Robertson to the bengals has been called off
Without signing a big guy, we are looking at going into the season with TONS of unused cap space (even if we re-sign a lot of guys).
I don't think you realize how quickly you can run through cap space.
Obviously we don't know how all of the deals are structured just yet, but ballparking it, and using a $39 million dollar free cap space figure as our starting point (which strikes me as generous), minus the rookie cap, we're probably sitting around $15 million as it stands. And any front-loading of Colston, Smith, and/or Evans this year would eat that up pretty quick.
That isn't to say we
can't accommodate Robertson at around $4 or so million. You can do a lot if you structure things right. Push some of Colston/Smith/Evans money off until later years or even just not restructure Evans or Colston and plan on tendering them a high RFA offer next year. You can convert a lot of Robertson's deal into signing bonus and extend his contract (likely). You might get Deuce to agree to a pay cut. You cut also cut a veteran like we already did with Brian Simmons (dangling Stinchcomb in a trade I think free's up about $1.65 and might net something like a 5th round pick, mark Campbell is worth $1 million and could probably be replaced for half that with a younger blocking oriented TE like Ghent, Craft is worth $1 million and might be pushed out now, particularly if we draft a CB, etc).
So there are things that can be done, but there is very little chance we go into this year with free cap space. We rarely do. Even when we
do have free cap space we almost always use it up by pushing contracts forward or using Likely-To-Be-Earned incentives to squirrel it away for next year.