Over The Cap's estimate of a $166 million cap gives the Pats $72 million in 2017 cap room with 30 players under contract. That also doesn't account for the ~15 rookies they'll draft between now and the 2017 season. To completely over simplify things, that's enough to sign Collins, Hightower, and Butler each for $9 million cap hits in 2017, 10 guys on rookie or cheap veteran contracts averaging a million each, 10 mid-tier veterans averaging $3 million each, plus $5 million left over.
Also note that Solder is still under contract through 2017 and presumably still the plan at left tackle then, but you could get another $7 million in cap room by cutting him a year from now. Amendola is the only other guy that sticks out, with $6.5 million in savings if he's cut next year.
Great points, Sciz, but historically speaking, when has Belichick chosen to pay for elite talent at 3-4 positions on the same side of the ball? It's usually just a couple of players, with some middle of the road pacts, and some team friendly/value pacts.
Defensively speaking--right now, we have McCourty as the sole party who's making top dollar. Prior to that it was Wilfork, although there was some overlapping with Mayo as well, keeping in mind that Mayo fell into the old wage scale for high priced rookies. Prior to that was the decision to move on from Seymour and give Wilfork the priority. Yes, we "could've" kept both, but that usually doesn't mesh with Belichick's line of thinking.
In 2007, we had Thomas making top dollar, as well as Seymour. I'm sure there were some other middle of the road deals, but they weren't for high money/longer term. In other words, more in line with what Solder got with his 2 year extension. If we're going to try and keep all of those players, this is what it will take:
1) Someone will have to take a team friendly deal. We've seen the Bradys and Bruschis of the world do it before, which has allowed more spending for other key players. Who, if anyone, will do it this time around?
2) Someone will likely take a good money, but smaller year deal, like Nate Solder did on offense. We cannot keep throwing around these 5/50 kind of deals like McCourty received when attempting to project guys like Butler, HT, Collins. It's just not going to happen in my opinion. The money may be there, but that's just not how Belichick has typically operated. Maybe they can take advantage of getting Butler out of the way now for something like a 3/25 deal, which would benefit both sides?
