They could free up and have around 40 million in cap space. Maybe Hollister can be our second tight end next year. It's important to resign some of these players. I would hate to see solder go but are they willing to give him 10 million dollars?
Miguel's best estimate is that the Pats will start out at around $13.8M (after accounting for all bonus escalations and likely RFA/ERFA tenders).
Cutting Branch, McClellin and Harris nets about $6.7M in saving without doing an damage to the roster.
.... So that puts them at $20.5M free space.
Barring significant re-structures in February, cutting Allen (not a great idea, IMHO) and Bennett (almost certainly necessary) would net another $10.4M -
but creates a major roster hole at TE that it doesn't seem like Hollister is anywhere near ready to fill, either blocking or receiving (though, of course, I have no idea how the coaches have evaluated him) .
.... and that only gets them up to about $31M in free space,
Extending/re-structuring Brady through one more season (2020) saves maybe $11M off the 2018 cap, although I may have calculated that savings too high when re-distributing the salary-to-bonus conversion. Regardless, such a move would also increase his future cap hits (currently at $22M per).
But that's pretty much the only way the Pats get to $40M for 2018.
McCourty could be extended/re-structured through an extra season and save maybe $5M in 2018, but the rest of the even semi-reasonable roster moves would net only a fraction of a million each.
I'm guessing that the biggest thing in Solder's life right now is the health of his son. He's apparently been receiving excellent care in Boston, so it seems doubtful to me that Solder would chase $$ in another city. IF he plays after this season, I'd expect it would be with the Pats, possibly on a 1-2 year deal maxxing out at $11.5M per year (or a bit less), which would make him the 11th highest paid LT in the league for 2018 and 2019.
I also suspect that any or all of several of the Pats other key UFAs ... Lewis, Burkhead, Waddle, Fleming, Butler, Bademosi, Marquis Flowers, etc. ... could be poached by either McD or Patricia - thus creating more or less significant roster holes at RB, backup OT, etc. The only "good" news there is that the Pats may gain 3-4 2019 comp picks out of those deals.
Also, the impact of this off-season's roster moves on the 2019 cap needs to be considered. The current estimate is $56M, but there will be many more potentially key UFAs to be re-signed (or not) ... Cooks, Gost, Ryan Allen, Cardona, Hogan, Chung, Dorsett, Trey Flowers, Shaq Mason, Rowe, Malcolm Brown. And there's not a lot of 2018 cap space to use on extending these guys before they hit the open market in 2019.