Clayton: Potential cap casualties,all 32 teams Cap situations*
Ah, John Clayton, the Saints should cut Bush to save money so he can go to the Iggles who have a lot of money to spend even though they are only $1.3 million more under the cap than the Saints.
Our cap situation is fine.
If needed we have 8.5 million more in cap room this year sitting there if we cut Reggie Bush.
We could be pushing 20 million under the cap if we absolutely needed it. With our talent, that's a good place to be.
Very true.
But where will we be after we resign some of our players?
Depends on how deals are structured. Let's say for instance, we gave Nicks a 7 year, $56 million deal with $20 million guaranteed. The $21 million will get prorated over the life of the deal, so that comes to $3 million per. In the first year, we can choose to pay him, say, $1 million. His cap hit is then $4 million though he would have made $22 million this season.,
Let's go with Bush. 4 years, $22 million of which $12 is guaranteed. That's $3 million per. Let's say we give him the veteran mininum of $750, 000. His cap hit would be $3.75 million. Effectively, he would only cost us $250, 000 more than what we will have on the books if we chose to cut him outright. But he will make $12.75 million, which is $950, 000 more than he was due to make. Thus, you get satisfied player and a team now will an additional $8, 050, 000 to spend.
How about Brees? Let's say we extend him for 5 years, $100 million with $40 million guaranteed. We can pay him $1 million this season in base salary. So he'll make $41, 000, 000. His cap hit, however, would only be $9,000, 000, which is lower than his current cap figure of $11.8 milllion ($2 million bonus prorated + $9.8 million in salary). That would give the team an additional $2.8 million in cap savings.
Roman Harper. 5 year, $25.5 million with $10 guaranteed. $1.5 million the first year in base. That's a cap charge of $3.5 for a player who would pocket $11.5 million.
Lance Moore. 4 year, $16 million with $6 guaranteed. $1 million base his first season would bring his cap charge to $2.5 million.
Together, these cap figures for the above players would be $22.75 million. However, with Brees and Bush's deals, we save a total of $10.85 million ($23.4 under the cap). So we would have only spent $10 million to re-sign our top players while creating that additional $10.85 million to bring our cap space to
$13.4 million left AFTER THOSE DEALS WERE SIGNED.
These are rough estimates, and are not necessarily meant to be salary suggestions though they are not that far off from the range each player should expect, in some cases give or take a couple million. I think the biggest one here is Reggie in terms of showing how the Saints could pay him, lower his base salary, extend the deal, and almost bring parity between his cap figure were he released and his cap figure while still being on the team. And the cap savings of $8.05 million would give us nearly $20 million to spend. Keep in mind that Randall Gay, Devery Henderson, Will Smith, and Alex Brown could all see adjustments made to their salaries.
As Bonchie intimated, we are in good shape based on the talent already on the roster and have the ability to make certain adjustments should we need more money to spend.