Next Year's Cap Situation

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

2) And the big one, they have oodles of options to restructure players. In 2008, the following players are on schedule for more than a $4 million base salary (excluding Brunell cause he'll be outta here and Springs because of reasons already mentioned): Griffin, Washington, Samuels, Jansen, Thomas, and Portis. There's an opportunity to restructure all of these contracts and save up to $10-$15 million in 08 cap space just on restructures alone. Of course, as you say, we'd kick the hit into 09 and create more headaches down the road. And as I look at 2009, I can see that being the year we decide to either "sh*t or get off the pot" with our current core of guys. That would make 2008 our last year with our current core group. And it just so happens that 2008 is also the last year of Gibbs' current contract. But as for 2008, I can see the team creating plenty of space.

If we want to have any kind of foundation to move into 2009 and beyond, we need to trade down and hit on multiple picks now. And we need to keep our draft picks in the 08 draft, and hit on those as well. Because in 2009, we're quite possibly looking at saying goodbye to a few good players.

This is not to say the Skins won't be able to restructure and create more cap room in 2009. After all, at that point the cap should be about 125 million, which gives us leeway.

From my understanding of the numbers we have, I felt our "sh*t or get off the pot" year is coming up in 2008. Although it's going to be impossible to field a team w/o any restructuring that year, we already have a pretty rough cap situation in 2009. I'd have to run the numbers with a lot more projections and guessing to test this hypothesis, but I'm concerned that if we push too much more money into that year (either restructuring or big FA contracts), the sky will indeed fall in 2009. I feel that we have the power right now to take measures to avoid that. But to avoid the sky falling situation in 2009, concessions have to be made prior to 2008. Some at least. I'm sure one of us will look over the numbers for 2009 sometime down the road, and I may turn out to be totally and utterly wrong, but I just don't see the cap potential to pick up a solid starter in FA at any point over the next two years and still be able to get 51 contracts in under the cap including our draft picks.

And yes, the more I think about it Springs probably won't be a Redskin next year. These are the type of moves that will lighten the future burden. I know we need Griffin and Washington to be competitive next year, but I do feel that barring a pro bowl type year from either, restructuring them to keep them around for one more year would only breed more financial problems for that tricky 2009 season.

It's also interesting that we have pretty much the entire offense (Cooley being the exception) locked up with so much guarenteed money that we can't even afford to disassemble it. All the roster changes over the next three years are going to be defensive.

To be honest, I went into this analysis thinking the 2008 situation was going to be much much worse. But some key veteran cuts after this season will give us the cap space we need to at least stop the buck right here. I don't think this will prevent us from being competitive in 2008.

Unless Springs restructures, we won't be able to handle a 9 million dollar cap hit this year. If he does, I could see Lloyd or Arch getting the boot.