Donald Butler.

[Sec-E4]

Donald Butler needs to stop thinking so much & should start playing with his raw talent, Normally when he's near the ball, Good things happen

The Matt Wilhelm approach has never worked for anyone

I'm sure TT knew what he was doing when he gave Butler his contract. I like it that he was called out about his sub par play, And they addressed the slow start.

"Next Man Up" & hold players accountable!

[blahblahblah]

Butler being exploited on the flanks again.

[Antonio's Gates]

Dude is so slow it always looks like a chore for him to run

[blahblahblah]

He had one of the worst games I've ever seen out of an ILB. He put on a clinic in:

Bad pursuit angles
Bad contain
Bad tackling
Bad man coverage

When the defense is beat up like this we need veteran players, especially veteran LBs, to step up and stop the bleeding. A good ILB will minimize hidden and second effort yards. Butler, when he wasn't invisible, was making all these things worse. I expect Marshall to be bad. I expect Butler to be good. He wasn't.

Absolutely disgusting.

[Boltx]

Butler is who he has always been. Solid-to-good player, but not a game changer. Don't get mad at him for not being an all world player. Expectations too high IMO.

[Steve]

If you look at his contract, it is pretty obvious it is really a 2-year deal, and then the team really has to make up their mind.

As far as his play, it has been on the verge of becoming a really good LB, who just missed a few plays a couple of years ago. Then last year, he started out bad, and this year has started out bad. He just needs to stopping missing some of the big plays, like dropping int (last week), and getting the RB in the backfield (he did do it this week), on top of not making a ton of mistakes.

[TTK]

Looking at overthecap, Butler has a huge cap hit in 2016 and 2017 ($9.4 mil and $5.4 mil). Looks like he is meant to stick around until 2017. Man, those are big cap numbers in 2016-2017 for a guy like him.

[Steve]

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/san-diego-chargers/donald-butler/

http://espn.go.com/blog/san-diego-chargers/post/_/id/3894/donald-butler-contract-details

There seems to be some disagreement between the over the cap, and these other sources. They seem to think that they money is split out differently, and that makes a lot more sense to me. But if you look at the sportrac one, there is an option bonus due, and those are often the bonuses that get a guy cut, and none of those would count. So, looking at that site, it is pretty clear we can dump him sooner then what over the cap suggests.

[blahblahblah]

I expect him to not miss or overrun like six tackles.

[SFW]

Looking at overthecap, Butler has a huge cap hit in 2016 and 2017 ($9.4 mil and $5.4 mil). Looks like he is meant to stick around until 2017. Man, those are big cap numbers in 2016-2017 for a guy like him.

If those numbers are accurate how is $5.4M in 2017 a huge cap hit? I wouldn't even consider $5.4M a huge cap hit this year let alone in three years from now when the entire cap will be higher.

[richpjr]

I'm not convinced he is 100% healthy (not a surprise) and it is affecting his play. One thing to keep in mind is not only will we have his salary on the books if we cut him, we also have to pay a replacement (duh) so that makes the money a bigger issue. So while we could upgrade almost every position on the roster with better players, there might be other places that are more pressing than ILB.

[Steve]

You can often count on finding a low cost, decent ILB in the FA market. That is because they often kick around, then teams like the appearance of signing a big name FA later in the FA period, overpay, then realize the guy isn't an impact player, and cut him a couple of years later. You would think some teams would learn, but many just keep repeating it.

Butler is only a huge cap hit if you consider the bonus money. Cut him at the end of this year and it is either a huge hit ($21 million in dead money according to over the cap (http://overthecap.com/player/donald-butler/447/) or a not so major loss of $ 8.9 mill (http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/san-diego...donald-butler/) due to how the bonuses are structured. OTC thinks that they are just a regular bonus, the other site seem to think they are a roster bonus, so we can dump him and avoid those. But unless you actually know how the deal is structured, you never know if we can dump him and save the cash or not.