The NFL has said the 2015 cap will be between $139M and $142M, and it is usually on the high end of that. So we'll assume that we have $142M to work with plus our $8M carryover from 2014. So as a rough estimate, for the purposes of guessing how much we'll get to charge to our cap in 2015, $150M is looking like a pretty nice round accurate number.
With our dead money and 2015 contracts in place, we'll be looking at about $124M in charges, leaving $26M of cap space. Keep in mind that they can, and probably will, save another $7.25M from cutting AJ Hawk and Brad Jones. My understanding is that they can add $1.3M to this savings if they choose to designate them as post June 1st cuts and defer half of the cap hits to 2016. So assuming they do this, that would be roughly $35M in available cap space.
Pure guess on my part, but if they want to find a way to reduce Peppers' cap number for 2015 by a couple million (perhaps converting some of the base to bonus), they should be able to do so without reducing his salary.
There's not much other significant savings to be had internally. They can cut Quarless if they choose and save a bit over $1.5M, and cutting Neal would net $3M in savings. I would guess it's 50/50 that Quarless makes the team next year depending on what they do at TE in the offseason, with Neal pretty likely to stick around at his current salary.
So I think you've got to assume Hawk and Jones are gone and that you've got $35M to work with for Cobb, Bulaga, House, Williams, Guion, Raji, etc. Cobb and Bulaga will be the biggest investments, and it'll be interesting to see what they do at corner. I would guess they'll want to leave themselves a bit of breathing room as usual so it's unlikely they approach the whole $150M, but I think hopefully the goal should be to keep Bulaga, Cobb, and one of Williams or House, while also adding a key piece via trade or free agency at ILB or TE. I think that's a realistic goal.
With our dead money and 2015 contracts in place, we'll be looking at about $124M in charges, leaving $26M of cap space. Keep in mind that they can, and probably will, save another $7.25M from cutting AJ Hawk and Brad Jones. My understanding is that they can add $1.3M to this savings if they choose to designate them as post June 1st cuts and defer half of the cap hits to 2016. So assuming they do this, that would be roughly $35M in available cap space.
Pure guess on my part, but if they want to find a way to reduce Peppers' cap number for 2015 by a couple million (perhaps converting some of the base to bonus), they should be able to do so without reducing his salary.
There's not much other significant savings to be had internally. They can cut Quarless if they choose and save a bit over $1.5M, and cutting Neal would net $3M in savings. I would guess it's 50/50 that Quarless makes the team next year depending on what they do at TE in the offseason, with Neal pretty likely to stick around at his current salary.
So I think you've got to assume Hawk and Jones are gone and that you've got $35M to work with for Cobb, Bulaga, House, Williams, Guion, Raji, etc. Cobb and Bulaga will be the biggest investments, and it'll be interesting to see what they do at corner. I would guess they'll want to leave themselves a bit of breathing room as usual so it's unlikely they approach the whole $150M, but I think hopefully the goal should be to keep Bulaga, Cobb, and one of Williams or House, while also adding a key piece via trade or free agency at ILB or TE. I think that's a realistic goal.
