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Pro Bowl Player
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Its quite amazing to see the amount of conservative views regarding FA. Im sure even Bill would issue a smirk upon reading these threads.
Lets debunk some of the “Pats have only 30M cap“ and everything “costs so much“.
1. 30M+ Cap Space is NOT REALITY. Its just accounting snippet in time for the outsiders.
2. In reality Cap Space is ALWAYS FLUID/FLEXIBLE since it extends over 4 or more years.
f.e.: After the flood of restructures (happens every year w most teams) and creating piles of 2023 Cap Space across the league -
Pats fell from #4-5 to #8 in 2023 Cap Space. On the flip side - Pats are #1 by far in 2025 - since they did not borrow anything YET.
Note that you have basically 3 Cap groupings atm for 2023:
G1 : CHI, ATL -> 60-70M effective cap space (ECS)
G2 : LV, HOU, CIN, ARI, DEN, NE -> 26-36M ECS
G3 : GB, LAC - > 15-20M
The rest of the league is around 10M or less . and some are still in significant red numbers - BUF, CLE, NO - that they will have to clear by Wed.
This puts them in very competitive position with lots of leverage..
3. Over the next 3 years NE has combined 455M (projected) Cap Space or 400M ECS. That puts them comfortably at #3.
Only CHI (by c. 40M) and HOU (by c. 15M) have more . the rest of the league has SIGNIFICANTLY less.
4. Even 30M Cap Space can buy you lots of APY contracts:
f.e. lets look at 2021 “shopping spree“ spendings -- they spent around 60M 2021 cap space to sign 24 players (incl TOP 51 rule):
T.Brown (6.8M), Agholor (6.2M), Henry (6M), Judon (5.6M), Smith (5M), Newton (4.6M), Mills (3.8M), Van Noy (3.6M), God (3.2M), JC (2.6M), Wise (2.5M), Bourne (2.3M), Karras (2.2M), Anderson (2M) + further 10 players at 1M or less Cap Hit (Cap number minus TOP 51 contract) incl. starters/contributors Andrews, White, Guy, Bethel, Cody, Jakob, Folk..
This amounted to approx. 130M APY of new contracts in FA (incl Brown trade)
Note that this was COVID low league cap year where everyone was conservative and most contracts were 1y.
In normal year w more long term contracts you can shop at closer to 1:2.5 Cap:APY ratio esp. if you have solid mid class/rookie deals base signed already.
So id guesstimate 30M Cap Space could buy some 70M APY contracts - possibly more if there are more bigger ones.
(In Judon case it was 5.6M cap hit : 13.6M APY = 1:2.4 ratio)
5. NE has 60 players signed atm and have 10 Draft picks - they dont have to sign many FAs - so they can spend more on those they do.
6. They can easily create new 2023 Cap Space as they go (its their modus operandi) - and they will (“surprise“ cuts & trades among other..)
7. They dont have to worry about signing Draft picks etc too much atm.
> if they use all 10 picks at current positions the cost will be c 3.5M (TOP 51 rule) - and NOT 6-8M as some are floating around.
> going by their mo (trading down, trading out, picks for vets etc) it will probably be less than 3M
> they will be doing that after 6/1
This is not to suggest they go “ALL IN“ - just approximate show that they have a TON OF CAP to spend if they choose to.
What i do expect is that they spend at least to the cap as they always do. And that can bring in quite a few good or even some top players.
So dont go gently..
-.-
Lets debunk some of the “Pats have only 30M cap“ and everything “costs so much“.
1. 30M+ Cap Space is NOT REALITY. Its just accounting snippet in time for the outsiders.
2. In reality Cap Space is ALWAYS FLUID/FLEXIBLE since it extends over 4 or more years.
f.e.: After the flood of restructures (happens every year w most teams) and creating piles of 2023 Cap Space across the league -
Pats fell from #4-5 to #8 in 2023 Cap Space. On the flip side - Pats are #1 by far in 2025 - since they did not borrow anything YET.
Note that you have basically 3 Cap groupings atm for 2023:
G1 : CHI, ATL -> 60-70M effective cap space (ECS)
G2 : LV, HOU, CIN, ARI, DEN, NE -> 26-36M ECS
G3 : GB, LAC - > 15-20M
The rest of the league is around 10M or less . and some are still in significant red numbers - BUF, CLE, NO - that they will have to clear by Wed.
This puts them in very competitive position with lots of leverage..
3. Over the next 3 years NE has combined 455M (projected) Cap Space or 400M ECS. That puts them comfortably at #3.
Only CHI (by c. 40M) and HOU (by c. 15M) have more . the rest of the league has SIGNIFICANTLY less.
4. Even 30M Cap Space can buy you lots of APY contracts:
f.e. lets look at 2021 “shopping spree“ spendings -- they spent around 60M 2021 cap space to sign 24 players (incl TOP 51 rule):
T.Brown (6.8M), Agholor (6.2M), Henry (6M), Judon (5.6M), Smith (5M), Newton (4.6M), Mills (3.8M), Van Noy (3.6M), God (3.2M), JC (2.6M), Wise (2.5M), Bourne (2.3M), Karras (2.2M), Anderson (2M) + further 10 players at 1M or less Cap Hit (Cap number minus TOP 51 contract) incl. starters/contributors Andrews, White, Guy, Bethel, Cody, Jakob, Folk..
This amounted to approx. 130M APY of new contracts in FA (incl Brown trade)
Note that this was COVID low league cap year where everyone was conservative and most contracts were 1y.
In normal year w more long term contracts you can shop at closer to 1:2.5 Cap:APY ratio esp. if you have solid mid class/rookie deals base signed already.
So id guesstimate 30M Cap Space could buy some 70M APY contracts - possibly more if there are more bigger ones.
(In Judon case it was 5.6M cap hit : 13.6M APY = 1:2.4 ratio)
5. NE has 60 players signed atm and have 10 Draft picks - they dont have to sign many FAs - so they can spend more on those they do.
6. They can easily create new 2023 Cap Space as they go (its their modus operandi) - and they will (“surprise“ cuts & trades among other..)
7. They dont have to worry about signing Draft picks etc too much atm.
> if they use all 10 picks at current positions the cost will be c 3.5M (TOP 51 rule) - and NOT 6-8M as some are floating around.
> going by their mo (trading down, trading out, picks for vets etc) it will probably be less than 3M
> they will be doing that after 6/1
This is not to suggest they go “ALL IN“ - just approximate show that they have a TON OF CAP to spend if they choose to.
What i do expect is that they spend at least to the cap as they always do. And that can bring in quite a few good or even some top players.
So dont go gently..
-.-
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