If there was a year to bite the bullet, cut some guys, and get the cap under control, it was last offseason. 2025 is not looking good for doing anything but kicking the can. $81 million over the cap and there are very few obvious cuts.
Lattimore actually costs you money to trade. Cutting Kamara saves you $18 million, but Cam Jordan costs you $3 million to cut. Carr only saves you $1.5 million to cut. Ramcyzck gets you $6 million (so that's a no-brainer). You save about $4 million total by cutting J.T. Gray and Khaulen Sanders.
In the end, we are stuck having to restructure a bunch of contracts of older players just to get under the cap, and that means we can't even really do a full rebuild like we need to. There will still be a lot of veteran players on this squad, some not really producing anything.
Can we get under the cap? Sure, but it's going to take until 2028 to really get this cap situation right, and that's assuming we even try.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us overpaying for old players who may or may not start while having to rely heavily on draft picks. If we don't knock it out of the park in the 2025 draft, we are going to be in the dumps for a while. We HAVE to start getting more draft picks now to even make it a possibility. Everyone should be in consideration to be traded before the deadline.
The big question is what coach is going to be willing to come here to take this project on.