What teams are going into the offseason with the worst cap situation?
Since we only have three games left, which teams will have the worst cap situations right now?
Posted Jan 19, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC
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Saints and eagles are in worst than cap hell right now.
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Saints might be in the single worst cap situation I can recall since the bad old days of the early '00s. Back then GMs would sometimes mortgage the team into the ground but since then even the aggressive ones have seemed to avoid the full on "dismantle the team" cap hell that some teams used to fall into.
Old school cap hell was biblical. Modern cap hell is usually "we can't make any significant new signings, we have to let a guy or two go who we'd rather keep, we made some not ideal but not all that painful cuts, we restructured a little money, and things should be better next year." I think the Saints can keep their stars but aside from that their situation looks pretty biblical.
Like, if you go look at the Saints cap calculator it's not pretty. The two obvious cuts are Brees himself and Kwon Alexander (who I assume the Saints might(?) like to keep but unless his value has absolutely hit the floor, good luck with that).
Cutting Brees and Alexander only gets you to -$68.15m though.
I assume that Kamara, Thomas, Jordan, Lattimore, and Ramczyk are all guys the Saints wouldn't think of ditching. Though all bets could be off if some team were willing to trade FMV in picks for one of those guys, I suppose, especially one of the older ones.
Restructuring $10m of Cam Jordan's salary raises his '22/'23 cap hits from $19.5m/$20m to $22m/$22.5m, and gets you down to -$60.65m.
Restructuring $10m of Michael Thomas's salary raises his future cap hits from $21.8m/$22.5m/$21.7m to $24.3m/$25.0m/$24.2m and gets you down to -$53.15m.
Restructuring Andrus Peat could push another $6m off easily enough.
You could save $7m from cutting Janoris Jenkins, $6.675m from cutting Teron Armstead, $4m from cutting Emmanuel Sanders, $5m from cutting Malcom Brown, $6m from cutting Nick Easton, $2.6m from cutting Josh Hill, $2.6m from cutting Patrick Robinson, $2.5m from cutting Latavius Murray, and $2.5m from cutting Thomas Morstead, your punter, among other additional cut possibilities, though I have no idea which of those cuts are easy, obvious ones, and which ones would be counter-productive. Cutting every one of those guys would save the Saints $31.9m. That plus the restructures above would get the Saints to... -$15.3m.
Of course you could do other restructures, and maybe a big extension or three that lowers a guy's 2021 cap number. But I'm also assuming the Saints don't want to cut all of the guys I mentioned above. Heck, they may want to keep most of them. It's a massive hole to dig out of.
PS: for any Saints fans: I miiight take a stab at mocking out how the Saints could get out of cap hell. If any of you care to share which guys you think the Saints are most willing to jettison and which are the highest priorities to keep (beyond the obvious like Thomas, Jordan, Lattimore, and Kamara) I'd be much obliged and it'd be a bit easier to make some guesses as to how the Saints might dig themselves out.
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The saints are going to be an interesting team to watch this off season. I have no idea how they are even going to be able to field a team next year with those numbers
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They might be the most undermanned team, talent wise, we've seen since the expansion Bucs
Or worse
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Yeah you look at all those cuts they would have to make just to still be over the cap. AND they still have to fill a roster. Like how many players would they have under contract after all that? AND they still have to re-sign Jameis to starting QB salary (if the rumors are true). They screwwwwwed.
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Overthecap had a good read on one way to handle it but wow is it going to be tough.
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I'm just curious, what are some examples of early 2000s teams being in cap hell, I never heard of this
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Vikings 01-02. We cut John Randle who was still a good player and coming off an 8 sack season as a DT. Also our LT, who was competent, plus we had to let a lot of others walk in free agency. We had the ‘98-‘00 window, but we got into major cap hell.
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Titans I believe would be one, but I remember a couple. Think the 49ers at one point, maybe.
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49ers went to cap hell twice — 99/2000 and again in 04/05. By the grace of god we lucked into Garcia in the first one at least.
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If Brees does retire, how much will it lower it by?
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About 12.5M I think I saw today.
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The Saints and Eagles are in the frozen lake alongside Judas and Brutus.
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Once you understand how to navigate this site it opens up doors to proving people wrong on the internet. Which is the purest form of human ecstasy one can achieve.
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I prefer overthecap. Spotrac is full of ads and slow load times. Is there a reason you prefer it? Maybe I'm just not taking full advantage of what it offers.
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I like both. I pretty much just use whichever comes up in Google first for whatever I search.
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Fellow Chiefs fan. Are we good for next year? I saw -18m which if I remember correctly is pretty bad, but it’s only the 23rd worst and exactly like the Raiders, which to whom they pay I have no idea.
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Nah we're good. That is the worst case scenario and even assuming that there are plenty of moves.
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Schwartz might likely retire and we drafted Niang as a future Tackle. That would be about 11 million.
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Then we can push money into the future with a signing bonus to a player like Mahomes, Kelce, or Chris Jones. Thy should get us through until the cap starts to normalize. It could be any number of players but since we're likely not cutting Mahomes/Jones we could free up about 10 million a piece if we had to.
And depending on how many players we want to resign than there are plenty of other guys we can restructure and give bonuses too. I could see us giving Matthieu an extension which puts more money into the back of the deal.
Last year we also restructured Watkins and LDT to outright save money. That happens when guys are running out of garuntees but still under contract. Maybe a guy like Hitchens?
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Spotrac is better for looking at player's contracts. OTC is better for looking at a team's overall outlook.
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The Saints number is impossibly impressive lol
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The Saints are like $100 million over the cap. That is an incomprehensible amount of money. Seriously. THAT IS SO MUCH DAMNED MONEY.
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And what makes it crazy is they'll be $100m over the cap, and with only 30 players. Which means they'll need to cut/trade/restructure even more players just to get back into the black, and then somehow sign 30-40 players to field a full roster.
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I don't think they have that many draft picks either. With Brees playing at a great level they managed 3 straight years of no playoffs because they put themselves in salary cap hell back in the early 2010s. With no Brees and the need to have a fire sale of their best players, the Saints will likely explore new depths of sucking for a few years.
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While the Saints only have 5 picks, it's not completely bad for them. First off, all 5 of their picks are in the first 4 rounds, with 4 of them in the top 3 rounds. Then there's the Falcons hiring Fontenot from Saints, giving them another 3rd rounder due to the new rule. That would give the Saints 5 picks in the top 100.
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They will need to trade key pieces for late round picks. Theres no way they'll be able to field a team of anyone but league minimum guys and maybe a half dozen starter level players.
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Y'know I don't think they're going to sweep the division next year...
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Saints by a mile and then Eagles.
Atlanta's cap space isn't in the best shape either but nowhere near as bad as those 2.
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Are you guys just going to blow it up this year?
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We could. We also could not. There's several vets we can cut that'll save us a good amount of cap space. Ricardo Allen probably being the most noteable. We can definitely get under the cap. There might be some tough decisions but it doesn't feel like we're in blow it all up mode. I mean, it isn't out of the realm of possibility but I don't think we will.
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I think Blank said the new GM has the ability to move on from Ryan and Julio if he sees fit so it certainly seems like it.
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But can they move on from both of them?
They can get rid of Julio by himself, no problem, but I think I remember hearing they were going to package them together to try and specifically get rid of Ryan. And with that massive contract who's going to take it? Jacksonville?
Oh shit is Urban going to have Trevor sit behind Matt Ryan for a bit before getting him in with Julio?
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Idk I'm just the messenger. No idea of their contracts/cap situation.
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Well, you've convinced me. Matt and Julio and 2 first round picks for Deshaun.
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The Saints my guy.
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To add something new to the conversation then the obvious(saints, eagles, texans).
The cowboys could be in tight offseason since the owe Dak a big contract but structure for 1st year being low and bigger years to follow. They have alot tied up in DLaw and Cooper. As well as the oline. They should be ok but its tighter than most.
Also Steelers depending on Big Ben his cap hit is huge and they have alot of studs on defense that make money. Minkah is going to want to get paid. Look for Ebron and McDonald to be possible cap casualties
Rams have a good amount in an average to above average QB. That ties up alot of free spending.
Chiefs and Mahomes contract. They might lose a few big names.
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Spotrac.com and overthecap.com are my go to sites for cap info. We don’t know what the cap will be yet though. But the short answer is Saints, by a lot, then Eagles, Falcons, Packers, and Rams.
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Philly
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Saints and eagles forsureeeee
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What about you guys?
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We’re over but losing Aaron jones and making some other cuts will make us stable. We just need to make some smart moves. Our situation isn’t as dire as NO or philly
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We'll probably do some restructuring to get us a little cap space, maybe convert some of Rodgers' salary into a signing bonus to spread it out. Preston Smith will be cut, as will Kirksey and that'll save us some money right there.
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I've seen the whole 'convert salary into signing bonus' thing a couple times in this thread. What exactly does that entail and why does it save cap space?
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Yeah, that’s what I saw when I was looking. The big thing Jaire right? Sucks you guys will lose Jones though.
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Yeah that’ll be a game changer but I’m hoping we can make some moves to hold onto him. We gotta lock him up. Lindsleys contract expires too I think so that’s another big one
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Nah we got next year+his 5th year option before we gotta start worrying about Jaire. Davante Adams is hte next big ticket player. Only got him signed through next season.
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It's absolutely the saints and yet they'll still sign a couple high dollar free agents like they manage to do every season somehow
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If you combine Cap Hell and Lack of Draft Capital, probably the Saints. Dead last in cap and 29th in the Draft Capital value. Texans would also qualify, 26th in cap and 30th in draft capital. HM - Packers (28th in cap/27th in draft capital) and Steelers (29th in cap/23rd in draft).
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Man the Texans are so fucked.
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They can slightly unfuck themselves by trading us Watson and getting 2/3 firsts and Tua.
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https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/
This is the website I follow along with
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To add the non obvious.
The bears
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Saints is by far the worst. 95M over with only like 45 guys currently signed
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Who would think this is funny?
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I’m guilty
I would have laughed at that when I was 8
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Saints and Eagles /thread
I knew about the cap with the Saints but what’s with the Eagles’ cap?
Have you ever heard the tale of Darth Wentz the overpaid?
Definitely not a tale Howie Roseman would tell you.
It's not a story any Eagles fan would tell you...
I feel like half of Philadelphia would trash wentz unprompted if you spoke with them for 5 minutes
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
His deal hasn't even kicked in yet. It's gonna be a dark few years for Philly
Dude you only asked for which teams were in the worst shape, not why. You’ll need to make a new thread if you want that answered.
Sorry, Reddit rules.
I believe there's some argument over how to interpret 26 Rdt. Code § 1041(b)(3), but I think your understanding is indeed the general consensus view.
Hasn’t r/KarmaCourt promised to revisit that code for awhile now? I’ve seen many decent redditors hanged over that code. Hung a few mehself when I was younger, before the Good Man Favre rescued us from obscurity, that is.
You can take a look at raw ranks here. Eagles are #2 after Saints. And they obviously have the QB situation with Wentz having just been paid big.
Take these with a grain of salt, but generally the lower the number the worse the situation. What this doesn't show is what the team needs are. If you've got key players needing new deals and you don't have guys who can be cut or restructured, you will be worse than this shows.
Eagles are way over the cap, they won't really be able to participate in free agency besides a couple cheap deals here and there. The only bright side to their cap situation is that most of the guys they're gonna be cutting in a couple months for cap purposes also deserve to be cut for performance reasons.
Not sure why you’re downvoted, this seems to me like any other discussion thread. Like, let’s discuss who has a shitty cap situation without getting bent about semantics...
Doesn't look like anyone gave you a good answer so here's a try. After the 2017 superbowl, the Eagles decided to mortgage their future to extend a 3-4 year window for a second super bowl. A couple years with Wentz still on a rookie deal and pay for quality players around him, and then a year after signing Wentz to still be able to afford some quality pieces around a franchise QB. They restructured the contracts of our veteran players to backload the cap hit.
A couple things went wrong. Some of our veteran players declined very fast, particularly at the WR position. Alshon Jeffrey might as well be out there with a cane or a wheelchair. We spent a lot of cap on DeSean Jackson and he played like a combined 3 games in 2 years.
Our coaching staff also wasted the 3 year window that was planned. Pederson resisted bringing in ANY outside coaches after the super bowl. He got stupidly arrogant and thought the Eagles staff was better than everyone else in the league. He filled almost all vacancies with internal promotions, and just about every member of our coaching staff is one or two levels above their competency level, and the poor scheme and sloppy habits caused our offense to consistently underperform. And that was before Wentz had a historic single year regression.
And the final thing that fucked the plan was...covid. the Eagles were gambling that the cap would rise each year. And its actually DECREASING for next year. We were planning to get fucked by the cap this year. We thought we were trading a 4 year window for 1 bad year to rebuild. During that time span we also spend almost all our high draft picks on the offense. That SHOULD have helped us with our cap hell situation, but we've drafted very poorly and/or our coaching staff failed to develop the draft picks. With few exceptions, they are not ready or capable of being star players.
TLDR:
The Eagles were PLANNING for this to be a cap hell, rebuild year. Covid and poor development of draft picks are just making it way worse. With Wentz shitting the bed this year, it's actually not a huge deal. Good excuse to clean house and rebuild. Rip the bandaid and get it over with and lose the bad contracts.
The Eagles are the second most over the cap for pretty much the same reason the Saints are.
Paying the players cash but delaying paying the NFL cap space for them and backloading contracts.