Hobson - only $15 million of cap to work with?

[*ochocincos*]

(03-01-2017, 04:49 PM)Bengalholic Wrote: I thought this might help a little in the cap/roller discussion:

The league salary cap going into 2015 was 143.28m. 
They rolled a little over 8m from 2014.
That made their total 'team' salary cap 151.66m. 
They spent 140m of the cap space and had about 4m in dead money.

For 2016, the league salary cap was 155.27m. 
They again rolled over the 7.6 m from 2015.
This made their total 'team' cap 163m.
They spent 153m and had about 3.3m in dead money.

This year, the league salary cap is 167m.
They rolled over 6.5m left from last year.
That makes the 'team' cap 173.5m.

So what you're saying is expect just under the regular league salary cap of $167 million and that the amount of dead money will just slightly bump the Bengals cap usage over the normal league minimum. However, we should expect at least $5 million left that will be rolled over to 2018.

If that's the case, ok. But there's a lot of missing money if only $15 million is spent on Bengals FAs.
Bengals have $42 million in cap space to spend. Subtract that $15 million and you're at $27 million.
Subtract $9 million for the supposed drafted rookies. Down to $18 million.
Take out another few million to reserve for injuries. Let's say $5 million just to be extremely conservative. Down to $13 million.
Not all the injury money will be spent (likely), but given the Bengals like to roll over at least $5 million, we'll add another $3 million to cover the actual injuries and still allow for $5 million to be rolled over. Now you're down to $10 million.

That means that essentially, if the Bengals follow their model for the previous two years in terms of cap spending, they will use about $10 million toward extensions for other players.
I can't imagine that would all go to extend just Burfict and Eifert, who I feel are the only two players worth extending.
Likely, we'll see a mediocre/bad player (e.g. Bodine, Hill) get extended beyond what we think is worthy, and that's how the rest of the cap will be used.