NFL taking away Redskins cap space

[GoSkins!]

Well, this sucks, but I don't think that it will have a tremendous impact on us. The reality is that we did a smart thing during the uncapped year and I think we actually did create a competitive advantage, at least as it applies to the salary cap over the long term.

I read that the team can split it up over the next two years any way they see fit. If the team wants to, they can look at next years cap and see that we only have 81 mil on the books. That changes to 76 mil now with the release of Atogwe and Sellers. Moss, Hall, and Cooley could be released to gain another 4, 8, and 4 mil respectively. I expect there will at least be some serious restructuring instead, but if they had to release them, we would be at ~60mil on the books.

The point I'm making is that we can have a plan in place to eat a small piece of the 36 mil penalty this year while using the space to structure free agent contracts so that we could adsorb most of it next year if we had to by releasing (or seriously restructuring) the mentioned players. Once that plan is in place, I'd team with the other penalized team(s), point out the inequity in the decision (like with the Bears) and start an all out fight with the league to get the penalty reduced. I don't see the league putting this out there and then backing off completely but there may be a reason we aren't seeing the penalty amounts on the NFL network ticker tape.

So, basically I see this as a sucky thing to happen to the Skins, but it is something that we are in a good place to absorb, something we can push out and something we can fight specifically because of the 2010 restructures during the uncapped year.