Brandon Winey as a starter

Excellent points, Canuck.

I'm okay with dealing Samuels before the draft-- I just don't want to see him packaged with the #5 pick. The Skins have more leverage and value with that pick than with any player they might consider trading away. If they deal Samuels for more players or picks (preferably mid-first round at minimum for one pick), while retaining their #5 pick, that would be fine.
Don't get me wrong; it's not going to be easy to replace Samuels. I really believe he's going to return to Pro Bowl form under Bugel's guidance. But if he's not willing to restructure now, then the time to deal him is now.

Theres no way we would get a first round for samuels the way he our quarterbacks have been getting killed. He has not done well under the spurrier regime with offsides and sub par blocking. I would be surprised to get a second for him, but I would rather keep Samuels and let bugel at him.

Excellent points, Canuck.

I'm okay with dealing Samuels before the draft-- I just don't want to see him packaged with the #5 pick. The Skins have more leverage and value with that pick than with any player they might consider trading away. If they deal Samuels for more players or picks (preferably mid-first round at minimum for one pick), while retaining their #5 pick, that would be fine.
Don't get me wrong; it's not going to be easy to replace Samuels. I really believe he's going to return to Pro Bowl form under Bugel's guidance. But if he's not willing to restructure now, then the time to deal him is now.

I think Crisp pretty much hits the nail on the head here. But I don't think we should be jumping on the Winey bandwagon just yet. He's a solid player but I can't see him being better than a healthy Samuels. I think it's important to remember that Winey joined the lineup right around the time Dockery was starting to find his groove. Samuels had to help compensate for a lot of Dockery's early rookie mistakes.

He was the third overall pick, why are we surprised at these numbers? Even if we think he didin't earn every dollar last season, dumping him for anything less than the third overall pick is insanity. Just be glad he is not Courtney Brown.

I think under Bugel our whole line will take a step up. Our guard next to Samuels/Winey is going to be suspect anyways. Either Fiore is going to give this another go around or we go with Dockery again. I sure hope Dockery did a lot of work this offseason becasue he lost some games for us. I think he should just take a paycut, leave the deal at two years and let him have a chance to prove himself. If i was him i wouldnt want a longterm deal becuase he should be able to play at a higher level and should want to prove that to get the big dollars again.

I agree with Crisp as well.

Losing Samuels would hurt us in 2004, but from all indications the Skins are on a 3 year plan. No point keeping Samuels for 2004 if we're gonna lose him in 2005 anyways.

We have assembled a great core of young guys that we can keep thru 2006 and beyond. Samuels should extend his contract to become a part of this core, or we should try to unload him.

The Skins gotta find a way to turn Samuels into Gallery without giving up the #5.

Come on Samuels, rework the deal so we can keep you and get KWII and Taylor.

He said he would redo his deal but didnt want an extension. Does that mean he will take a new, two year contract and pay cut?

Restructuring without an extension does nothing for us. There's too much accumulated signing bonus remaining on his contract. An extension would be the only way to get short-term cap relief, by pushing more money to future years.

The extension would have to have a small signing bonus though. It would have to give him the 20 million he should get in the next two years, over 4 or 5. If we give him another big deal we'll be in the same cap hell down the road again. We're going to have to take a big hit when we cut Brunell in two or three years to.

Let me remind all of you again that I don't read minds so I can't be positive about why Samuels has not reworked his deal.

I SUSPECT that he has lost some measure of faith in the team to come up with the money in his "big payoff" years when they actually come due. He has already redone his deal at least once - and maybe twice - with some minor tweaking to let the Skins survive previous cap problems. He has seen teammates not get the big money years at the ends of their deals. He has seen one teammate with an incentive loaded deal pushed back to a point where it is far less likely that he will earn those incentives. And so he says to himself, why do this again? Why not take the money that "they" owe "me"?

From his perspective, he is going to have to take a really low salary number this year and maybe next in order to get a bonus that makes his deal cap friendly. That means he is deferring the current salary AND the potential signing bonus he would get just by playing out his deal and going into the open market. If you add his salaries together and then add in a potential signing bonus for a solid OT who may not make the Hall of Fame but who can play at the NFL level, you are probably in the range of a $15-18M signing bonus right now. And to make that deal cap friendly, he has to make that at least a 6 year deal and maybe 8.

And maybe he's not ready to commit to that just yet - since maybe he thinks the Redskins aren't committed to him just yet.