Dead Weight

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(02-28-2017, 02:08 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: The only thing I can figure is he's subtracting out rollover space that we carried forward from not spending at the cap as that isn't recurring.


We have about $44.5 cap space.
- $6.5 million that we rolled over. (In reality this can be used for signing bonuses, etc. and the cap should keep rising each year.)
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$38 million
-9.2 million - Our rookie pool is around $9.2 million. (https://overthecap.com/draft/)
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$28.8 million


Plus, if they waive guys like Maualuga, Jones, MJ...we could have even more.

And even that rookie pool number is iffy because that assumes all 11 picks make the team, which isn't currently possible because then they would need to cut other people to make roster space, thus freeing up more cap. Spotrac has the Bengals listed as 56 people under contract right now. So even if the draft picks kick league minimum guys off the payroll, that's $420,000 x 11 = $4.62m.

So your $9.2m rookie pool - $4.62m = $4.58m is the actual cap hit.. and that's assuming every single draft pick replaces someone making league minimum, which is unlikely. So it's probably even less.


- - - - -
EXAMPLE: Last year's 9th overall pick (Ereck Flowers, OL) was a $2.6m cap hit in 2016. So say 9th overall they take Reuben Foster and he has about a $2.7m cap hit in 2017. He also makes Rey Maualuga no longer helpful for the team, who currently has a $3.67m cap hit in 2017 with $0 in dead money if cut.

So drafting Reuben Foster to replace....
-Rey Maualuga actually nets you a gain of ~$1m in extra cap space.
-Vincent Rey nets you a gain of ~$650,000 in extra cap space.
-Nick Vigil loses you $2.4m in cap space.

One of those three would have to be cut because the Bengals won't go with 4 MLB on their roster, and though they vary in the amount, all of them would cause Reuben Foster's cap hit to not be as big as it would have been if they didn't have to make roster space for him.

So that $9.2m rookie pool number is fairly worthless for calculating cap space.