Correct me where I am wrong (and I am sure I am), but our cap hit primarily effects us in three ways....
A) Ability to retain Free Agents.
For the most part we have done well here. some minor loses here and there in the past 10 years with Trey Hendrickson, Ducey, Marcus Williams, Jimmy Graham, Malcolm Jenkins, Emmanuele Sanders, and a few others. But overall not that bad. The upcoming years seem more worrisome.
B) Ability to trade
Hard to speculate but NFL trades seem iffy at best to me. You might give up 5 players to get Ken Houston or you might be the one wishing you kept Ken Houston.
C) Ability to make big splashes in Free Agency
To me here it seems we have for the most part done nearly as well with our frugal and mediocre purchases as we have with our big splashes with DD and Max Unger being the big exceptions.
Is it really that bad for us if we dont spend too much in FA?
...and this is where my math is probably wrong, but I believe these to be the major FA acquisitions in the past 10 off-seasons with what I think is the average yearly cap hit (roughly, very roughly calculated)....
| Position | Player | Avg Cap/yr |
| DB | Honeybadger | 13.5 |
| LB | Demario Davis | 9.0 |
| OL | Larry Warford | 7.0 |
| DB | Jairus Byrd | 6.6 |
| TE | Jared Cook | 6.5 |
| QB | Jameis Winston | 6.3 |
| OL | Max Unger | 5.7 |
| OL | Ben Grubbs | 5.4 |
| TE | Coby Fleener | 5.0 |
| LB | AJ Klein | 4.7 |
| DB | Marcus Maye | 4.5 |
| DL | Malcolm Brown | 4.3 |
| DB | Malcolm Jenkins | 4.2 |
| WR | Emmanuel Sanders | 4.0 |
| WR | Ted Ginn | 3.7 |
| DB | Kennan Lewis | 3.3 |
| RB | Darren Sproles | 3.3 |
| LB | Curtis Lofton | 3.3 |
| RB | Latvaius Murray | 3.0 |
| WR | Jarvis Landry | 3.0 |
| DL | Broderick Bunkley | 2.5 |
| OL | Jonathan Goodwin | 2.3 |
| DL | Alex Okafor | 2.3 |
| DB | Bradley Roby | 2.1 |
| LB | Kwon Alexander | 2.0 |
| QB | Andy Dalton | 2.0 |
| DB | Eli Apple | 1.8 |
| DL | Nick Fairley | 1.8 |
| TE | Ben Watson | 1.8 |
| LB | Kiko Alonso | 1.7 |
| DL | Paul Kruger | 1.6 |
| LB | Manti Teo | 1.6 |
| DL | Kevin Williams | 1.5 |
| RB | Mark Ingram | 1.5 |
| LB | James Laurinatis | 0.9 |
| OL | Senio Kelemente | 0.8 |
| DB | Kyle Wilson | 0.7 |