Don’t buy into the lie that was sold that we couldn’t afford Hopkins, Watson, and Tunsil. We could.

I often see this thought processing being spouted in this sub and it's completely false that somehow we were not going to be able to pay Watson, Tunsil, and Hopkins' increased salary/extension. This is false. Here is a breakdown of our cap hits of players brought in to replace Hop's production rounded to the nearest million:

• DJ – 2020 – $11M, 2021 – $9M
• Cobb – 2020 – $6M, 2021 – $11M, 2022 – $10M
• Cooks – 2020 – $8M, 2021 – $12M, 2022 – $13M, 2023 – $14M

Totals: 2020 – $25M, 2021 – $32M, 2022 – $23M, 2023 – $14M

Hop's cap hits are:

• 2020 – $7M
• 2021 – $13M
• 2022 – $25M
• 2023 – $27M

The only years we're saving money are 2022 and 2023. In 2022 DJ will either be gone or we'll need to re-sign him negating any savings, and by 2023 we'll have neither Cobb nor DJ or we will have re-signed them both likely for a total of $13M or greater. It's simply not true that we couldn't afford to give him the amount of money he wanted, we just didn't want to.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/arizona-cardinals/deandre-hopkins-12307/

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/houston-texans/david-johnson-16810

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/houston-texans/randall-cobb-7783/

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/houston-texans/brandin-cooks-14429/#:~:text=Brandin%20Cooks%20signed%20a%205,dead%20cap%20value%20of%20%248%2C000%2C000.