Peyton Manning or RGIII your choice

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by biffle

For the record, why don't you look at GTripp's breakdown of our cap space. People keep throwing these numbers around and thinking that we are going to have trouble figuring out what to do with all the cap space. Once we re-sign our own and our draft picks, that space turns into a much more pedestrian number.

If you throw a ton of front loaded cap space at Peyton Manning, I think you are right that the $48 million figure can look a lot bigger than it really is. That $48 million can become $12 million really quickly and without guaranteed roster improvement. Look at how much the Redskins spent last year and what they got out of it.

But I do want to say this: Schneed is right when he says there are very limited ways to improve your team with available cap space. I believe the best use of the cap is to have as much available as possible for a day where you have so many critical veteran pieces to your team that you actually need to use that cap space to keep those guys together, but if you pay Peyton Manning mostly through 2012 and 2013 guaranteed roster bonuses, all that cap space spent to get Manning will still be there in 2014, and it limits the room to make bad signings just because you want to dispel the illusion that you are being cheap.

Marginal wins are almost impossible to buy in football with cash, whereas in baseball, you have pretty accurate estimates of a marginal win costing $4.8 million.

I buy your argument that Peyton is in decline, but I think if you strip out the Colts-offense related decline, Peyton's personal decline is much less steep, and you still have a pretty dominant player who is a better quarterback than Eli Manning and Michael Vick in the NFC East.