mgteich

It has often been said that New England spreads out its money, and doesn't pay top money to its top players. Let's look to see the reality. The patriot cap is about $92M for the top 53 (when we exclude about $8M for IR, the PS, dead money and a reserve for picking up players during the season).

The top ten now account for $46 of the cap.

The next ten now have caps totalling about 14M.

The bottom 33 share about $20M.

There is $12 unspent, and available.

Top 10 $46M (over $2M cap)
Next 10 $14M (over $1M cap)
Bottom 33 $20M
Current dead $ 4M
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$84M (includes player 52 and player 53)
available for top 53 $ 12M
needed cushion $ 4M (for IR, PS and player added in season)
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total patriot cap $100M

I presume that $10M of the $12 will go top players. The total might end up being 21 or 22 playes I suppose.
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In what way do we spread the money around more than other teams?

Are other teams not able to pay their second level players a million a year?

Do other teams have LESS the $22M for their bottom 30-35 players?

Or perhaps other teams just have more dead money.

Joker

why do you constantly obsess over the cap numbers?

are you an employee of the New England Patriots in the accounting dept?

Really, what is the constant avalanche of mind numbing capology posts suposed to prove? Do you think you know more than the Patriots front office? Pioli? Is that it?

RayClay

Ignore the static. That's a good point. We no longer have the luxury of balancing out our cap.

To maintain the same talent level, we have to pay up for top performers.

We have to choose those players wisely and work even harder for sufficient depth.

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PatsWickedPissah

Hey, I find the cap talk interesting. Ignore posts and topics that bore you. I do.

the taildragger

interesting.

i wonder how this compares to other teams though? the pats create a lot of depth by bringing in versatile players, but there are always a few guys who you really can't afford to lose.

dalero

How many times can you lose a Woody and get a Koppen to replace him before you get burned?

mgteich

Yes, bb has some real bargains, but not as many as he used to. Perhaps that is of necessity, We used to have much more dead money.

I think the key is that none of 22 are marginal players, or grossly overpaid; that is, none are mistakes.

If you include our top 2 rooks, the following have caps over $1M.

QB Brady
RB Dillon, Maroney, Faulk
WR Branch, Jackson,Brown
TE Graham, Watson
OL Light, Mankins, Koppen, Neal
DL Seymour,Wilfork,Warren,Green
LB Colvin,Bruschi,Vrabel
CB
S Harrison
P Miller

The bargains are
Kaczur and the defensive backfield.

Poll

Maybe this top heave situation will be corrected when new contracts are given to the pending FAs (Samuel, Koppen)

fgssand

Don't forget Branch & Graham in there,,,,,,

spacecrime

Interesting numbers, but you only post the Pats numbers and draw a conclusion that we are no different than other teams. Shouldn't you actually look at other teams numbers before suggesting that?

I'm not sure why youk broke it down as 10-10-33. I hope you picked these nubmers frist and THEN looked at data, rather than figure out what looked best (or worst) and selected those numbers.

I do think it is interesting about distribution of cap dollars.

Perhaps we could settle on some categories and list them

The top ten is too large a sample for high priced players. No team has twn superstars.

maybe top five?

It's kind of hard to figure out each teams starters, but maybe top 25, or O, D, and P-K-LS.

that would leave the bottom 28, which could be further broken down into backups, fill-ins and developmental as 10-10-8.

Yeah, that would satisfy the engineeer in me. Who has the time to dig out team salaries and post each team's cap spent for

Top 5,
Next 10 Quality starters
next 10 Journeyman starters
next 10 backups
next 10 JAGS
last 8 developmental

Now THAT would give up information.

However, since we are only looking at Pats data, let me look at the Pats numbers and draw the opposite conclusion as you, that the Pats spend more on lower tier than other teams.

I'm guessing that some teams will be spending about 2.0 mil on bottom eight,
3.0 on JAGS, and about 6.0 mil on backups. The pats do better than that!