Salary Cap Talk

I am no cap expert but I do some reading and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once.......ok with that said I thought I would talk about the cap and get people thoughts and facts on it.

First off it has bee said the cap is expected to be some where in the 165-170 mil range. Over the cap has it at 171 mil so I will use that as a base. Right now we have 36 mil of space......yeah 36 mil, wow when was the last time we were this good with the cap? Yeah I know we have a lot to do but really the more I look at out cap the more I like the chance we have the money to make moves.

I was worried that with taking care of Bell and AB that would eat half our space but no that is not the case. Not sure what is gonna happen with Bell but let's say they tag him, so there is 12 mil ish. That brings me to AB where I was worried his raise/restructure would hurt us. Well after looking at his cap number for this year(13.6 mil) I think it will help us or pretty much keep it close to the same. He is looking at some where in the 15 mil ranges but with signing bonus it could bring the avg per year down a bit, but still what are we talking 2-3 mil a year more, ok so between Bell and AB that's like 14-15 mil still 25 mil lets.

Maybe we give AV 4 mil, JH 2-4 mil, 5 mill for rookie class, and a decision has to be made on Timmons. I am going to say we give him 5 mil, so that right there puts us at around 13 mil of cap space. Still pretty good to get 2 mid range FA's, imo.

Now I know some may say well we won't sign Timmons ok that is fine I am just throwing it out there either way we need a ILB so we should be able to get one for 5 mil. So you get what I am saying as far as the money goes. Now my question is am I right as far and space goes and am I missing something? Man what a great feeling to talk about space instead of who we can cut to make room.

 

I have no problem with any of those signings, but I don't think they need to give Timmons $5 million. I'd say 3-3.5...take it or leave it

 

how about cockrell?

 

SC, it really isn't about the signings, for example if we don't sign Timmons we will sign another ILB right? I just used names and went a little on the higher side just to get a feel where we are cap wise. I am still checking to make sure this is really us, lmao.

 

Stop stop stop.......why you poking be this early in the morning???? lol Yeah we can throw 3 mil into the back up QB for now and that still leaves us in the 9 mil range.

 

Mac, I forgot about him cause he is a RFA so we can use one of the following:

First round tender: 1 year, about $3.582 million
Second round tender: 1 year, about $2.516 million
Right of first refusal/Original round tender: 1 year, about $1.647 million

No matter how you look at it he is getting at least a one mil raise so that may leave the cap space at 7-8 mil. Now these last few changes will make a difference in FA cause I feel we will only have enough for one good signing, but a lot depends what happens with Timmons and like I said above I am still amazed we have cap space.

 

I hear ya. At times this year, Timmons played like a $5 million ILB. I'm just afraid of overspending on him and him already being over the cliff.

I feel this should hinge on what they decide to do in free agency, if anything...with OLB and CB. As much as it is against the grain for them to do it, I truly feel that they need to make a splash in free agency at one of these positions "NOW." I remember back in the 2005-2010 years, they kinda got into a "win now" mentality with the aging veterans. That was when our franchise QB was 24-26 years old. He's no spring chicken anymore. They need to get back into that mode with him. They could make it work with the fact that he'd be off the books in 2 years. And if he kept playing, it'd be for a much more team friendly deal if I had to guess.

My wish list is:

OLB: Melvin Ingram or Nick Perry
CB: Trumaine Johnson (he's going to want too much IMO), Stephon Gilmore, Logan Ryan, or AJ Bouye.

As I've mentioned before, two of my favorite candidates just happen to have gone to a certain university. And damnit, I've gone long enough and never had a good USC player on this team. This would be a great opportunity to get one of them, or two...

Edit: I know they'll need to designate Cockrell soon...I just meant that they at least need to have an idea of who they want to target (if anyone) in FA and early in draft. How they feel about prospects will have an effect on how badly they want to keep Cockrell. IMO he's solid for us for the most part, has kept some of the top receivers in check. But I do feel we need to improve the position.

 

hubbard? ricardo matthews? they just signed steve johnson. shabazz? how about the guys already tendered like chickillo. toussaint. backup qb. finney? mihalik? i know some are low level money but they add up and have to get to the top 51.

 

Mike Mitchell hits the back end of his backloaded contract this year with a 5 million base salary and with bonus he is a 8.135 million cap hit this year and the same cap hit of 8.1 million next year, his last year on this contract, of course green is another base salary and bonus hit for about a 6.1 mill cap hit in 2017, are they worth a combined cap hit of over 14 million???

http://steelerswire.usatoday.com/20...ction-would-put-steelers-under-by-34-million/

 

Right now our 51 is almost 135 mil(134.9), our lowest guy is Smith who is at 465k and a boat load at 540k including Shabazz. Your right Hubbard, Matthews, Finney, Mihalik etc are gonna add up but they aren't gonna break the bank.

My point I was trying to make was while Bell is going to get a big cap hit AB isn't cause he is already at a cap number of 13.8 mil. We are pretty good on cap space which like I said is a far cry from where we have been for so many years. We need a ILB, either Timmons or a FA we need to offer AV a little more and other than that we have a lot of money for backup QB & RB, and to dabble in FA on other positions like CB, S, WR. This is a position we have not been in as long as I can remember and I was just seeing if anyone thought different.

 

Mitchell's salary is back loaded cause he turned some salary into a signing bonus to help our cap a few years back. With that said next year if we cut him we save 5 of that 8.1mil but this year we have to bite the bullet and let him have that 8.1 mil and we really don't need the space. As far as Green goes not much we can do but hope he is healthy cause when he is the 40+ yard passes that he catches is nice...... jmo

 

Jesus Christ, $8.1 million...didn't realize how high it was. grrrrr

 

Just want to point this out again he turned salary into signing bonus so we could save money on the car. His number is high this year cause he did us a favor a few years back. I am not justifying the 8.1 number but just pointing out why. I have been on record saying we need an upgrade with him.