With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

Looking at Miguel's site the Patriots have $113 million comitted and his projected cap is $114 million.

Miguel's UNOFFICIAL 2011 Patriots Salary Cap Information Page

Are the Patriots tight against it? or is there a top 45 rule? How much cap space will the Patriots have once free agency starts?

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

Would love to hear Miguel chime in. Looks to me like the likeliest spots for cuts/savings, if they needed any, would be:

1) a long-term deal for Mankins that reduces this year's number;
2) cutting or restructuring Kaczur;
3) cutting Banta-Cain.

Also, I'd imagine Crumpler and one of Page or Sanders should feel just a little worried. Sanders is an important contributor, but with Page they have four safeties making nearly $2 million or more. Sergio Brown is under contract for a few more years and is cheap. You wonder if something has to give there.

I can't see them cutting a team captain in Crumpler, but he is their third tight end and they did draft a player who duplicates his skill-set.

Looking at this list makes you wonder about their decision to sign Banta-Cain to such a big deal. For them, that was a serious investment. It makes me think those rumors about him being hurt all last year were true. He has to be better than he showed last year, right?

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

No he just flat out sucks.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

Looking at 2011 salary cap figures - espn.com

Posted this in another thread, but it's useful knowledge, even if it doesn't include the franchise tags. Most people are assuming the cap is going to be close to 140 million when it comes back. At around 112, we're in pretty good to excellent shape, especially considering our only UFA is Light and we were 14-2 last year.

As a point of reference, here are my approximate estimations of some of our rivals' caps going into free agency, including the franchise tags.

Green Bay 129.8 million
Pittsburgh 126 million
NYJ 138.5 million
Indianapolis 138.5 million
Baltimore 113.3 million

When factoring in impending FAs, the only play-off level teams in the AFC who are in better shape than us would be Kansas City and San Diego.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

Based on the current reporting, it looks like Page is a free agent which puts the Pats at more like a 111 million cap number.

Also Brandt and Clayton are suggesting the cap will be about 120 so the Pats aren't actually all that far under it.

It looks like there's going to be a cash floor near 120 million that the Pats are actually very far away from meeting that number-their cash number is something like 81 million right now so they have to figure out how to spend about 40 million more in cash while only increasing their cap value by about 9 million. Lots of signing bonuses is the most obvious way so I'd expect to see a Mankins signing, maybe another big ticket free agent, and possibly some extensions for guys like Mayo/BMW/Chung/Vollmer.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

I saw the same concept in Mort's report but it doesn't make any sense to me. If a team goes cash-over-cap one year (big signing bonuses), don't they necessarily have to be cash-under-cap at some point in the future? To say you are going to have a salary cap and a cash floor at near 100% of the cap, wouldn't that essentially eliminate prorating bonuses?

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

FWIW, it wouldn't surprise me if (A) there were special rules in place that only apply this year, or (B) there were changes in how they do the salary cap math.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

1.) I think you can stay cash over cap for quite a while if you keep doling out big signing bonuses-if you can squeeze out $6 million in cap room you can always sign a guy with a $1 million salary and a 5 year/$30 million signing bonus. As long as you're willing to dedicate significant amounts of future cap space to potentially useless players you're ok.

2.) I do agree that this will likely reduce or eliminate the size of signing bonuses; it's easier to manage a dual cap/cash system if players have equal cap and cash values. teams will just end up giving more guaranties or roster bonuses or something.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

It will all depend on whether they get Mankins to commit to a long term deal. Right now, his cap # is about $2-5 million more than it should be.

Re: With Free Agency set to start are the Patriots in a good cap position?
 

If the cash floor happens it almost looks like they have to give somebody-Mankins, Mayo, Ray Edwards, Rice, who knows? a long term deal to increase their cash pay out.