Why would they pay an old dhop if they wouldn’t pay Cooper?
Lol, no the didn’t! They’ve cleared around 50m over the last couple of days. Roughly half of that went to covering what we were over the cap. Half of what was left covered Wilson, Vander Esch, and Gilmore. That leaves a bit over 13m. Around 8 of that will be needed for the rookie class and to cover in season signing!
The first year of extensions is usually relatively low. Plus, there are restructures that can be activated to free up money. Just as an example, Gallup's contract cost us $4.5 million this year. Elliott's giant deal cost us $6.3 million the first year. Dak's restructure this year opened up $22 million in space. He will be restructured again next year or extended to heavily reduce his $59 million cap hit. The salary cap is always rolling, restructures pay for new contracts, which get restructured to pay for new contracts, absorbing dead money along the way. Most teams have figured out by now how to keep it rolling and can practically manipulate it however they want (although sometimes its best to stop and take a hard hit so that you can reset if you see that contending isn't likely).
Nobody knows exactly what the salary cap will be in 2024. However, I read where OTC has the cap rising to about 256M.
Wasn’t my question
The knack is to spread the big 3's contracts, which we can easily do as the UFA years differ. (Diggs - 2024, CeeDee - 2025 ($20m 5th year option in 2024) and Micah - 2026).
This is the most pertinent point....we can afford the 'Big 3' (even Dak in 2026 and Tyler 2027), the problem is you only want to pay top salaries for top talent or on contracts that are easily restructured/cut....not the recent methodology of paying everyone.
I agree but we cant rule it out. We still have a depth issue at LB.
Yes. But there are a few issues.
