theProf Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 NFC South in big salary-cap troubleMar 23 2:10 PMBy Pat YasinskasThe Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons have less salary-cap room than all of the NFL’s 29 other teams.According to numbers obtained by ESPN.com, the Panthers have the league’s least cap room at $1.08 million. That includes the deal signed by guard Mike Pollak on Thursday. That one-year deal is worth a $700,000 base salary. But the Panthers took advantage of the NFL’s minimum salary benefit to lessen Pollak’s cap hit. The benefit allows the Panthers to count only $540,000 of Pollak’s base salary toward the cap. Throw in his $65,000 signing bonus and his cap figure for this year is $605,000.Even after signing defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley to a cap-friendly deal, the Saints are second behind the Panthers with only $1.28 million in available cap space. They’ve got a major issue on their hands with the Drew Brees situation. He currently is on the books for the $16 million franchise tag. Even if the Saints are able to work a long-term deal with Brees, it’s likely his cap number will climb unless the team gets really creative in structuring the deal. The Saints are going to have to cut some players at some point and probably also will have to restructure some contracts (they already did that with Will Smith and Jahri Evans).The Falcons are No. 3 with only $2.02 million in available cap space and that would explain why they haven’t been active in free agency, although they have re-signed some of their own players, such as John Abraham and Harry Douglas. The Falcons still have some wiggle room because there are several players that could be released and contracts that could be restructured to clear cap space.The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only team in the NFC South without major salary-cap issues. I can’t give you an exact number on how much cap space the Bucs have right now because we have yet to see how much Ronde Barber’s new contract will impact the cap. But the Bucs were roughly $16 million under the cap a few days ago and they cleared $1.5 million off the books by releasing defensive ends Tim Crowder and Nick Reed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HASHBROWN3 Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 (edited) No real revelation here...thanks for the insight into the rest of the nfc south... Edited March 23, 2012 by HASHBROWN3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fabs0 Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Oh well, we could easily free up $10+ million in space by extending Ryan, cutting Ovie and re-signing Grimes if we needed to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HASHBROWN3 Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Well the good thing for the falcs is that the bucs resigned ronde barber JJ, HD, and RW must be really worried... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muskokas finest © Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 I'd like to know the status of a Michael Vick cap credit. Apparently Blank has his money back in the bank from a portion of the bonus that bankrupt Vick was required to return. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Falcons 'til Death Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Major cap issues ? We are below the cap . What few holes we have can be address through the draft . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DD: Objective Elite Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Oh well, we could easily free up $10+ million in space by extending Ryan, cutting Ovie and re-signing Grimes if we needed to.Can we make it an even $12M and cut Baker too?Please!?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capologist Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 LOL @ some of our players, we've re-signed MOST of our players... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.