maybe only 2 teams 'really' look to make a move like this.

Don't we have the opportunity to match this type of offer if one comes? Let them do our negotiating. Only 1 team will make a 'grand' offer and since they are also giving up a 1st rounder, they might have a hard time opening the pocketbook all the way. The concern is that they tailor the contract so that it doesn't fit the Steelers ability to match. All front loaded or something. But I doubt many teams can do this.

So I imagine if we sign him to a 1st round option, NOONE comes calling or they just do the work for us on his deal.
I think teams will understand that we 'could' accept losing him and they won't play games to hurt our salary cap...knowing we could let him go and they'd be stuck with some weird contract.




Secondly about Cotchery. There's no guarantee that he will be getting some super offers as a no.2.
MAAAYbe as a no.3, but not sure he really could pull off a no.2 anymore. So I could see getting Wallace back and putting up a mild fight for Cotch. The Steelers might be the only team willing to pay him 'abit' extra for a couple year. We'd need to sign him to a longer spread out contract anyway. It would suit him better anyway. With that chunk of talent out there this year, I think there's a better chance of him returning too.

The Steelers may just let this play out a bit. see how many suitors either 'really' have before breaking the bank for either. I think they can get both back for respectable contracts.

But we have alot of young players popping up for new contracts in a couple years. Young DEs, ABrown, maybe Sanders if he has a big year. DB Lewis if he takes over opposite Ike.

We draft and scout well at WR, so I don't think the Steelers will go crazy for any of the WRs. What rounds did we get all these guys:

Wallace, Brown and Sanders were 2nd-5th rounders. Cotchery was on the trash heap. Don't fret too much over either player, but I think there's a chance we keep both.

[fezziwig]

Re: Mike Wallace interviewed on NFL Radio

To me and all this talk about being a passing league, receivers have now become as important or expensive as any left tackles, shut down corner or possibly equal in value or at least close in value to some qb's.
I think Wallace is that type of spreading the defenses and drawing double coverage but, I still don't see him as a game changer. Maybe his time will come on being that guy and maybe with Haley, we will finally have an OC that knows what to do with his talented crew ?

I think the Steelers are hot for keeping Wallace and I have a feeling they will break some hearts with their process in keeping him.