London Fletcher leaning towards playing in 2013 (updated)

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat

I'm not the cap expert, but i dont see how cutting and re-signing Fletcher would work.

He's currently scheduled to make 6.2MM this year. If we cut him, we take a 2.8MM cap hit. So, unless Fletcher would be willing to come back for less than 3.4MM, it would be advantagous for the team to cut and resign him.

From Fletchers perspective, he's not having surgeries and planning to come back to make half of the 6.2MM he was scheduled to make this year. He certainly wouldnt be coming back to make the vet minimum.

Again, i just dont see cutting/resigning as a viable option. We either sacrifice other areas of the team and keep his contract as-is, restructure and push cap into future seasons (which would be stupid), or cut him and he plays somewhere else.

In a normal year pushing half his cap hit off would be stupid, but two things make this not a normal year, and why I think the Skins ought to gain maybe 4-5million in cap space by doing the following with LF and maybe 2 others.
First, next year we will not have an 18Mil albatross on our cap number, so as long as we are smart we shouldn't be in nearly the bad shape that this year finds us, and second, in 2015, the cap should go up significantly as the new TV money comes in. With those two factors, I would sign LF to a 3 year deal, the last year voidable, with a 4Mil signing bonus, and vet min next 2 years. That would pay LF about 5Mil this year, while making a cap hit of 2-2.25 mil this year, and either a 3 million next year or if you make him a Jun 1st cut next year (or he retires after Jun 1st) the numbers would be dead money, but in the very palatable 1-2mil per year. Again, not ideal but worth it to keep LF, save a little cap space and get out from under the penalty this year.

I know pushing money back has pitfalls, and should not be the normal mode, but this year I think the Skins should push 9 mil of the penalty through the next 2 years through use of deadcap and extended contracts.

If they can't well then at least this will be behind us after this year, and we can move forward to signing Griff to a 6 year 123 mill contract.