The multi-million dollar question for the Texans heading into free agency is what to do with Mario Williams who will become an unrestricted free agent in early March if the Texans don't lock him up before then.
Williams would be a hot commodity on the free agent market, presumably to a 4-3 team looking for a big-time defensive end.
The Texans have three options with Williams: a) sign him to a long term deal, b) franchise him, or c) let him go unrestricted.
There could also be a sub-option to (b) that would be to apply a franchise tag on Williams to buy time with the intent to trade Williams to a team that will sign him to a long term deal.
The Texans have leverage with Foster because he's restricted and I think the Texans will give him the long term deal he deserves.
Let's explore the options on Williams just a bit.
Before we simply say 'sign him to a long term deal' you must look at the Texans salary cap situation for 2012. Details are still emerging but the cap will be somewhere around $125 million next season.
According to spotrac.com, the Texans have six players that will account for $44.8 million of that cap space and that doesn't include Arian Foster who will likely get a nice long term deal of his own in the next few months.
Let's say for discussion purposes that Foster's cap hit in 2012 is $6 million. That means the Texans would have around $51 million in cap (more than 40%) wrapped up in seven players (and that wouldn't include Williams).
Add a fat Williams contract to the bunch and you could easily have the Texans using roughly half of their cap space on eight players - and the other half would be spread across the other 45 players plus contingency space for injured reserve.
That might be manageable but do you see where I'm going with this?
As an aside, the cap values on the spotrac site may or may not be totally accurate because Andre Johnson, Antonio Smith and DeMeco Ryans re-structured their deals to help the Texans get under the cap last year and those amounts appear to be the pre-restructure amounts. So the real cap figures may vary a bit, but they're probably close enough for this discussion.
As another aside, Williams' rookie deal with the Texans was 6 years - $54 million, with $26.5 million guaranteed. And Chris Myers and Joel Dreessen are also set to become free agents in March by the way.
So how about a franchise tag for Mario? That would be even worse from a cap standpoint than a long term deal since his tag (and cap hit) would be $16.56 million in 2012, at least until a long term deal or a trade could be worked out. UPDATE: Jan 28. If the $1.35 million 'other' bonus shown on the spotrac site is included in Mario's 2011 salary, then Mario's franchise tag would be $15.15 million x 1.2 = $18.18 million. I'm not sure what the $1.35 million is, but I'm guessing it's a proration of an option bonus.
And then there's always the option to let him walk.
This wouldn't make sense to many fans but this is a business decision and you have to ask yourself the question: Is Mario Williams absolutely essential to the success of the Texans defense going forward?
I'm talking essential to the point where you're going to make him the highest paid player on the defense, a decision that will have a significant financial ripple effect throughout the rest of the roster? Is five more sacks per year (but quite possibly fewer tackles) than Connor Barwin's production level worth $40 million guaranteed?
Also, Mario has had his troubles with injuries over the past two seasons, landing on IR in both the 2010 and 2011 seasons with a sports hernia and a torn pectoral muscle.
What if you took Mario's money and spent it on a free agent WR2 and CB2 much like the Texans did last year when the passed on Nnamdi and signed Johnathan Joseph and Danieal Manning for the same amount?
I floated this idea on Twitter a few days ago and most of my followers liked the idea of taking care of Arian and then using the money it would take to sign Mario and spend it on other needs, and then drafting another outside linebacker to back up Barwin and Reed.
Plus, this isn't just a decision for 2012. The Texans have another challenging situation ahead of them in free agency in 2013 so these decisions can't be based on one-year situational snapshots. There needs to be at least a two year cap health plan in place to avoid the situation known as cap hell.
Texans players entering their final contract year in 2012 include Connor Barwin, Duane Brown, Rashad Butler, James Casey, Shaun Cody, Tim Jamison, Matt Leinart, Brice McCain, Troy Nolan, Glover Quin, and Matt Schaub.
So what do you think, Mario or no Mario?
You may also want to read >>> Texans free agency look-ahead
Comments