http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...eason-get-ready-wild-defensive-spending-spree
HOUSTON -- A funny thing happened here Sunday night. Two NFL teams -- the Cowboys and the Texans -- played a game and neither one of them scored 20 points. Not even with the help of an overtime period. Yes, even in the high-flying NFL of 2018, you still can find some pockets of defense being played here and there.
Now, what, you're going to come at me with a list of bad coaching decisions and the fact that the Cowboys don't have any reliable receivers, and you're right about all of that. But plays were being made on defense in this game. Houston bottled up
Ezekiel Elliott. Dallas hit
Deshaun Watson over and over again. You're still allowed to make plays that stop the other team, even as the rules make it harder and harder.
But the real reasons Dallas-Houston was an important game to watch from a defensive perspective were a couple of star pass-rushers in each team's front seven. The Cowboys'
DeMarcus Lawrence and the Texans'
Jadeveon Clowney are both in contract years and project to be among the jewels of a 2019 free-agent class that's going to be all about defense.
Remember how we just finished with the year of the free-agent quarterback? Next year looks like the year of the defensive player. Lawrence will be coming off a franchise-player season in which the Cowboys paid him $17.143 million. Clowney is making $12.306 million in the fifth-year-option season of his rookie contract. Assuming health and continued productivity, these two guys are set to cash in on a market that went through the roof about six weeks ago when
Aaron Donald and
Khalil Mack signed their record-setting deals.
They aren't alone. Next spring's free-agent pass-rusher market could include Detroit's
Ezekiel Ansah (like Lawrence, a franchise player who can't negotiate a new deal until after the season), Philadelphia's
Brandon Graham, Seattle's
Frank Clark, New England's
Trey Flowers and Kansas City's
Dee Ford, to name a few. Jacksonville's
Yannick Ngakoue is signed through 2019 but could be in line next offseason for a contract extension that helps set the floor for some of those other deals.
And it's not just the pass-rushers. We could be looking at a free-agent safety class that includes
Earl Thomas,
Landon Collins,
Lamarcus Joyner,
Tyrann Mathieu and
Ha Ha Clinton-Dix. Potential free-agent cornerbacks include
Bradley Roby and
Ronald Darby. This market could feature linebackers such as
Anthony Barr and
Vince Williams and defensive tackles such as
Grady Jarrett,
Ndamukong Suh and
Sheldon Richardson.
Could it really be that -- after a year that appears poised to break all kinds of offensive records -- it's the defensive players who cash in most?
It certainly could. Lawrence sits half a sack off the league lead with 5.5 through five games. He had 14.5 sacks last year, and the Cowboys probably could have saved themselves some money by doing an extension with him in June or July before Donald and Mack blew past $20 million a year. But Lawrence's pre-2017 history included injury and suspension issues, and as one source close to the situation put it, "He had one franchise-type year, and the Cowboys wanted to see another one." Lawrence's franchise tag next year would be $20.57 million, and given where the market sits now, it's hard to see him signing for anything that pays less than about $19 million a year. And even with extensions looming for Elliott,
Byron Jones and
Dak Prescott over the next couple of years, the Cowboys have enough cap space to pay Lawrence at the top of the pass-rusher market and still get those other deals done.
Danielle Hunter signed a below-market extension with Minnesota, which might have hardened Houston's negotiating position, and then the Mack deal went well beyond the market, which likely hardened Clowney's position. He's got his own extensive injury history, which is part of the issue as well. But if Clowney can get through this year healthy, he should be in line to tickle that $20 million-a-year level as well. What's interesting about that as it pertains to Houston is that the Texans usually do deals for their big stars well before they reach free agency, and they often try to tamp down the average annual salary a bit on the grounds that Texans players play at least 10 games a year in states that don't have a state income tax (eight in Texas and one each in Florida and Tennessee). If Clowney is determined to break the bank, he could find himself franchised or looking elsewhere.
Ansah and Graham are a little bit of a different story, since Ansah is 29 and Graham is 30, while Lawrence is 26 and Clowney is 25. But everyone needs pass-rushers, and the age issues could just mean shorter-term deals for bigger money and/or guarantees.
One more wrinkle: At this point, next year's draft projects as a big one for defensive players -- defensive linemen in particular. That was part of the reason Oakland decided to trade Mack for first-round picks, and there might be a team or two that decides to sit out the free-agent pass-rusher market thinking they can find their solution in the draft. But as we saw with the quarterbacks this past year, the top guys will get their money. And in 2019, the money dished out to defensive players could make us all forget how much this season has been about offense.
