Thoughts on Available Cap Room

With the lockout nearing its end, and a rumored salary cap of around 120M set to be imposed, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at how much salary cap space the Eagles will have, practically speaking.  I’m not going to get incredibly specific with numbers, and I’m going to ignore the Top 51 rule for the time being.  My reasoning is that the things the Eagles need to accomplish include more than just signing free agents before the season starts (i.e. extensions), so I’m more worried how much of the 120M they will use by the end of the season. 

First, let’s make some assumptions about the roster.  Of the players currently signed, I think that 37 are highly likely to end up on the final 53-man roster.  This number includes Vick, Kafka, McCoy, Schmitt, D. Jackson, Avant, Maclin, Cooper, Hall, Celek, Harbor, Nalbone, Peters, Justice, Dunlap, Howard, Herremans, McGlynn, J. Jackson, Cole, Tapp, Graham, Teo-Nesheim, Sapp, Patterson, Bunkley, Laws, Dixon, Fokou, Clayton, Chaney, Samuel, Hanson, Lindley, Allen, Coleman, and Dorenbos.  This accounts for 2 QBs, 2 RBs, 5 WRs, 3 TEs, 7 OL, 5 DEs, 4 DTs, 3 LBs, 3 CBs, 2 Ss, and a LS.

While someone like Nalbone might not actually make the roster, anyone who takes his spot will be making a similar minimum salary, so practically speaking, it doesn’t really matter.  The difference might be 100K, or something along those lines, but I said that I wasn’t going to get real specific with the numbers.  The same goes for Hall as WR 5, Schmitt as FB, or Sapp as DE 6.

The total salary cap commitment for these players comes out to $76,508,874.

Via the draft, the Eagles acquired another 9 players that I think will take roster spots.  This includes Watkins, Jarrett, Marsh, Mathews, Henry, Lewis, Vandervelde, Rolle, and Lloyd.  The last four are questionable, but again, the salary cap difference is minimal if Buckley is RB 3 instead of Lewis, or if Fenuki Tupou beats out Vandervelde for the OL 9 spot. 

We are now up to 46 roster spots, including 2 QBs, 3 RBs, 5 WRs, 3 TEs, 9 OL, 5 DEs, 4 DTs, 6 LBs, 4 CBs, 3 Ss, a K, and a LS.  I’m not going to go crazy trying to estimate the cap hits of the rookies, in part because the contract structures for 1^st and possibly 2^nd round picks could change, but I’m going to estimate that these 9 players account for about 5.5 M worth of cap space.  That looks like a number I just randomly came up with, but I made an educated guess for each pick, added them up, and it came just short of 5M.  Even if minimum base salaries are increased by 100K in the new CBA, that would only push this number to the 6M range.  So I’ll split the difference and say 5.5M.

That brings the total salary cap commitment for these 46 players to about $82,000,000.

We have seven roster spots to fill, including QB2, RB2, DE2, CB2, LB, S, and P.  I’m comfortable with the following position groups:  WR (sorry Plaxico), TE, OL, and DT.  For the seven roster spots, we do have some internal options, both under contract and entering free agency.  Kevin Kolb could certainly be our QB2, and Juqua Parker could very well be our DE2.  I suppose it is conceivable that Rashad Jeanty could be that last LB, and that Marlin Jackson could be the last S.  Jerome Harrison, Stewart Bradley, and Sav Rocca are candidates to be re-signed to fill some of the spots as well (I won’t even suggest Dimitri Patterson as the CB2). 

Prorations of 5.35M (Kolb), 800K (Parker), and 100K (Weaver) will count against the cap whether or not they are on the team, so this brings the total cap commitment to about 88.25M.  I’m assuming Weaver will be cut.  If the Eagles decide to keep Kolb, they will add his 1.392M base salary to the total. 

As far as Parker, I think that he will either be a starter at DE, or he will be cut/traded.  If the Eagles are going to sign a DE in free agency, it needs to be an impact player.  It makes no sense to sign someone that’s not clearly better than Parker or Tapp.  If that is the case, saving 3.5M by cutting Parker makes sense because he would be an expensive backup.  Tapp, Teo-Nesheim, and Graham (when he is healthy) are more appropriately paid to be backups.  On the other side, if they choose not to sign a DE in free agency, Parker is fairly paid for the production he delivers as a starter.  But I’m going to go on the thought that they will sign an impact DE, so I am going to leave Parker’s 3.5M base salary out of the total.

So assuming a 120M salary cap, they have 31.75M to do the following things:

1. Acquire an impact CB
2. Acquire an impact DE
3. Acquire a LB or re-sign Bradley and figure out who starts where
4. Figure out whether or not to trade Kolb, and if the answer is yes, figure out who the QB2 will be
5. Acquire a RB2 or re-sign Harrison
6. Acquire a P or re-sign Rocca
7. Figure out whether to re-sign Mikell or acquire a different stop-gap safety or stick with Allen, Coleman, Jarrett, Jackson/Anderson and hope for the best.
8. Extend DeSean Jackson before he holds out
9. Extend Michael Vick (possibly creating more cap space)

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