Philly extend up LeSean McCoy

[srobert96]

I am personally not a fan of paying any running back big bucks. I liked the deal that Jax did with MJD. I think Rice is on par with Foster and McCoy but I would rather they not sign him to a similar contract. I would rather use the money on Oline and wrs and take a rb by committee approach similar to NY Giants.

[Corey]

I love Ray Rice as much as the next guy, but LeSean McCoy had a much better and more complete season than Rice did last year and is probably a slightly better overall back at this point. They're both top-5, though.

Much better is an overstatement. If anything McCoy plays in a much better offense with much better players.

Do you realize that even with Vick out Philly still finished with a top 10 passing game? The Ravens were 10 slots lower. I am not knocking Flacco for his production but in Andy Reids offense McCoy has it much easier than Rice has it Cam Cameron's offense. In Reid's offense, imo, McCoy is a secondary figure to the Eagles passing attack. The Eagles would still put up huge offensive numbers without McCoy. Ray Rice is Cameron's entire offense. When Rice falters 90% of the time the Ravens offense crumbles.

[ravensnhokies]

Much better is an overstatement. If anything McCoy plays in a much better offense with much better players.

Do you realize that even with Vick out Philly still finished with a top 10 passing game? The Ravens were 10 slots lower. I am not knocking Flacco for his production but in Andy Reids offense McCoy has it much easier than Rice has it Cam Cameron's offense. In Reid's offense, imo, McCoy is a secondary figure to the Eagles passing attack. The Eagles would still put up huge offensive numbers without McCoy. Ray Rice is Cameron's entire offense. When Rice falters 90% of the time the Ravens offense crumbles.

Pierce would be Cameron's entire offense if he was the featured back. Call it like it is, Cam offense is a RB's wet dream but unfortunately a nightmare for a QB.

Last year, Rice left a lot of yards on field. The evidence was Ricky Williams being the more productive RB in the playoffs. Ray danced too much instead of hitting hole that Leach blew up. A 5yd straight ahead dive is a lot better than Ray's too frequent tapdance 2yd gains. Sorry I just don't think Ray is a great Running RB. Good but not great. (Passcatching RB he is arguably the best)

If the Ravens do cave in to Ray's agent demands, and he does get a deal that is substantial better than Foster & McCoy contracts, I will be very pissed at the Ravens FO. It's simply bad business. Thankfully the FO is smart. Why do you think the drafted Pierce anyways... It lessen the blow of Ray's likely holding out and being in bad 'football' shape for the 1H of the year.

[Haloti92]

So 12 playoff carries where Ricky averaged 1 extra yard per carry than Rice (42 carries) proves that "last year, Rice left a lot of yards on the field?" Even though during the regular season Ricky averaged 4.1 YPC on 108 carries to Rice's 4.7 YPC on 291 carries?

To be honest, I thought that Rice was tripped up by minimal contact in semi-open field last year more than he had been in previous seasons (didn't lift his feet or was a bit off balance, etc). I also recall a few times where he didn't quite follow Leach and/or danced, but I would argue all backs do that. I am not sure I would go so far as to say he left a lot of yards on the field. And I wouldn't point to the results of two games and a dozen carries as strong evidence.

In reverse.....Last year Ben Tate averaged 5.4 YPC on a whopping 175 carries in the regular season. To Foster's 4.4 YPC on 278 carries. Tate also had 9 playoff carries (to Foster's 51) where he averaged 1.5 YPC less than Foster.

In general I agree with you that Rice's running abilities/results are not as exceptional as his receiving abilities/results, but the combination of very good running and very great receiving I think makes the overall package "great" for sure. Without a passcatching RB our offense would struggle mightily and need to drastically change its philopsophy/playcalling.

[GOTA]

Our back seems to be the only one with his head in the clouds.

Don't forget Matt Forte

[GOTA]

Hensley's got a slightly different take...

http://espn.go.com/blog/afcnorth/pos...-help-ray-rice

Why is Hensley comparing Rice, McCoy and Foster as if they had anywhere near the same number of games played or even carries in the past 3 years? What an apples and oranges way to look at things.

[leachisabeast]

Pierce would be Cameron's entire offense if he was the featured back. Call it like it is, Cam offense is a RB's wet dream but unfortunately a nightmare for a QB.

Last year, Rice left a lot of yards on field. The evidence was Ricky Williams being the more productive RB in the playoffs. Ray danced too much instead of hitting hole that Leach blew up. A 5yd straight ahead dive is a lot better than Ray's too frequent tapdance 2yd gains. Sorry I just don't think Ray is a great Running RB. Good but not great. (Passcatching RB he is arguably the best)

If the Ravens do cave in to Ray's agent demands, and he does get a deal that is substantial better than Foster & McCoy contracts, I will be very pissed at the Ravens FO. It's simply bad business. Thankfully the FO is smart. Why do you think the drafted Pierce anyways... It lessen the blow of Ray's likely holding out and being in bad 'football' shape for the 1H of the year.

Are you saying that Pierce would be just as productive as Rice if he was the starter? Do you actually think Rice is going to hold out that long and get out of shape? I don't think so my self, he is a hard working character, and isn't the type to do that, he respects this team too much.

[GOTA]

Are you saying that Pierce would be just as productive as Rice if he was the starter? Do you actually think Rice is going to hold out that long and get out of shape? I don't think so my self, he is a hard working character, and isn't the type to do that, he respects this team too much.

If the Ravens believed that Rice was that easy to replace they wouldn't be giving him franchise tag money.

[JAB1985]

Hensley's got a slightly different take...

http://espn.go.com/blog/afcnorth/pos...-help-ray-rice

doing 3 year totals when rice was a starter all 3 and McCoy and Foster were backups their first one. bad comparison and bad article. Cant believe that guy gets paid when its such horribly biased "reporting". theyre actually very similar with McCoy being the low guy, imo, while Foster and Rice compare very favorably as far as total yards production. I feel Foster brings more personally but as far as tier and contracts go they should be all around the same due to similar production, personal opinions aside.

I wouldnt say McCoy had a vastly better year than Rice. I think all things equal they were pretty close. you could argue that McCoy has more upside since hes been steadily getting better every year while Rice has been pretty steady around 1300/600 with only yearly variance, but that can go the other way too since Rice has been more proven. I think this contract should put Rice in his place. I dont think he deserves more than Foster but i can understand wanting more than McCoy. I dont think theres reason for him to be getting a million more a year than either of them. Rice is a very good back, great even, but i dont think hes irreplaceable or "elite" (power running be the only knock really) which i can argue with those two since they have the size speed and power to be "complete". I think eventually they up the guaranteed money a bit to make him happy while still making his per/year around that 8-9/year number.

[Captain Silver]

I imagine the FO and Ozzie have a fair deal comparable to McCoy and Foster on the table and Ray Rice's agent wants the Moon.

Again, love Ray, but the league has set the scale at which he is to be paid. He is rolling the dice on his career.

I am sure in his head, he thinks he can walk and get AP money from some other team, you know what, he is right. There is an idiot owner out there that would pay Rice CJ2K or AP money, but Baltimore won't.

Unfortunate for everyone we had to use the tag. No one will part with 2 first rounders for him, so he will play under the tag, dangerous for a back in my opinion considering one injury and more than a few games would effectively cost them millions.

Plus Flacco's new deal is looming and in the end, QB's are 10 times harder to find then a serviceable back. If negotiations with Flacco go south as well, Flacco would get the tag and Rice will walk.

I'd not like to see this scenario play out, but I think Rice's agent wants to gamble for what is behind door number 3, it is inevitable.

And for those that like to point out we had players play under the tag for two plus years, the were defensive players. Not that they don't get hurt, but they lay more hits than they take in comparison to a back.

p.s. Hensley sucks, he is arguably the worst writer ESPN has hired in a long time. I miss James Walker.

[bmorecareful]

Are you saying that Pierce would be just as productive as Rice if he was the starter? Do you actually think Rice is going to hold out that long and get out of shape? I don't think so my self, he is a hard working character, and isn't the type to do that, he respects this team too much.

No, what he was saying is that if Pierce were the starting RB he would be targeted on a similar % of plays as Rice because of the nature of our offense--and that would likely lead to him posting big numbers, not necessarily on the level of Rice but big nonetheless.

No matter who we have at RB, he (or they) are going to be running the ball a lot and catching the ball a lot. Our offense is built around around a few very simple concepts: 1) run the ball between the tackles, 2) send the WRs on deep sideline routes, 3) if the deep routes aren't there, throw the ball short to the back or TE. If we're not running the ball with the RB, there's a pretty high chance we're going to be throwing it to him particularly because our WRs have historically not been very good at getting deep (Mason could work the sidelines with the best of them, but not so much on the deeper routes.)

If you look at the pass target % over the last few years, our offense is throwing a much higher percentage of passes to RBs, but not all teams do that. Some teams, like the Patriots, Packers, Giants, Steelers, etc. throw nowhere near as frequently to the backs as we do because their schemes are much more sophisticated and balanced.

That has always been the Cam Cameron offense. Obviously it has worked great when he had superb RBs like Tomlinson and Rice, but even in 2007 when the Dolphins had crap at RB they were still throwing tons of balls to backs. Cam Cameron's offense is run the exact same way no matter what 11 players are on the field. Now, if Rice were to go down, I don't think Pierce/Allen/Berry could produce anywhere near as much as Rice, but they would still be targeted plenty.

[wickedsolo]

I think Rice and McCoy are two of the more comparable backs in the NFL currently. Both are smaller (Rice is "thicker", but McCoy is taller) backs that utilize a nice variety of burst, vision, and elusiveness. The one edge that McCoy has is he does have that extra gear when he gets out into open spaces. Rice doesn't have that.

Regardless, what this is telling the rest of the league is that two well run franchises have paid their star RB's who happen to be arguably two of the best YOUNG rb's in the league significantly less than the deals that CJ and AP (and even DeAngelo Williams) signed. They've set the market for RB's.

I could see the Ravens going maybe slightly more than McCoy's deal, but not much. Foster's was 5 for $43 with just under $21 guaranteed and McCoy's had relatively the same guaranteed money and was 5 for $45.

Rice's deal should be somewhere in the vicinity of a 5 yr deal for $45-46 mill with about $21-22 guaranteed.