Training Camp 2018

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

I'm surprised by your frustation, Given the injury bug last year and so many players returning from injury, I think you leave extra to cover the possibility of some sizeable IR related additions, and then as you mentioned the need to sign guys next year.

We could have used the money I am sure, but this FO has tended to be very disciplined in leaving a portion of the cap available.

I'd contend that too much is left available.

Point 1 - signing free agents off the street once Week 1 has passed results in nothing but vet minimum guys being available. It's not like you're going to find a G right now on the street who is worth $2.0M. So you go into the year with $14.5M in cap space, and you start experiencing injuries, and you start signing available players to replace them at the market rate: vet minimum. Let's call that $700K on average.

$14.5M divided by $700K is 20 players. And that's if you signed them ALL on Week 1. Reality is your injuries will happen throughout the season, meaning on average the replacement guys you sign will spend an average of 8 weeks on the team, not 16 weeks. So prorate the $700K salary down to a $350K salary. That's 40 players you could sign. I don't care how bad your injury situation gets, you don't need $14.5M set aside for injuries. You could have easily spent $2.0M to get a decent swing G back in free agency, and still have $12.5M leftover.

Further, when you look at available cap space by team, the Skins have the 11th most available. 7 of those teams have just flat mismanaged their cap and are just carrying way too much space either because they're small market or aren't attracting talent: Browns 61M, Colts 51M, 49ers 43M, Texans 32M, Titans 29M, Bears 24M, Jets 21M.

So our 14.5M in space isn't quite that bad, but I wouldn't want to compare myself to those organizations for the most part. The better organizations have less space (Patriots $10M, Eagles $5M, Packers $11M, Chiefs $9.7M, Falcons $9M, Vikings $8M, Steelers $3M).

You want to leave space to cover replacements for injuries, sure. But when you have a major need to back up Lauvao with a capable player, I think you're delinquent to leave $14.5M unused. I wouldn't want to be the Steelers with only $3M to play with, but other high performing organizations don't feel the need to carry as much as $14.5M.

Use your resources. Stop trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. They're either too shell shocked over their injury situation from a year ago, or Bruce is being a chintz.