Did the Ravens learn from Steelers past mistakes?

I could be totally off on this-

Coming off a super bowl championship, does it make sense to let FA's walk? Their value is certainly inflated and year after year we see guys sign above their actual value, merely because they were part of a championship team.

We seem to have executed this strategy well after '05. We let Faneca, Porter, Kimo von Oelhoffen and Chris Hope loose, none of whom did anything extraordinary following their departure. Our replacements for them filled in well and we subsequently won another championship in '08. Following '08, however, the only guys we let go of were Holmes (disciplinary issue) and Nate Washington (our #3 receiver at the time). We signed EVERY other key part of our championship team to long term, Super-Bowl-Vet-Inflated deals which are hurting us where it counts (think our inability to sign our homegrown diamonds in the rough Mike Wallace and Keenan Lewis).

I may be wrong, as I can't recall which players we might have re-signed to long term deals in between '05 and '08 but my gut tells me the Ravens will reload well despite the outflow of talent. I sure as hell hope I'm wrong

 

Interesting question.
My take on it is, it`s hard to identify which players deserve the payday, and which don`t.
Do you think we would have overpaid to keep O`donnell, if the league was trending the way it is nowadays, given the premium put on having a capable qb now?
Lookit what Flacco and company got this offseason...(Brees/Rodgers/Romo, etc...)
I know he didn`t WIN us a Superbowl, he Cost us one, but it could be argued that he had a big hand in helping us get there.
I guess what I am trying to say is, we only have so much money to spend.
How do you decide who to keep, and who to let go?
Has it been a mistake to keep paying Polamalu, since he can`t seem to stay healthy?
Should we have spent the money on Antonio Brown, who fumbled at a few crucial times this year, or kept Mike Wallace, who was the greatest thing since sliced bread, until he got greedy, and held out of training camp?
How do you know which players are "overvalued", because they were on a championship winning team, and which you need to keep around to have a shot again?
I think the Steelers get the answer right more often than not, because it is very rare, that you see someone we cut go have much sucess somewhere else.
On the other hand, you can certainly argue that there are players here, who are making too much money, and we would be fine without(Colon, Starks, Hampton, Foote, etc)...
We seem to be purging a lot of those players(Harisson), lately, but not enough, according to some people here.
I don`t know how to determine who is essential(besides Ben), but every team in the league struggles with that issue, whether they win the SB, or even get in the playoffs, or not...
Parity, Baby...
Ya only got so much money to spend.
We have always had plenty of depth, to replace the "overinflated" contracts of our past SB veterans, that we didn`t really have to worry about in 05 thru 08... Now, I`m not so sure...
We will see.
And the Cravens are in the same boat, IMHO...
I`m just gonna have faith in our track record, that we can re-load every bit as well as the Ravens, but i will be honest, and admit, I think they have caught up to us, and it`s like fighting a mirror image of ourselves, every time we play them.
They seem to have learned from us, how to be a successful football team, and there is no denying that they are, no matter how much I hate them.
GO STEELERS!

 

By mistake do you mean keeping a team together that went to two and some three super bowls.

 

I believe that Ozzie has more confidence in himself in judging talent than Kevin Colbert.
He is also more open minded in bringing other players(from other teams) into the fold.

 

This is always an interesting question, especially concerning FAs. I think you have to look at the bigger picture and see how often FAs workout with any team. Almost impossible to predict how a FA is going to do with a new team/system. I've seen nobodies go to a team and become a pro-bowler and I've seen big name guys come in and you never hear their name again. I do think your right, in that, too many of them get big contracts after their team has won a Superbowl, however, some of the guys that stick around get bigger contracts after winning a Superbowl.

 

Interesting.

I think the Steelers have gambled the last two season - they had a SB-worthy team, and were keeping the gang together for one last show. We won SB40 with basically that mentality.
The problem was, for the last few seasons, we didn't have a dominating team - we had a team who, if all the cards fell the right way, should win the SB. But if the cards weren't falling to us (like last season), then we wouldn't. So whether we should have shored up rather than make dramatic cuts is a question. However, I was happy to see the cuts made last off-season, and felt it was time we started getting younger.

I'm not sure if we let the right or wrong players go - the next few seasons will bear that out. I also think, though, that many of our "issues" are not down to who we signed or didn't sign, but rather what happened to them whilst here. Think abut it: what if Spence and Decastro weren't injured? What if Tomlin and Mendenhall never fell out? What if Mike Wallace didn't hold out (how many people would seriously, seriously be chiding him as a one-trick pony if he had come into camp and performed?)? What if Limas Sweed got his head straight... etc. etc.

 

I'm not necessarily advocating for completely shredding the roster following a super bowl championship to save cash. But I do think it's not wise to assume that a guy like Timmons is that special that he's crucial to keep around. We signed the guy to for 6 years $50 million- definitely a championship inflation. I see Baltimore letting the Ellerbe's and Krugers of the game leave via expensive deals and I wish we had done the same.