They tried to get Ridley and made an aggressive offer. Should they have given a 30 year old WR $30m/year with $60m guaranteed when he's facing the same cliff that OBJ, Julio Jones, and pretty much every NFL WR who relies on explosion and twitch faces and falls off from right around their age 30 season?
Look, none of know how Wolf and the coaching staff view some of the internal options. Yes, we know they want to "weaponize" the offense. Yes, we can see LT is a giant question mark from the outside. But if they saw Tyron Smith as the only actual upgrade (for the handful of games he's actually available...and even then he likely wasn't interested in NE), I don't blame them for not shelling out money for any of the meh FA LTs just so they can check a box. Kyed's reporting suggests they think Okorafor is a viable LT candidate, even if he most likely isn't The Guy moving forward. Maybe they think Calvin Anderson is a viable LT with a normal offseason and a clean bill of health (and before people freak out, yes, I know Calvin Anderson was unplayable last year. I also know he was thrown into an impossible situation, with what--a week of camp to try to ramp up and play OT? Good luck!). Whatever the team's 2022 evaluation of Calvin Anderson was, I don't know. But maybe they see a guy they can get by with if they have to--which is what they'd be doing with any of the FA LTs...getting by--and that includes Jonah Williams. I'm sure a rookie LT will be in the mix as well.
Another example is we don't know how the team feels about Marcus Jones, Alex Austin, Marco Wilson, or Isaiah Bolden. Wilson and Bolden are RAS darlings, and maybe they feel like one of them can pop in their scheme. Austin obviously played well in a small sample size down the stretch. Maybe instead of signing a vet CB like Gilmore or Xavien Howard, they want to give the kids a chance to sink or swim since they're all dirt cheap and cost controlled (except Wilson, I think he's a FA next year). In fairness, I'd like to see Julian Blackmon signed at safety, since he's young and fills a need they currently don't have on the roster, but IDK.
They were never going to fill every need in a single offseason. Wolf has been pretty upfront about building through the draft, playing and developing young talent, and prioritizing extending their core players. They appear to be doing just that, and it's a smart way to go about it.
