For the record professor Clayton said this AM in his insiders blog that the Colts were "right at the cap" before they restructured Mannings and Mathis contracts thus freeing up $14.8M in cap space. Since Freeney wasn't tagged until later in the day I for my own purposes will assume his $8.6M tag price will now come off of that figure leaving them effectively with $6.2M for the time being irrespective of the rule of 51. Miguel's comments not to the contrary because they don't make sense. And because I want to know what they really have, not just what they can temporarily appear to have.
BTW Manning's restructure just lowered his cap hit from $16M+ to $8M+. That money doesn't just disappear. It is all falling into the next 3-5 years depanding on whether his contract actually voided to 7 years as widely reported for some time now or not. Years when bonuses dry up replaced by double digit salaries. You can guarantee and prorate those too, but eventually you run out of years to dump them into without starting over, which means a big new signing bonus to prorate into years already loaded down with prior amortization - so it's not nearly as palatable as the first time around when you started with a clean slate.
