Elvis' 2025 cap and roster cleanup proposal

I know this will be controversial to some and we won't all agree that this is the way things should be done. This is what I would do to manage the roster and cap situation as the team enters a new era with a new head coach. I believe it's time to clean up the mess that was created over the last 5 or so years and give the next coach the quickest path to a clean slate to show us what he's got. None of this solves ALL of the problems. All I ask is that if you disagree, tell us what you would do to clean things up. If you like where we are, then this thread is probably not for you.

I am starting without touching the contracts of Carr, Cam Jordan or Ramczyk. We can get to within $10.25 million of cap compliant by restructuring some players and cutting only a couple of players. Many of the restructured players are under 30 years or are players we are likely to keep because of salary guarantees in 2025 anyway. The cuts I’ve listed just make sense as under performing players and the additional options listed below are to tackle the remaining $10.25 million.

Restructures

EDIT: Strangely, overthecap.com is no longer showing the same numbers that they were a few days ago. I've seen this happen before and I don't know why they change. They are still close, but not exact as I had them when this was first posted. It still get the team to the same exact place but the numbers I list as savings is different.

Player (Restructure Cap Savings, Already Guaranteed $ in 2025)

Erik McCoy ($8.43m, $0)
Demario Davis ($5.25m, $4,25)
Cesar Ruiz ($7.98m, $9.15m)
Carl Grandson ($6.56m, $7.73m)
Tyrann Mathieu ($5m, $1m)
Alvin Kamara ($1.735m, $3m)
Pete Werner ($3m, $4.25m)
Foster Moreau ($2.734m, $0)
Khaled Saunders ($2.23m, $0)
Rashid Shaheed ($3.1m, $0)
JT Gray ($1.345m, $0)

Cuts

Player (Cap Savings)

Jamal Williams ($1.23m)
Cedrick Wilson ($2.4m)

Additional options to get to cap compliance

The below options would be used in combination with each other to lower the rest of the $10.25m of negative cap by the deadline.

Player (mechanism for lowering cap)

Taysom Hill (pay cut)
Cameron Jordan (pay cut, if not released with a June 1 designation)
Alontae Taylor (extension with low first year $)
Rashid Shaheed (extension with low first year $, would replace his restructure from above)
Chris Olave (extension with low first year $)
Nathan Shepherd (cut or restructure)
Chase Young (re-sign to extension to lower 2025 dead $ hit)
Juwan Johnson (re-sign to extension to lower 2025 dead $ hit)
Various bottom of the roster players (cut)
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The hypothetical additional moves I chose were:

1. Extend Juwan on a 3 year $14.2m deal with $7.2 in guarantees. That lowers his 2025 cap hit from $6.5 to $3.825. I don’t love this, but something had to be done.

2. Restructure Nathan Shepherd saving $3m.

3. Taysom pay cut to $5m. He’s 35 and isn’t going to be available for camp and won’t be able to sign to another team until healthy if he was cut. $5 guaranteed is better than nothing guaranteed.

These along with the other moves above gets us under by about $500k by the deadline without having touched Carr, Jordan or Ramczyk allowing for June 1st designations for Carr and Cam while remaining cap compliant. When June 1 hits, $42.7 million in cap comes back to sign new players. Overthecap shows there would be $88.4m of cap space in 2026, but I think there is an error in that it doesn’t show the increase from 2025 restructures in accelerated bonuses from void years as dead money, so it won’t be that high. But I don’t think we’ll be in the hole either.

This sets us up for much less cap juggling in the future though 2026 will have these restructures hit the books as dead money, they will be paid for by what we will save by not having Carr’s 2026 contract on the books and taking part of his hit in 2025.