Salary Cap Discussion: 2021 and beyond

[time2rock]

There are going to be plenty of moves made in order to get under the 2021 salary cap where we are projected to be roughly $70M over.  Two moves have been made to kick off that process  by restructuring the contracts of Jeffery and Malik Jackson.

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/eagles-reportedly-restructure-2-contracts-begin-process-get-under-2021-cap

[wtfcares]

This is where Howie earns his pay check. Fully expect us to be sitting in a good position heading into FA in March as usual. Now if only he can draft half as well as he can maneuver contracts. 

[Road to Victory]

37 minutes ago, time2rock said:

There are going to be plenty of moves made in order to get under the 2021 salary cap where we are projected to be roughly $70M over.  Two moves have been made to kick off that process  by restructuring the contracts of Jeffery and Malik Jackson.

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/eagles-reportedly-restructure-2-contracts-begin-process-get-under-2021-cap

I wouldn’t mind M.Jackson back at a lower cap figure but I pray that Jeffery is not back. 
 

They can make it a win-win for some of these guys. For example, if DJax is $10m cap hit, renegotiate a deal that saves them some cap room while keeping him on the team. I’d rather pay DJax $5-6m a year on a one year renegotiated deal then to cut him and have a $10m cap hit and watch him play for someone else. He must know by now no one else is going to pay him $5-6m. 

[time2rock]

15 hours ago, Road to Victory said:

I wouldn’t mind M.Jackson back at a lower cap figure but I pray that Jeffery is not back. 
 

They can make it a win-win for some of these guys. For example, if DJax is $10m cap hit, renegotiate a deal that saves them some cap room while keeping him on the team. I’d rather pay DJax $5-6m a year on a one year renegotiated deal then to cut him and have a $10m cap hit and watch him play for someone else. He must know by now no one else is going to pay him $5-6m. 

I’m ready to move on from DJax too.  Pay him $5-6M to use a roster spot to contribute maybe 15-20% of the season?  Time to let the young players grow - best to do that by playing.  

[NOTW]

40 minutes ago, wtfcares said:

This is where Howie earns his pay check. Fully expect us to be sitting in a good position heading into FA in March as usual. Now if only he can draft half as well as he can maneuver contracts. 

Well, he's the reason they're in this mess.  He kicked the can down the road too much.  He's going to have to release guys, restructure, move things to future years again, etc.  And they have no money to bring in anyone new.

He sucks at drafting, we know that.  The only hope is that having a higher pick makes the choice easier.

[Road to Victory]

38 minutes ago, time2rock said:

I’m ready to move on from DJax too.  Pat him $5-6M to use a roster spot to contribute maybe 15-20% of the season?  Time to let the young players grow - best to do that by playing.  

I’m ready to move on too but if we can save on cap space to have him on the team, I’ll take it. Maybe we can get 8 games out of him. 

[UK_EaglesFan89]

Its a decent start. I guess they'll do something similar with Desean? Work to be done still but Howie is at least getting to work. 

[NOTW]

Just now, UK_EaglesFan89 said:

Its a decent start. I guess they'll do something similar with Desean? Work to be done still but Howie is at least getting to work. 

Now THAT speaks louder than a press conference.  Howie making contract decisions the day after the last game of the season is a pretty safe sign that Howie is going nowhere (which we already expected).    

[UK_EaglesFan89]

Just now, NOTW said:

Now THAT speaks louder than a press conference.  Howie making contract decisions the day after the last game of the season is a pretty safe sign that Howie is going nowhere (which we already expected).    

Yeah agreed. And that's a kick in the nuts. It's unbelievable this guy still has the job. 

[NOTW]

Just now, UK_EaglesFan89 said:

Yeah agreed. And that's a kick in the nuts. It's unbelievable this guy still has the job. 

What he said in his PC is probably the same message to Lurie:  been with the team a long time, won a SB, guys on the roster that are talented were drafted here (not all by him of course!), knows what it will take to build another winner.  Same thing Doug is selling.

[pallidrone]

Here is an article from OTC about it

https://overthecap.com/eagles-get-creative-with-the-salary-cap/

According to this the move will potentially shave almost $21 million off the cap.

[UK_EaglesFan89]

18 minutes ago, NOTW said:

What he said in his PC is probably the same message to Lurie:  been with the team a long time, won a SB, guys on the roster that are talented were drafted here (not all by him of course!), knows what it will take to build another winner.  Same thing Doug is selling.

And Lurie is lapping this ish up. 

[NOTW]

Not exactly getting under the cap, but Howie signed contracts to practice squad and free agent guys to secure them on the roster:

https://www.pennlive.com/philadelphiaeagles/2021/01/philadelphia-eagles-agree-to-terms-with-defensive-tackle-on-one-year-deal-sign-9-players-to-futures-deals.html

DT T.Y. McGill - one year deal.

"The Eagles signed the following nine players to reserve/futures contracts: wide receiver Deontay Burnett, tight end Hakeem Butler, safety Blake Countess, defensive tackle Treyvon Hester, cornerback Lavert Hill, running back Elijah Holyfield, defensive end Matt Leo and defensive end Joe Ostman."

[EagleVA]

47 minutes ago, NOTW said:

Howie is going nowhere (which we already expected).    

One more time, as long as Lurie owns the team Howie will be in the Eagles organization.  

[Road to Victory]

45 minutes ago, pallidrone said:

Here is an article from OTC about it

https://overthecap.com/eagles-get-creative-with-the-salary-cap/

According to this the move will potentially shave almost $21 million off the cap.

So if I’m reading it correctly they also kicked $14m down the road in 2022. 
 

They obviously have to do something to create cap space but I hate kicking the can down the road. 

 

[PhillyRockd]

According to over the cap, the Eagles have $30m left on the cap from 2020

[time2rock]

1 hour ago, PhillyRockd said:

According to over the cap, the Eagles have $30m left on the cap from 2020

Rolling that over will be a huge help.  Guessing that is why we stood pat at the trade deadline, to have that to help with the expected 2021 cap deficit.  

[jsb235]

The salary cap isn't an issue as long as they know who will be the qb in 2021.

If it's Hurts, you shove a ton of money into 2022 since you will ultimately be saving the money on Wentz's salary. So you restructure Graham, Cox, Slay, Hargrave and Lane and sign Barnett to an extension.

If it's Wentz, you restructure him, saving $20 million or so next year, but committing to him for the next three years. And then it's not as crucial to restructure the vets.

The problem is if they get caught in no man's land, unable to decide who they want to keep. Then they will lose the option of extending Wentz, which will cause major problems next year that I don't see a way out of.

 

 

[Godfather]

I'm expecting them to extend Barnett to lower is cap and axe that scrub djax

[jsb235]

5 minutes ago, time2rock said:

Rolling that over will be a huge help.  Guessing that is why we stood pat at the trade deadline, to have that to help with the expected 2021 cap deficit.  

One issue is that the rollover has already been included in the 2021 figure. So assuming the cap is $175 million, which is the floor, we are $70 million over even with the rollover.

Ultimately the cap will probably be $20 million more than that, so we have to cut roughly $50 million to be compliant, and ultimately $70 million or so to pay for draft picks and have a cushion for the season.

[time2rock]

4 minutes ago, jsb235 said:

One issue is that the rollover has already been included in the 2021 figure. So assuming the cap is $175 million, which is the floor, we are $70 million over even with the rollover.

Ultimately the cap will probably be $20 million more than that, so we have to cut roughly $50 million to be compliant, and ultimately $70 million or so to pay for draft picks and have a cushion for the season.

The amount over the projected cap accounts for the rollover amount?  Are you sure about that?  If so, that is a real bummer and makes Howie’s job even more difficult.  

[jsb235]

19 minutes ago, time2rock said:

The amount over the projected cap accounts for the rollover amount?  Are you sure about that?  If so, that is a real bummer and makes Howie’s job even more difficult.  

Yup, we have cap liabilities for next year of around $275 million and the cap is projected to be around $175 million, so we are $100 million over, minus the $30 million rollover, which is how they calculate that we are $70 million over (although the cap will probably be closer to $195 million, meaning we are most likely $50 million over.)

There is $6 million or so in savings that will be realized through procedural matters (cutting Goodwin for example.) Trading Ertz will save $8 million. Cutting DJax can save up to $9 million. so we are almost halfway there just with those moves. Then there is relief if Kelce retires and an obvious extension for Barnett, or cutting ties altogether.

But ultimately the biggest factor will be what we do at qb.

[MillerTime]

50 minutes ago, jsb235 said:

Yup, we have cap liabilities for next year of around $275 million and the cap is projected to be around $175 million, so we are $100 million over, minus the $30 million rollover, which is how they calculate that we are $70 million over (although the cap will probably be closer to $195 million, meaning we are most likely $50 million over.)

There is $6 million or so in savings that will be realized through procedural matters (cutting Goodwin for example.) Trading Ertz will save $8 million. Cutting DJax can save up to $9 million. so we are almost halfway there just with those moves. Then there is relief if Kelce retires and an obvious extension for Barnett, or cutting ties altogether.

But ultimately the biggest factor will be what we do at qb.

Only Top 51 count. I just added the cap hit for the top 51 and it’s $265,783,722. That did not include the $30,379,670. Which lowers the numbers to $235,403,729.

Now if the cap is $195,000,000. That means we are $40,403,729 over the cap. If the article is right and we just cut $21,000,000 then we are now only $19,403,729 over the cap.

We save $4,702,000 by trading Ertz. We save $852,928 by trading Wentz. We save $11,193,750 by restructuring Cox. We save $6,912,000 be restructuring Lane. We save $7,068,750 by restructing Brooks. We save $8,943,759 by restructuring Graham. We save $7,616,667 by restructuring Slay. We save $8,820,000 by restructuring Hargrave. We save 9,000,000 by cutting Desean. All those are before June 1st. We could save more with Post june 1st moves.

That puts us $45,706,125 under the cap. We have 50,000,980 in cap space in 2022. ($72,001,980 without Wentz) We have $101,589,715 in cap space in 2023. ($126,589,817 without Wentz) Both numbers will go down a bit because the NFL will probably help 2020 with some of the cap over the next 5-10 years.

That means we have plenty of space to kick the can down the road for those restructures. We can get the dead weight veterans off the team. We can bring in impactful free agents for 2021. We also will have plenty of draft equity after Wentz and Ertz get traded. 

[jsb235]

11 minutes ago, MillerTime said:

Only Top 51 count. I just added the cap hit for the top 51 and it’s $265,783,722. That did not include the $30,379,670. Which lowers the numbers to $235,403,729.

Now if the cap is $195,000,000. That means we are $40,403,729 over the cap. If the article is right and we just cut $21,000,000 then we are now only $19,403,729 over the cap.

We save $4,702,000 by trading Ertz. We save $852,928 by trading Wentz. We save $11,193,750 by restructuring Cox. We save $6,912,000 be restructuring Lane. We save $7,068,750 by restructing Brooks. We save $8,943,759 by restructuring Graham. We save $7,616,667 by restructuring Slay. We save $8,820,000 by restructuring Hargrave. We save 9,000,000 by cutting Desean. All those are before June 1st. We could save more with Post june 1st moves.

That put us $45,706,125 under the cap. We have 50,000,980 in cap space in 2022. ($72,001,980 without Wentz) We have $101,589,715 in cap space in 2023. ($126,589,817 without Wentz) Both numbers will go down a bit because the NFL will probably help 2020 with some of the cap over the next 5-10 years.

That means we have plenty of space to kick the can down the road for those restructures. We can get the dead weight veterans off the team too. We can bring in impactful free agents for 2021. We also will have plenty of draft equity after Wentz and Ertz get traded. 

I wouldn't do the moves in bold unless we have to. Brooks is injury prone and Herbig can replace him. Slay is getting older, and we don't want to have him owed a ton of money later on. The Desean number you quoted is cutting him after June 1st. Cutting him prior to June 1st would save about half that.

The 2022 cap number is already off because of the moves we made today, which reduces our space for that year.

But, ultimately, it comes down to what we do with Wentz. If we keep him without a restructure this year, 2022 becomes dicey, especially if we have to restructure guys like Brooks and Lane, who have struggled with injuries.

[Bwestbrook36]

4 hours ago, NOTW said:

Well, he's the reason they're in this mess.  He kicked the can down the road too much.  He's going to have to release guys, restructure, move things to future years again, etc.  And they have no money to bring in anyone new.

He sucks at drafting, we know that.  The only hope is that having a higher pick makes the choice easier.

Hopefully Dorsey is more then just a consultant this year.