JDG Posted March 1, 2006 Posted March 1, 2006 For all the criticisms of Tom Donahoe, almost everyone agreed that he rescued us from "salary cap hell." And yet, even after releasing Mike Williams, ESPN.com reported today that we are just $2mil under the cap. What the heck? Where is all that cap space going? It seems to me that we have only a handfull of high-priced players. Yes, we have to pay Spikes and Fletcher, since we brought them in as free agents, but they are LB's. Vincent is probably also getting decent money, and Schobel has gotten paid - but not exorbitantly so. But many of our top skill position players, Losman, McGahee, Evans, and McGee are still on their rookie contracts - which are relatively cheap. Its not like we have a high-priced TE, and how much can we be paying anyone on our offensive line? Yes, Moulds is taking up a lot of cap space - but how did we let the Moulds situation get into "cap hell" status anyways, where even if we cut him he gobbles up $5.3 mil of space? I only have two possible explanations: 1) The Bills are getting hosed right now on the acceleration of "not-likely-to-be-earned" incentives into the current cap year, due to the labor armageddon. 2) Tom Donahoe didn't even get the cap situation right, in addition to everything else he screwed up. I suspect there is a bit of truth to both. JDG
JimBob2232 Posted March 1, 2006 Posted March 1, 2006 Well, we are getting eaten alive with dead cap money right now with all the releases. Thats for starters. But it doesnt explain the high cap number overall. I think the Mike Williams situation hurts alot. You just cant have a top pick fail, or it kills you financially. I also think the handling of EM was suspect. You cant renegotiate a contract and cut the guy the next year. That is bad for the cap. Unless you are the patriots and can find a superior replacement in the 7th round of every draft and win paying your players the league minimum, this isnt going to work. We now have ONE GUY eating 1/9th of the cap. OUCH. Problem is, if we cut him, we have one guy WHO ISNT ON THE TEAM, eating 1/15th of the cap...so take your poison there. Is drew still eating dead cap space? I cant remember when he was cut... Plus alot of contracts were backloaded, as per typical NFL protocol. Cant blame TD there really. Spikes, Fletcher, Milloy and others came on a few years ago, they are probably seeing huge escalations in base salary, eating away at our cap. I cant say TD did a bad job of handling the cap. I think he did a good job actually. Actually overall I give him a B+ on cap management.
eSJayDee Posted March 1, 2006 Posted March 1, 2006 The ideal handling of the cap is to be close to it, but not put yourself 'in trouble'. Bear in mind, you need to spend $ to get quality players. (At least in theory - and let's it also requires the leap of faith that we were trying to field as competitive of a team as possible ) We are UNDER the cap AND in a managable situation. Sure, we're not in as good of shape as some teams (w/o looking at # & each team's FA situation I can't sight specific teams better off, but I'll guess SF.), but considering that we all felt that we should have been a playoff caliber team last year, I think our situation is/was in pretty good shape.
finknottle Posted March 2, 2006 Posted March 2, 2006 I think the Mike Williams situation hurts alot. You just cant have a top pick fail, or it kills you financially. 615420[/snapback] I'll go one further. You can't have a top pick succeed either, because it kills you financially. The better he plays, the bigger a piece of the pie he is going to demand to where he accounts for nearly 10%.
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