I think the team is looking ahead to 2026, not trying to sign anybody big for this year. 2026 is going to be much harder than many on here think it will be. I will be going under the assumption the cap will be around $300 million.
In 2026 we have many voiding contracts that carry more than $67 million in dead money. In addition to that, Carr will cost $32 million if he is restructured again. That's around $99 million accounting for just for one player. In the worst case scenario they cut Carr and it goes up to $126 million in cap for no player on the roster, breaking the all time dead cap record by roughly $41 million. This is the number I will use as most believe 2025 is Carr's last season with the team.
That leaves roughly $174 million in 2026 for the 51 players that count toward the cap. The next problem is that after Carr is cut, there are only 34 other players under contract and that $174 million has to cover them all and players like Penning, Olave and Taylor are not included as they will be free agents in 2026, unless the team picks up 5th year options for Olave which would cost around $22 million. Let's say they do exercise Olave's option, $174m - $21m (cost of the option) = $153m. So now we have added 1 more players for a total of 35, but only have $153m for the other 34 players plus the other 17 new players to get to 51 players. All of that $153m is already used up and we are over the cap for 2026 and still need to add those 17 players to get to the 51.
And because we are left with a pile of young player on rookie contracts that can't be restructured, there isn't nearly as much room for restructures as there has been in the past. We can probably get around $55m in restructures as it stands now, will be more once Justin Reid's contract is added, but the amount of cap space will also go down so it's pretty much a wash.
To make a long story short, I think they are creating rollover cap money that they can count on right now, just so they can field a full roster next year. It's not for some great player this year.
