Predicting landing spots for the Redskins top-five pending free agents
The landing spot of Ha Ha Clinton-Dix will be difficult to figure out. It’s going to be a very crowded safety market, and it’s unclear exactly which players will set the market and who will have the most interest. But one thing is certain. Teams will have a lot of options about who to pay.
The Redskins should have a level of interest in playing Clinton-Dix. He wasn’t as good as many expected he’d be after being acquired in a mid-year swap with the Packers, but he still had flashes of very good play that was reminiscent of his early years with the Packers.
Clinton-Dix is generally good in coverage, and it’s possible that he needed time to adapt to the Redskins’ system. After all, mid-year trades are sometimes difficult to work out. And also, Clinton-Dix was still generally solid, and the truth is that he is far better than any talent the team currently has at the position.
The question with Clinton-Dix is about whether or not the team wants to pay him. He may have some interest on the open market, and Washington could opt to target a guy like Landon Collins instead while picking up a cheaper player as well or maybe a draft pick. But if Clinton-Dix wants to make, say, $8 million annually, the Redskins may opt to let someone else pay that while they try to get Collins. But, if they can’t get Collins, circling back to Clinton-Dix would make sense.
At the end of the day, Clinton-Dix is the true toss up of the Redskins’ important free agents. He could come back, and he could end up somewhere else. In a loaded safety market, it’s hard to know exactly where anyone will land. With that said, I think Clinton-Dix is going to leave at this point in time, so we’ll see where he ends up. A good landing spot for him could be Oakland, and the Raiders reportedly have interest in him.