03-24-2022, 06:50 PM
(03-24-2022, 03:28 PM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: OK, so where do we stand?
I go by spotrac instead of Over The Cap. The are both pretty good but make mistakes here & there on the edges. Most of the time spotrac gets their stuff up quicker, so I go there.
They have us with 61 guys signed. With actual numbers for Collins, Apple, Morgan Jr, and Irwin not availabe. Best guessing $10 mil, $4 mil, and $895kx2, and you come out with cap space of $11.76 mil. The Collins number may be a bit high. And this method takes the top 51 salaries instead of picking a viable 53 person roster, so you may get a salary diffetence of $200k in a spot or two, but it is pretty close.
What does that nearly $12 mil need to do? It needs to cover our rookies in the top 51, which should be around $3 mil accounting for displacement. So down to $9 mil. We will want some space for mid-season moves if necessary (Tre Flowers last year). Call it a security blanket. The blanket + a cheap/discount vet to add proven depth at a spot or two. Spain? Hopkins? Waynes? Reiff? Larry O? $4-$5 mil is probably as high as we go on one guy. Unless the others are virtually making vet min (thus adding next to nada due to dispacement). Or if we limit ourselves to one guy making more (Gilmore, Larry O). We also might want to save some riom for final cuts.
If we extend Bates his number might come down some. I have no idea if we can do some contract king-fu to free more space (Hendrickson, Reader?).
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cincinnati-bengals/cap/
Don't accuse me of playing Hobson, but we still need a few million for our drafted players (even though they bump other salaries) and most NFL teams leave a cushion of $3-$5 million of unused cap space for injury replacements.
But we still have enough to signs a veteran OT. I think they already have something in the works by releasing Fred Johnson. he was making $2.4 million. For just another couple of million I think they could sign some one much better. Maybe an old vet on a one year deal.
