Football is not a sport where contracts are burdens. Kirk is owed 21M next year which is bottom end money for a veteran starter, he could easily be traded (he won’t be traded if Speilman is the GM). Barr is inexpensive to cut after this season. If Cook drops off we can cut him with minimal damage after 2022 (he should still be good after that though).
We had a Super Bowl roster 2015/2016-19. We never got to see Teddy take the next step and Speilman panicked by trading for Bradford. He should’ve rolled with Shaun Hill and we would’ve finished around 10-15 in the draft. Who knows if we would’ve gotten Mahomes/Watson or Trubisky/Kizer. Regardless having the QB on the rookie QB deal would not have only allowed us to keep the players that needed raises but also add a quality O lineman and corner. I don’t blame Speilman for signing Kirk because we needed a QB and he was the best available.
It is near impossible to win a super bowl without drafting a franchise QB. You compete when they are on their rookie contract supported by a strong team and as they develop they become strong enough to make up for roster deficiencies.
Pretty fair. However, while recently the "rookie QB" thing is true, that hasn't always been the case. We had quite the stretch where it wasn't a Rookie deal QB taking you to the Promise Land. The issue always lies in trenches. The O-Line has been completely neglected and was serviced for a large portion of the latter half of the 2010 decade by very inferior linemen who were not even going to be 2nd on their former team's depth charts the next season if they were to resign. Then the ones who were serviceable, they ended up always getting hurt or just flat out missed the entire season. It is why I have always felt Zimmer's plan was to go the Ravens style and just build a completely elite defensive core from the Top-Down and keep the games at like 21-13 or 13-9 type games. The issue with that, is while the Defense was pretty amazing during that last NFC Championship Game run -- the offense completely fell off the wagon. Same with the many early exits because the offense squandered chances.
I think they knew the window was closing on keeping the elite defense together and if they didn't act now, that window would close and it would be another 5 year cycle of getting players up to the level where they were playing Zimmer Defense. In the end, the signing probably hurt their ability to keep at least 1 veteran DB on the team and make a push to get another Tackle or Guard to keep whoever was QB'ing upright.