Hankerson

Hankerson

Friday, January 2, 2015

Redskins Salary Cap Situation Going into 2015 and Beyond

Doing some math and such...

The Redskins need to cut, based on both plays and recoverable money, Chris Chester and Tracy Porter, cut or restructure Stephen Bowen with a much cheaper deal, and extend Trent Williams and Ryan Kerrigan who both have a lot of unguaranteed money on the books in the coming final year of their contracts. Doing just those could leave us with a projected 40-45 mil in cap space with under 100 on the books (projected 2015 cap a little over 140 mil)

We should be able to re-sign Kai Forbath, Niles Paul, Tom Compton, Santana Moss, Roy Helu, Chris Thompson, and Jarvis Jenkins...

Cut Chester, Porter, and some scrubs...

Extend/Renegotiate Bowen, Kerrigan, Hall, Darrell Young...

Sign all of our draft picks...

Let Chris Clark, Brandon Merriweather, Tyler Polombus, EJ Biggers, Colt McCoy, Leonard Hankerson, Duke Ihenacho, and a couple more scrubs walk...

and be left with 30 mil in cap space and 53+ people under contract.

The only currently rostered/relevant person not taken into account in that scenario is Brian Orakpo. He's kind of a special case as the only potential free agent who would command real money, and I'm not sure what we should do with him. I like him and loathe such a needy teem letting talent like that walk, but someone would give him more money than it makes reasonable or safe sense to guarantee him, or he'll sign a one-year prove it deal which he might do with a contender instead of us. Tagging him a second time would cost 14-15 mil I think, so even with all our space that's probably not an option. So I guess we'll have to see how things are looking in terms of cap space and other signings and what he's being offered and then decide.

At present, Jason Hatcher, Shawn Lauvao, Andre Roberts, Kory Lichtensteiger, and our 2014 rookies are the only players still on the books past 2016, and they total less than 6mil of unrecoverable guarantees between them in the final years of their deals.

So, we should be able to keep whomever we want AND be active in free agency, and we still should be in a good cap space going forward in future years. This leaves us, obviously, with a similar roster to last year without Clark/Merriweather, Chester/Polombus, and maybe Hall and Bowen; so we could use some OL help and definitely need help in the secondary.

Particularly, Phillip Thomas would really be the only remotely promising safety on roster. In addition to him, we would only have Amerson, Breeland, and possibly Hall and Minnifield at corner, and Thomas and Akeem Davis at safety on the roster.

Sadly, this is a poor year both in free agency and the draft for safeties. I don't really see any way we have good-looking safeties next season, unfortunately.