Miguel

No but it does provide a good part of the story.

Somewhat. But the story was not mentioning the number of teams under the cap by just $10 million but by at least $20 million.

Good luck with the former as cap information for the entire NFL has become sparse. One could do some sleuthing for the latter.

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Pats726

Miguel...I wonder if this time last year this was the case for 06?? How it has been the last few years and if this ballooning of money under is a rather new thing or not. I think it would be interesting if it was a new as opposed to similar to the past..It does tell part of the story..but not all.. Would make a larger difference if a team was under that much and that included all 22 starters as opposed to a team with that amount under and only a handful of starters included.
Does this mean teams are getting smarter financially??

MrBigglesWorth

No links for 2008? Even though it would be hard to predict so far down the road. Free agents are slim pickings. It's nice to see the Colts will potentially lose 2-3 more defenders.....most likely cato june, jason david, and another d-back. I'm suprised they ranked Asante so high.

Va_Pats_Fan

This is not good for the Pats, IMO. As the cap rises, more and more teams will be able to bid on FA's. As with any commodity, the more bidders, the higher the price will go. This will make the pats formula of what to pay a FA outdated and restrictive. I can also see less FA's on the market, as more teams are able to extend their players under contract.

MrBigglesWorth

That is one way to think about it. But on the other hand I can see less player movement as teams try to hold onto their own players they have drafted. We're seeing the eagles do this now. Obviously you don't want to ink a player to a long term deal that turns out to unproductive.

I think one great thing about this is hopefully players will stay with their original teams longer such as the case pre-free agency. As stated earlier this makes the draft all the more important because to be a good team yoou need to hit on this top tier picks and you need to hit on at least half of the lower picks which like baseball get inked for low salaries the first several years of their career.

I see this as leveling the playing field and giving more emphasis to the draft. The good teams will have become good through productive drafts and the poor teams will have drafted poorly and ebcuase of their mistakes will pay heavily in free agency to cover up for their deficiencies and get themselves in cap trouble.

mgteich

16 teams (including the pats) will have over $20M available (8 are over $30M under), even before cuts and restructures, and the patriots have decided to move more money into 2007. The numbers are no surprise. Miguel has bgeen writing this since the CBA was signed, even though many were talking about the one-year 2006 overpriced bubble for free agent player prices. The situation won't be any better next year. In the end, we can again next year decided whether to spend the cap money, or push it further into the future/