That would be nice, but unfortunately it would be practically impossible to fit them both under the salary cap.

The Niners secondary all benefitted from having Nate Clements as a teammate. Most of their young DBs saw an improvement and (as noted above) there were Niners fans who wanted to keep him, so to view him as the same guy who was cut by three teams may be inaccurate.

For what it’s worth, he saw significant playing time in the Niners win over the Jets this season, recording 4 tackles, as he stopped Coles for a 5 yard gain on first down, Stuckey a yard shy of a first down on third and nine and Jones in the backfield for a loss. He added a late tackle on Cotchery in the prevent and obviously contributed to Favre’s 137yds passing that day.

He is also an excellent special teamer, which already makes him better than Drew Coleman or Eric Smith. Don’t be so sure he’ll be that much more expensive either…last year he earned just $800K. Smith and Coleman are officially set to earn $673K and $523K respectively this year, but Jason from nyjetscap.com said in a recent e-mail to me that this Smith’s base salary is set to escalate to $1.01M in the next few weeks. We will have to wait for the details of the deal, but I’ll be surprised if Strickland gets as much as $3m over the three years.

He is an excellent special teams tackler, and is especially good at covering the slot in nickel and dime packages. That is what KILLED us last year. He is coming in to fill a specific void.

Great signing.

I have to say that I think a lot of people would say two 1st round picks, a 3rd round pick, and a starting OLB is a little much for Cutler. Now if the Jets do trade him, I’m positive Tanny will get him for the best value to the Jets, and there is no way with Rex coming in for his first year that they would take his first 2 1st round picks away from him. That’s mortgaging the future for one player and I don’t see them doing it.