Battle Red Blog
Is the young defensive end ready to cash in?
The short answer to the subheading is yes. Will Anderson is ready to cash in. Ironically, while quarterbacks get the most headlines and the most money, there is more intrigue at the edge rusher position in terms of free agent dollars. The quarterback market is pretty tight and pretty well defined. The edge rusher market not so much.
Like with did with Stroud last week, we will do with Anderson this week. We will start by looking at the top 12 edge rushers according to AAV. In order to do this, we are playing a little guessing game. Trey Hendrickson and Micah Parsons will almost certainly have new deals from someone before the season starts. That will play into Anderson’s market, so we have to include them. At this point, we are just getting on a price, so their financials will be in italics.
From there, we can look at the collective performance of these 12 players over their last two seasons. With both the financials and the performance data we will gather a median and a mean. The final step will be to get a per 15 game estimate of those numbers to see where Anderson needs to be to comfortably be within the group.
Hendrickson and Parsons represent a guess. If we take them out then the numbers get much more stark. Everyone except for Garrett fits into a range between 22 and 35 million. Obviously, when you sign the contract makes a bit difference. This is why we use medians in the first place. Garrett’s contract skews the mean because it is so far beyond what anyone else is making.
It is also the folly of the Bengals and Cowboys in this instance. All it takes is one idiot to set the market and the Browns were that Huckleberry. Parsons can make the Cowboys life miserable simply by demanding Garrett money. is he as good as Garrett? We will see when we look at the numbers, but this day and age that really doesn’t matter all that much.
The Bengals just paid both of their wide receivers, so they may not have the appetite to go 30+ million for Hendrickson. Someone will though. Then, you have the looming contract for Aidan Hutchinson. While Stroud will make more than Anderson, there is more of a state of flux for Anderson based not only on his performance, but the fact that a few prominent edge rushers have yet to be paid.
These run the gamat as well. Like we did with Stroud, it is important to pay attention to the mean and median for these numbers. Is this the neighborhood that Anderson lives in? If not, then what does he need to do to get to that neighborhood? Obviously, we need to look at his numbers.
Anderson: 27 games, 82 tackles, 26 TFL, 18.0 sacks, 41 QB hits
At first glance, it would appear he is far short. However, the...
