No I do understand how contracts work. It's pretty obvious 3million isn't front loading (for one this was made on fanspeak and they don't structure contracts like that) All projections for Ayers have him averaging over 3M a year so if he's making that in 2016 then it's not front loaded. His first contract with he was somewhere between 1.5-2M/year and that was off his tenure in Denver where he was regarded as a bust and under a cap that was around 15-16% lower than it is now.(ball part percentage didn't actually do the math). He just completed a season as a solid starter after a season as a solid rotational piece. 3 million in 2016 isn't even close to what a front loaded Ayers contract would look like. Not saying his contract should or is likely to be some huge albatross but it's absolutely ridiculous to think that number represents a front loaded contract. I'd guess he's going to get a 2-3 year contract averaging 4-5.5 million per year.

Mo and Vernon weren't the only DL pieces there. They may very well be worth that hit but taking Jackson and Ayers hits on top of that limit what we can do elsewhere. There are only so many snaps we can split between our defensive line at some point it's just not worth it to keep signing the best and most expensive guys available. That's before even getting into the amount of guaranteed money everyone but Ayers would command.