When I hear people say the "Cap is crap" I laugh because I just have to point to all the players who are getting cut to show that it's not. If it was, these players wouldn't be getting cup and teams like the Jets would have plenty of depth behind their starters. Something that everyone knows they don't have... Hell even Antonio Cromartie basically said it and we all know how thick he is...
I do not believe that the cap is crap by any means. None whatsoever. It's no coincidence that the successful teams have been very mindful of the future while remaining as competitive as they can at the moment.
I do believe that teams can and often do move money into the future to free up current room. Just in the last 24 hours we've seen both the Steelers and the Cowboys free up something that totals about 35 million dollars...without cutting one single player, not one. That is why I hold off on the "gutting" of team comments by so many fans and media outlets, because we just don't know "how" these teams are going to approach it. More often than not it isn't half of the total "gutting" that we hear it's going to be. I am leery about the supposed downfall of Baltimore for the same reasoning. Every team loses key players every year, us included of course. That doesn't necessarily mean they are suddenly "re-building around Joe Flacco" like some of the comments I have seen here lately state. That's ridiculous. They still have the same core group of guys and will likely remain a playoff competitive team, even if they lose a couple/few players.
Obviously moving money ahead into future years is one hell of a gamble, and those teams will need to make some expensive decisions regarding pay and cuts in the upcoming years. In other words, they are robbing Peter to pay Paul.
But...that also doesn't necessarily mean that those teams are going to lose all of their key players and suddenly submerge themselves into irrelevancy, at least not this year anyway. Time will tell what kind of future decisions will be affected by these questionable/poor decisions at the moment.
My guess is that they are relying on the hope that they draft more efficiently in the next couple of yrs, which can make more expensive players expendable, but that is certainly a gamble. If they do not draft more efficiently they will be continuing the cycle until they ARE in cap hell, but it also doesn't mean that it's going to happen for the 2013 season.
The NY Jets are a total other subject completely, because they have made a plethora of stupid moves and choices from poor scouting of talent, to bringing in overpriced vets, to giving their supposedly "franchise QB" a bank breaking deal (again). There aren't many teams like them, if any, and it certainly isn't just due to poor cap decisions. Their failures are monumental on many levels.
