It's neither possible nor practical to sign all 5 for under $10M. But then, they don't have to. They can free up another $12M or so on top of the $16M or so they will have for a total of $28M just by extending Brady and Wilfork and restructuring Mankins. And they can do more than that to probably free up another $5M+/- via a series of minor restructures and inexpensive extensions. And that will not result in a blow it all up scenario, which is never preferable.
We have to get past this either or scenario bs on this forum. It's never that simple or that foolish.
Mo, I'm not a capologist by any means, and I certainly will defer to your better knowledge of cap maneuvering. But I sort of see it this way, and wonder if you think I am off:
1. The 2013 league-wide cap is estimated at around $121M. The Pats have around $6M carryover from 2012 IIRC, and around $5M in dead money, so when those two are factored in it leaves them with around $122M.
2. I think that the league cap will probably remain flat for a while, and Robert Kraft has generally taken a conservative view of the cap and of speculative spending (including in the uncapped year in 2010). So I think the Pats will probably play things on the conservative side. That may include trying to have a little money that they can roll into 2014 if possible, and some money to maneuver with during the season. Add in the rookie pool (at least $3M), PS, injured reserve, and I don't see any way that they will immediately spend up to $122M. They will probably want to keep $10M or so in reserve for all of those factors. JMHO.
3. Discounting players under contract who are most likely training camp bodies (if they make the roster all the better, as they will be low cost roster additions and will decrease overall position cap costs) and looking at guys who are likely to be on the roster, right now I get the following cap breakout:
- QB(2) = $22.6M for Brady and Mallett.
- RB(4) = $2.7M for Ridley, Vereen, Bolden and Demps. Woodhead is a UFA.
- TE(4) = $8M for Gronkowski, Hernandez, Fells and Ballard. This assumes around $0.5M cap hit for Ballard in 2013 as an ERFA.
- FB/H-Back(1) = $0.9M currently for Spencer Larsen, or to sign RFA Michael Hoomanawanui. I don't really expect 4 TEs plus a FB/H-Back, but I'm keeping this for now for cap planning purposes.
- WR(2) = $6.8M for Lloyd and Slater, the later obviously being more of a STer than a true WR.
- OL(7) = $18.3M for Solder, Mankins, Connolly, Wendell, Cannon, McDonald and Zusevics. Vollmer and Thomas are UFAs.
- DL(5) = $15.4M for Wilfork, Love, Deaderick, Forston and Pryor. I'm estimating about $1M for Forston and Pryor for 2013. Unless the Pats get better options, they are cheap depth at DT.
- DE(6) = $6.5M for Jones, Ninkovich, Armstead, Cunnigham, Francis and Bequette.
- LB(5) = $9.7M for Mayo, Hightower, Spikes, Fletcher and either Tarpinian or Rivera. I'm including Fletcher since he is a RFA, and guestimating around $900K.
- CB(6) = $7.5M for McCourty, Gregory, Dowling, Dennard, Wilson and Ebner. Talib, Arrington, Coles and Martin are UFAs.
- ST(3) = $5.3M for Gostkowski, Mesko and Aiken.
All 2013 cap numbers are rounded numbers based on Jason's site. The total comes to around $103.7M for 45 players.
4. That would leave us with less than $10M to spend assuming the conservative rules I've suggested above. You suggest we could free up another $21M or so through extending Brady and Wilfork, restructing Mankins, and minor cuts and restructurings, without doing major surgery or sacrificing the future for the present. Assuming that scenario, we end up with about $30M that we can spend, excluding rookies, on our own FA re-signings and on external FAs.
5. Our own FAs (I've including Ballard, Fletcher and possibly Hoomanawanui in the above calculation) include:
- WR Welker
- OT Vollmer
- CB Talib
- WR Edelman
- RB Woodhead
- CB Arrington
- OG Thomas
- CB Cole
- CB Martin
Not to mention any external FAs that we might want to pursue (WRs, DBs, etc.). I'm not even bothering to include Pat Chung, but others can if they want to.
Does this seem way off to you?