Put On Your Smithiak Hat: What Would You Pay DeMeco Ryans, Owen Daniels, And/Or Dunta Robinson?

For Ryans, i’d say a 6 year $45 million contract keeping the salary more or less level throughout at around $7.5 mil per year and the first 4 seasons guarunteed so around $30 mil. That’s ALOT of guarunteed money, and because of that i’d expect him to happilly accept the offer and to be perfectly honest, he deserves it. He’s one of the best MLBs in the game and just the way he’s handled his contract situation this summer shows me that he’s exactly the kind of player i’d want on my team and would throw everything including the kitchen sink to keep him. Character like that doesn’t fall from the trees, it’d be foolish to let him go or even to feel underappreciated.

Daniels, maybe a slightly rear heavy contract for 6 years and $30 million with four seasons guarunteed so maybe like $18 mil guarunteed. I think this is more than fair, even though it’s a little less than what Winslow got from the Bucs. Daniels is a great young receiving TE, if we sign him up for the next 4-6 years it’d be likely that he’s clearly one of the best at his position by the time we renegotiate so the contract should reflect those expectations a bit. With Daniels I think he mostly wants security and this would give him that.

Robinson gets a heavilly rear-heavy contract for 5 years and $42 mil with 3 guarunteed for a salary of around $18-$19 mil. He might not like it, but there’s no way i’d offer him more without seeing how he performs this season as he never really came back to 100% last year.

that I was about to post, so I will throw out my numbers here and post the article sometime later this week.

Demeco Ryans – Six year, $48 million. 24 million Guaranteed.

Dunta Robinson – Four-year, $16.8 million contract. 8.5 million Guaranteed.

Owen Daniels – Six-year, $30 million contract. 14 million Guarenteed.

Regardless of how much money you offer these guys the contract details are what make or break the deal. In the case of Ryans, I would want a deal where he doesn’t make as much upfront but has performance bonuses tied to every year of the contract, i.e. extra money for X number of tackles in a season/interceptions/fumble recoveries. Dunta would get the same kind of offer, if your as good as your telling me then the performance bonuses would actually get you more money every year. Owen Daniels is a slightly different case since as a TE he has no guarantee that the ball will come his way in a given game, so maybe something along the lines of bonuses for yac/first downs/TD’s/plays over 15 yards in length.

The point here is to stop the “I going to work my a** off the first year of my new contract and the last year but coast the middle of it” mindset that a lot of players seem to have now a days. I am not saying these guys do but you never know.

What’s the Texans’ financial status versus the cap? How much money do they have to spend? Without knowing the answers to those questions it’s hard to answer the question about what to pay these players. You have to factor in not only what they are paid, but what it will cost to pay players coming down the pike, such as Slaton. What will Cushing get paid? There has to be an estimate based on the 15th selection last year. Sorry, I don’t feel like doing the research. But you’d have to look at the whole database of numbers to make an informed decision. Keeping DeMeco is a given, but you may want to let Owen and Dunta go in lieu of losing Slaton or Mario down the road. Versus those two, Owen and Dunta are more replaceable.

DeMeco.