As it stands today, the Raiders are slightly more than $19 million under the league’s salary cap limit. Though there are only eight teams with less cap room, the Raiders still have the ability to make plenty of eye-opening moves in the upcoming free agency period and trades. It bears noting that the Raiders salary-cap
Raiders updated salary-cap situation sheds light on inactivity
There's room to make some impact signings, but it's limited until more salaries dumped
Hopefully all these ignorant fans on Twitter will read this to get a basic grasp of how cap & FA works. Good breakdown.
It also depends on who our Raiders are planning in signing.
We have talked about this a lot, if we are going to wait for bargains again, its likely several of those high priced veterans may not get cut until long after the FA frenzy.
Do Cork or BW have a list of roster bonus days and prices? Maybe that will give us a little more info into who might get cut when.
Maybe this is part of the plan though. Maybe Gruden wants to keep much of the team in place and go big next offseason after he figures out who is going to fit the new schemes.
I hear a lot of folks chirping about how RM is so amazing with the way he structures contracts, so we should overlook his terrible drafts. Yeah? Well, take a gander at their lousy roster and see how they’re going to sign some if the better free agents with such little money available.
Not only can they NOT land some if the top-tier FA’s, but we also have to put up with RM’s horrible drafts!
After another trainwreck 7-9 season, you’ll all be saying the same thing…..RM has to go!
Excellent dose of reality, Cork.
Hiring free agents requires the cutting of your guy, ditching his salary (wow! now we have cap space), and then you hire someone else’s guy, who has to get paid (Oops! there goes our salary cap space). You are hiring someone that some other GM felt wasn’t worth his salary.
The whole time this is going on, the fans of each of the 31 teams that are not called the Patriots, blast their GM because he can’t out-do the other 30 GM’s in what is a zero-sum crapshoot.
The “good” years are usually a byproduct of previous really bad years. After the bad years, you dump the contracts that didn’t work out and you have “found” money that *might* be redeployed to hire other fired players and you come out ahead.
But, you have to have some really bad, over paid players to come out ahead spending his money elsewhere. Other than Sean Smith, do we *really* have any terribly overpaid players? They have to be over paid so dramatically that we know that we can hire a guy (who has been recently fired) at a better production per dollar rate. And, to beat it all, Smith started playing the last part of last year!
We do have some players who might be cut and their money redeployed to some unemployed player and come out ahead. But, the operative word is “might”. You’re really just gambling, and, to beat it all, you never get to know whether the guy you ditched would have done had you kept him.
In other words, would a person prefer to be a Browns fan this year because they have a bunch of money to spend, and the chances are pretty good that they will get more impact for their money than than the impact from the players they booted out.?
Unless you are really in a bad place, you’re just shuffling players around, dropping one guy’s salary and picking up another guy’s salary, and hoping for the best.
Coming out ahead consistently is not so easily done.
The only place it has happened consistently is that team from Boston that has a superior culture and coaching staff.
That, also, is not so easily done.
But, maybe the oft-maligned son of Al has pulled that off. Nobody else in the league has ever had the balls to invest so much (Gruden), over such a long period of time to create that culture, excellence in staff, and consistency it takes.
Free angency is also a way for new coaches to find players that fit their system. And get rid of players that don’t.
You’re welcome, Randy. It is important to remember that, if you call for the Raiders to cut, say, Bruce Irvin, the Raiders have to find a replacement who is at least as good as Irvin, for $8.5 million — the money saved by cutting Irvin — or less. And that’s just to break even. It’s a tough thing to pull off. That’s why players like Irvin don’t get cut or forced to take a pay cut. They aren’t easy to replace.
Cork, what’s the real reason Smith was such a bust? Was he just a bad player? Was it because he was used the wrong way? Is he a head case? Did he suddenly forget how to play? Poor coaching? Was he injured?
I ask this because he was a highly sought after free agent and he must have been pretty damn good as a Chief to command the big deal he got. Say what you want about RM, it’s not like he’s a complete idiot.
So with the Smith’s poor play and impending legal issues, I would think the Raiders could re-sign the guy on the cheap. Is he worth a low base, high incentive deal? Is he completely toast, or can he be resurrected?
It’s always weird to to me how a guy can go from boom to bust so quickly…
A combination of things. Smith is at his best when matched up against bigger, stronger and not-as-fast receivers. That’s why he shined the latter part of last season, because he was put in favorable matchups. He can’t succeed against all receivers, which is why he looked so bad against faster receivers such as Brandin Cooks. Pretty simple, but some coaches are stubborn and try to force the issue.
Thanks for the reminder, Cork. Admittedly, I get caught up in the “hey, why aren’t we signing [insert name of free agent here] or trading for [insert name of CB/LB here]!” I’ve said it before, I believe that the coaches and RM think that the team is better than they showed last year talent-wise. But, still need depth and to fill many holes. Not sure I would have gone after Richard Sherman since I think he is a scheme player and that injury scares me a bit. But, I worry that RM will not be able to land his top FA targets. And, what happens if the Mack negotiations drag on for a while like Carr’s did? Is it August, yet? 🙂
You’re welcome, Michelle. It’s easy to get frustrated and angry when teams such as the Browns, Rams, Eagles, Chiefs, etc., are making so many moves, while the Raiders seemingly watch the world pass them by. But, it’s important to take a step back and understand what’s going on. One more point: The Raiders didn’t miss out on Richard Sherman if he truly was given a contract that averages $13 million per season. Reggie McKenzie never is going to pay that much for a player who is 30 and coming off a major injury.