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Per Spotrac.

That's...remarkable.

I am not sure if that includes Darnold yet. OTC actually shows $169 mil in space.

Not sure what they are saving money for...

That’s the mystery of this FA. With obvious needs we haven’t done much to fix the issues and provide an environment to select BPA in the draft. Now they have to target positions to improve. WR, C, IOL, LB, S, and TE are identifiable needs even if JS bottom feeds as usual.

I mean, they do have large extensions looming: Cross and Spoon, mostly

But...that's a LOT of cheddar. You can get those done for less than $30M a year cap hits.

Irish Greg 2.0 wrote:I mean, they do have large extensions looming: Cross and Spoon, mostly

But...that's a LOT of cheddar. You can get those done for less than $30M a year cap hits.

Also Walker, Lucas and Riq. Not much for FA guards next year, some older ones.

Maybe they want to compete for some quality defensive talent like a big time pass rusher. I guess we'll see.

I want to see what they draft now. We should have a good number of picks.

Irish Greg 2.0 wrote:I mean, they do have large extensions looming: Cross and Spoon, mostly

But...that's a LOT of cheddar. You can get those done for less than $30M a year cap hits.

TriCitySam wrote:Also Walker, Lucas and Riq. Not much for FA guards next year, some older ones.

10-4 on Walker and Lucas, but Riq? I'd be hugely disappointed if he's even on the team come this September. They guy's been benched for poor tackling by two completely different coaching staffs in the past two seasons. We need to move on from him.

Those players aren’t going to take up much Cap room for the first few years but I think the key is the guaranteed portion of the contracts. There’s a lot of deception with the AAV and how it affects the Cap space unless the contract goes full term.

TriCitySam wrote:Also Walker, Lucas and Riq. Not much for FA guards next year, some older ones.

I am not sure K9 gets an extension. Have to see how he fits Kubiak's wide zone, and see if he can stay healthy.

Lucas is a possibility, again have to see how his knee responds.

I don't think Riq gets extended.

Well, I don't know where they go with Riq. I don't think they would want to just cut him and take on an additional $5.3MM of dead cap $, and Tre is gone (and rated lower than Riq). We know he has starter ability, but certainly he has underperformed. The CB shelf is pretty thin....we'll see what the draft brings.

TriCitySam wrote:Well, I don't know where they go with Riq. I don't think they would want to just cut him and take on an additional $5.3MM of dead cap $, and Tre is gone (and rated lower than Riq). We know he has starter ability, but certainly he has underperformed. The CB shelf is pretty thin....we'll see what the draft brings.

Cutting him is different than just letting him walk in free agency without an extension.

He is a UFA in '26.

Maybe the Seahawks should trade for Hendrickson of the Bengals. The leading sacker over the last 4 years but the Bengals don’t seem to want to re-sign him to an appropriate salary.

Uchenna just renegotiated freeing up another $10M in cap space, we got something else up our sleeve.

c_hawkbob wrote:Uchenna just renegotiated freeing up another $10M in cap space, we got something else up our sleeve.

I'm not so sure. Is IG's theory correct, that we're pinching pennies due to management's insistence? Are there non-football reasons for our financially conservative approach to this offseason?

New ownership perhaps if part of the deal is giving them a lot of room to replace Management and make major player personnel changes.
Other than that maybe one huge trade of a player which as far as I know would be Trey Hendrickson. It's not unheard of for JS to give a big contract to an established player and he would be a huge addition to the Defense.
But the Bengals don't want to trade him at this point.

i don't thinks it's anything to be excited about. While we have the most cap space for 2026 we also are tied with Ravens and Raiders for fewest players contracted with 25. That's a lot of roster to fill out, so the dollars will disappear quickly.

Also, in 2021 we did not have a 1st round pick, if JS would have hit a home run with that pick, he would be on a second contract in 2026 eating into that cap number.

You're right about having to fill out the roster. JS history is he will overpay for scrubs for one year usually IOL but other positions too and waste a bunch of money. But that should still leave quite a big pile of Cap room.

River Dog wrote:I'm not so sure. Is IG's theory correct, that we're pinching pennies due to management's insistence? Are there non-football reasons for our financially conservative approach to this offseason?

They've pretty much spent their cap space over the years, so I would be surprised if there is a push to pinch pennies. JS has been pretty steady in his opinion on the mistakes and risks that comes with over spending in FA. I get that.

River Dog wrote:I'm not so sure. Is IG's theory correct, that we're pinching pennies due to management's insistence? Are there non-football reasons for our financially conservative approach to this offseason?

TriCitySam wrote:They've pretty much spent their cap space over the years, so I would be surprised if there is a push to pinch pennies. JS has been pretty steady in his opinion on the mistakes and risks that comes with over spending in FA. I get that.

But have things changed? Has management suddenly gotten an urge, for whatever reason, to pinch pennies? I'm not claiming it to be true, only that it would explain what, as you have noted, is an obvious exception to how we've operated under JS for years.

Maybe I'm missing something in the conversation, but Over the Cap doesn't have the 3 biggest FA signings of Darnold, Kupp and Lawrence accounted for. When you click on the team, the 3 FA's which are 50 million or thereabouts in cap are not listed on the roster with their respective cap hits. They are at the bottom of the page as part of the team, but not with cap hits. Not sure why, but that will have an effect going forward, too.

The last move to restructure Nwosu's contract just bumped us up a little.

Contracts can be made such that the Cap hit is not evenly distributed. For instance, when Mahomes signed his $250M contract his Cap hits for the first couple of years were in the range of $10M, but the hits later were huge and that's where the void years came into play. They will of course re-sign him early and avoid the big hits again going forward but at some point it will hit KC.
The point I'm making is we can't look at a contracts total value and average over the length of the contract.