Lynch deal or no deal?

[depaashaas]

According to Jason La Canfora a deal is done or close even though Lynch his agent is denying it.

http://www.komonews.com/sports/Agent-No ... 53671.html

If true, those are some pretty good #'s and I am wondering who's not coming back. My first thought would be Okung as he is just to expensive for as much as he get injured

[NorthHawk]

$21 million over 2 years is pretty good and if true, seems like near top $ for RBs at this time.
I wonder how much would be guaranteed.

The Cap will go up a lot in 2 years, and if Lynch doesn't come back for 2016, they are off the hook for that year.
Okung is pretty good when healthy, but he rarely is, so I don't see them offering him top LT money anyway so he might hit FA, but you never know.

[RiverDog]

Okung is still under contract this season. There's no way we are cutting him. Even as much as he's been hurt, we're still a lot better team with him than without him, and left tackles don't grow on trees. There are other players we could choose not to bring back that would be a lot less painful than cutting Okung would be. Okung has one helluva lot of leverage as we do not have anyone that's close to ready to replace him full time at LT and drafting one is nearly out of the question as the top 2 or 3 LT's usually go very high in the draft.

The decision on Okung is going to be a tough one, but we won't cross that bridge until 2016.

[Steady_Hawk]

It will be quite interesting to see how they handle Okung. I'm really hoping La'el Collins falls into our lap at 31 although that's wishful thinking no doubt. He would certainly fill the LG role nicely and would leave us with one hole on our line when Okung's contract comes up next year.

[NorthHawk]

Some of the media evaluators have suggested he might be able to move to LT as they were surprised at how athletic he is.
I doubt he's there at 31, either - and if he was, we probably wouldn't select him anyway.

[depaashaas]

Okung is still under contract this season. There's no way we are cutting him. Even as much as he's been hurt, we're still a lot better team with him than without him, and left tackles don't grow on trees. There are other players we could choose not to bring back that would be a lot less painful than cutting Okung would be. Okung has one helluva lot of leverage as we do not have anyone that's close to ready to replace him full time at LT and drafting one is nearly out of the question as the top 2 or 3 LT's usually go very high in the draft.

The decision on Okung is going to be a tough one, but we won't cross that bridge until 2016.

I am not so sure about them not cutting him, his cap number is 7.28 mill and they can safe 5 mill if they cut him. And taking in account that in his 5 year career with the Hawks he has yet to play a full season, he has missed 21 games in those 5 years, they must at least be talking about a pay cut or restructuring contract imo. If the deal about Lynch is true that money has to come from somewhere. They also want to sign Wilson and Wagner, I know Wilson will get done but loosing Wagner as we did see a little of last season was hurting the team more than loosing Okung.

[c_hawkbob]

I would be floored if we cut Okung. We don't improve ourselves by making our weaknesses weaker.

[RiverDog]

I am not so sure about them not cutting him, his cap number is 7.28 mill and they can safe 5 mill if they cut him. And taking in account that in his 5 year career with the Hawks he has yet to play a full season, he has missed 21 games in those 5 years, they must at least be talking about a pay cut or restructuring contract imo. If the deal about Lynch is true that money has to come from somewhere. They also want to sign Wilson and Wagner, I know Wilson will get done but loosing Wagner as we did see a little of last season was hurting the team more than loosing Okung.

Okung's cap number actually went down this season. It was $11.2M last season, so we're already saving $4M in cap space. We don't need to make Draconian cuts in order to sign Wilson and Wagner. There are other areas of the team we can cut if need be that would be far less painful than cutting Okung, Mebane being one, Miller being another. Plus the cap is going to go up again this season. I don't think we would be flashing the type of money in front of Beast that's being reported if it meant that we were going to have to cut Okung.

I'm not necessarily for retaining Okung past 2015, but cutting him this season would be insane.

[mykc14]

I see no way that we cut him. In fact I would be more surprised if we were to extend him, or try to. Although, I could see him wanting to play out this year to try and prove he can stay healthy to maximize his next deal.

[Steady_Hawk]

Yeah, there's no way we cut him this year but next year's going to be a tough one.

[RiverDog]

I see no way that we cut him. In fact I would be more surprised if we were to extend him, or try to. Although, I could see him wanting to play out this year to try and prove he can stay healthy to maximize his next deal.

The Okung dilemma is going to be one of the most perplexing choices this team has had to make since Pete and JS arrived. I don't see us extending his contract this season, but next year is going to be tough. Okung is not a Pro Bowl quality LT (yes, I do realize he made the Pro Bowl one year), but he is by no means chopped liver, either, and we are a far worse team without him than we are when he's healthy. Unless we come up with a player in the draft that can step in and play LT, we might be forced to overpay for him even if all he does is play in his typical 10-12 games. We don't have anyone currently on the roster that can come anywhere close to replacing him, and we just can't leave our franchise quarterback naked on his blind side.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.