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I too live in D.C. and, regardless of injury, I felt the Redskins made a mistake by getting rid of Springs. The best example is clearly that he enabled them to give Dallas their first loss of the season by shutting down Owens - and Dallas was a different team before he laid out that forumla. You obviously don't want to plan around a guy getting injured but in New England we have a lot more depth and he may even be #3 or #4 for us.

Wow Mike, you really served up my prediction that the Pats will draft a first round OLB this year! I just feel, if they were able to sign Jason Taylor, this would really give them an opportunity to bring a young linebacker along this year and feel confident about their roster. It's true that it may come down to the best available guy but I feel strongly, in a linebacker rich draft, it will be someone coming off the edge.

Do you think Sean Smith from Utah will still be availible in the second round, and if so are the Pats interested in him?

Mike mentioned that it shouldn’t be a problem for the Pats to sign their free agents under the cap, so I wanted to quantify it for you all. Using the cap info from ianwhetstone.com, which has cap info for every team and the past three draft classes, I found well-reasoned estimates for the 11 draft picks cap costs. These aren’t exact since the contracts haven’t actually been done, but they should be a good prediction of how much cap the Pats would need so that they can sign the 11 picks currently assigned to them.

Around –
#23: $1.270m
#34: $0.910m
#47: $0.730m
#58: $0.559m
#89: $0.475m
#97: $0.460m
#124: $0.415m
#170: $0.333m
#199: $0.324m
#207: $0.323m
#234: $0.316m

Using Miguel’s method for the salary cap, the first 4 picks would be in the top 51 against the cap which would mean dropping Ryan O’Callaghan, Jonathan Wilhite, Mark Levoir, and Matt Gutierrez outside the top 51. Their base salaries would not count against the cap. The addition of #23, #34, #47, and #58 would then be their cap cost with the base salary of those four players subtracted from them.

Around –
#23: $0.885m
#34: $0.450m
#47: $0.270m
#58: $0.099m

The rest of the picks would just have their guaranteed money associated with this season effect the cap.

Around –
#89: $0.17m
#97: $0.154m
#124: $0.11m
#170: $0.03m
#199: $0.024m
#207: $0.019m
#234: $0.011m

The total change overall to the cap by all 11 picks would be the sum of both, $2.218m, the amount of cap necessary to sign all 11 players in the offseason.

wow nate good work.
btw, when are the forums coming back?
where does everyone think cutler will land?

Alex, I think Cutler remains in Denver.