Hawks sitting at about 20 mil in Cap Space

[mykc14]

Depending on where you look the Hawks have between 18-22 million in cap space for next year (this takes into account an estimated 7-8 million for the draft). We can increase that by cutting Dickson (3.5 mil) and maybe a guy like Britt (8 mil), although I would rather work out an extension with Britt than cut him outright. With that being said there isn't a ton there and it would be nice to extend Griffin this offseason, which would eat up a bunch of that cap. Not a ton of money to spend. We can probably still sign Clowney, another 10 mil guy, a second 2 second wave type of guys. The way I see it we need to sign Clowney and spend 10 mil on a LEO or good RT and then get a second wave DT and LEO or RT. There's not a lot of wiggle room there and it makes you wonder why we put a 2nd round tender on Hollister (3 mil dollar cap hit). Right now we are spending 11 million on our TE's. Hopefully all of them workout because we could have the highest paid TE in the leauge on our team for that price!!

[NorthHawk]

20 million is a lot of money.
They can be creative and convert existing contracts to some cash for the year as well as maybe cut
some players, not to mention structuring any new contract with an eye for putting the biggest CAP
hits in a few years when the CAP should jump a lot.

The Cowboys for example created 5Million of CAP space by converting part of Elliot's salary for
2020 into a cash bonus. We can do the same thing for some of our players, too. Last year the
Chiefs signed Clark to a $100 Million deal averaging over $20 million/year. His CAP hit last year
was something like $7 or $8 million. So contracts can be manipulated to fit.

[c_hawkbob]

I see it as between $20 and $44M. From USA Today "The team currently has roughly $44 million in cap space, according to Spotrac, a solid number that will likely go up if the team releases veteran Ed Dickson, a move they are expected to make to save $3.8 million."

I don't buy any real concern for our cap. Whatever we decide we want to do we'll be able to make it work.

[RiverDog]

I see it as between $20 and $44M. From USA Today "The team currently has roughly $44 million in cap space, according to Spotrac, a solid number that will likely go up if the team releases veteran Ed Dickson, a move they are expected to make to save $3.8 million."

I don't buy any real concern for our cap. Whatever we decide we want to do we'll be able to make it work.

That's my take, too. I thought our cap number before the start of free agency was around $54M. We've since signed Olsen and Reed, which would take it down to the neighborhood of $40M, so C-Bob's number looks more like what I thought we had.

The two big names on our roster that remain unsigned are Clowney and Ifedi. I'm hearing that there's not a lot of interest for either one so maybe we'll be able to fit both them in and still leave us some wiggle room.

[mykc14]

I see it as between $20 and $44M. From USA Today "The team currently has roughly $44 million in cap space, according to Spotrac, a solid number that will likely go up if the team releases veteran Ed Dickson, a move they are expected to make to save $3.8 million."

I don't buy any real concern for our cap. Whatever we decide we want to do we'll be able to make it work.

Spotrac is where I got 22 mil. USA today must not account for any signings. I agree that the cap is fluid and we can do a lot of things but it also means that we can't do other things. Signing a very good OT, a good DT, and 2 DE's doesn't seem possible with 20 mil of cap space, but at 44 it is more than possible. Along with the fact that we should seriously be thinking about extending #26, it's just tighter than I think many of the talking heads/people I have been talking to seemed to think it would be.

[mykc14]

That's my take, too. I thought our cap number before the start of free agency was around $54M. We've since signed Olsen and Reed, which would take it down to the neighborhood of $40M, so C-Bob's number looks more like what I thought we had.

The two big names on our roster that remain unsigned are Clowney and Ifedi. I'm hearing that there's not a lot of interest for either one so maybe we'll be able to fit both them in and still leave us some wiggle room.

Yeah, there's no way of knowing exactly how much we have but the two best websites seem to OverTheCap and Spotrac. Over the Cap has us at 18 million as of right now and Spotrac has us at 20 right now. This is what I mean I think a lot of fans feel like we have/had more than we actually do/did. That 40 million roughly $40 mill that you think we have doesn't take into account 15-20 million we have into RFA that we tendered, our draft, or the OL we signed. With all of that being said the cap can certainly be manipulated, but it's just tighter than I thought it would be at this point, but I didn't see us spending 9 mil to tender Hollister, Moore, and Hunt. I also thought that we would have dumped Dickson by now and resigned Britt to lower his number. All of those moves alone could save us 8-10 million.

[NorthHawk]

Remember, the Cap numbers aren’t linear. There isn’t a direct
correlation between salary and Cap space meaning if we have
say $30 million and sign a player for $10 million it doesn’t have
to mean we now have $20 million left. A contract, depending on
its structure might leave us with something like $26 million.

[jshawaii22]

I thought JS didn't like contracts that were backloaded as it which would lower the current cap space used but put more stress on it down the road -- That's why we don't have a lot of 'dead' cap space.

[mykc14]

Remember, the Cap numbers aren’t linear. There isn’t a direct
correlation between salary and Cap space meaning if we have
say $30 million and sign a player for $10 million it doesn’t have
to mean we now have $20 million left. A contract, depending on
its structure might leave us with something like $26 million.

Yeah they can definitely manipulate the cap that way, but PC and JS are smart they don’t ever put themselves in a bind unless a player gets injured early in in an extension, like Kam. A perfect example of how a contract can be manipulated is what the Chiefs have done with Clark- he was signed to a 20.8 mil/year contract and only had a 6.5 mil cap hit last year. That cap hit was supposed to jump to 26 this year, but they have recently turned some of his salary into a signing bonus which lowered his cap hit to 18... eventually that bill has to be paid though and his cap hits in the next few years are between 25-27 mil/year. Like they could easily free up money by manipulating RW or BWags contract if they need to- they just like to try and avoid it because it messes up the cap in the future.

[mykc14]

I thought JS didn't like contracts that were backloaded as it which would lower the current cap space used but put more stress on it down the road -- That's why we don't have a lot of 'dead' cap space.

We don’t have much dead cap this year and typically JS doesn’t backload for that reason, but we have had big dead money hits in the past, like last year we had 26 mil in dead cap. Imagine what we could have done with that 26 million!!

[NorthHawk]

True, but we only have Russ in his prime for a few more years and Pete isn’t
getting any younger so maybe the time is right to go a little bit in that direction.
We were close last year and maybe with a little money spent we can win
another SB in the next few years.

[obiken]

True, but we only have Russ in his prime for a few more years and Pete isn’t
getting any younger so maybe the time is right to go a little bit in that direction.
We were close last year and maybe with a little money spent we can win
another SB in the next few years.

I agree!

[jshawaii22]

We don’t have much dead cap this year and typically JS doesn’t backload for that reason, but we have had big dead money hits in the past, like last year we had 26 mil in dead cap. Imagine what we could have done with that 26 million!!

No kidding about having more cap space... i would imagine that a lot of that 26 million was due to Kam and Cliff's injuries that forced them to retire, not because of the contract itself.

[RiverDog]

Remember, the Cap numbers aren’t linear. There isn’t a direct correlation between salary and Cap space meaning if we have say $30 million and sign a player for $10 million it doesn’t have to mean we now have $20 million left. A contract, depending on its structure might leave us with something like $26 million.

Good point.