Keeping Tee Higgins is not that impossible.

[Essex Johnson]

(09-09-2023, 05:27 PM)casear2727 Wrote: Joe's extension likely increases our current cap space to 20M or more this season, which is more than enough for any potential signing bonus for Tee.

Joe & Tee's extensions could potentially be very affordable next season making it easy to sign Chase.

Joe's 7 yr deal allows for extreme flexibility to sign both these WRs.  

2 things to understand:  Proration and large cap increases.

Proration: Providing a large signing bonus usually results in the 1st two season's being very affordable salary wise. (2023 & 2024)
Joe's 29M salary this season could be lowered to 1M, and potentially less than 20M next season.  If he receives a singing bonus of 100M in cash this year it is prorated at 20M over the next 5 seasons.  Thus his cap hit this season would only be 21M instead of the previous 29M, freeing up 8M for a total of 20M available cap.

Tee could receive a 3 year/80M deal with a 40M signing bonus.
His current salary cap hit is 4M that likely stays the same, but add the 10M signing bonus and it increases to 14M.  Which would could potentially still leave 6M in cap space this season.

Both of these scenarios involve Tee and Joe's annual salaries increasing well above their AAV numbers in 3 years.  But that is ok.  The salary cap this year is 224M, but based upon the new TV contracts the cap is expected to be over 300M in 2026.  The gambling money will begin increasing the cap as well.

There is room for the Big 3.

This could go a million different ways, but it is doable.

Of course it is doable the argument is it worth it to handcuff team in other areas, I  don't think so.. we were to better served to invest deeper in other positions and draft a WR