The Myth of Having to Go Into a Season With Cap Space

[*ochocincos*]

(08-16-2017, 12:44 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Sportrac shows our cap space somewhere around $18.6 million. We largely have this cap space because we didn't sign Whitworth.

We paid about $3.25 million for Andre Smith. A guy who has never played Guard.

A lot of fans get touchy when I talk about spending some of our cap space talking about how we have to extend Eifert and Burfict...which we haven't.

Well, here is where this hoarding of cap space with the promise of retaining our own free agents becomes a myth:

1 ) Even if we spend this money on a guy like Ronald Leary who makes about $9 million a year...and we'd still have $13 million cap space. Plenty of money for an extension for Eifert or Burfict.
2 ) We have guys like MJ that we could waive to create cap space.
3 ) The cap generally rises each year.
4 ) A competitive team is more attractive to even our own free agents.
5 ) We'll spend $3.25 million on a guy who has never played Guard...but won't spend more to actually upgrade a position.
6 ) Other teams restructure contracts. We don't seem to.
7 ) Look at all the guys we lost last year like Nelson, Sanu, Jones, etc. Hoarding cap space doesn't really help us.

Agreed. Holding onto the $ the way the Bengals do is a very conservative approach, as there's no guarantee extensions will actually happen. If they don't happen, Bengals "roll it over" to next year with the same uncertainty. Rinse and repeat.