Howie Roseman: Eagles still have flexibility under cap

Share

They’ve spent a fortune the last two weeks, and they haven’t even addressed Sam Bradford or Fletcher Cox yet.

No worries, says Howie Roseman.

According to the Eagles’ resident capologist, the team has plenty of room under the 2016 salary cap to address all its needs.

Even if they want to sign Bradford to a long-term contract that could be worth in excess of $20 million per year and ink Cox to an extension worth in the ballpark of $14 million or $15 million?

“Yes,” Roseman said. “Yes, we have the flexibility to sign other players. Obviously, there’s a limitation to how much you can do, the totality of it, but we do have room and we do still have flexibility.”

Roseman excels at constructing contracts that are team friendly, in that they include higher cap figures in years where the Eagles project to have more cap room.

The NFL’s unadjusted salary cap is expected to rise from about $143 million to somewhere between $150 and $153 million this year.

Every team’s actual cap figure is different, depending on adjustments based on how much room a team had under the cap when the previous year ended.

The Eagles have $7,255,362 in adjustments, which means their final cap figure will be more than $7 million over that $150 million figure. That’s the ninth-highest adjustment amount in the league. That means the Eagles will have more money to spend than 22 of the 31 other teams in the league.

After the Lane Johnson and Zach Ertz deals but before the Vinny Curry contract, the Eagles had $135,983,600 in 2016 salary cap obligations.

So without even shedding any players under contract, they have approximately $21 million available under their projected cap.

But they can easily clear cap space by shedding higher-priced veterans who are late in their contracts and wouldn’t carry a high amount of dead money.

Releasing a player accelerates the remaining prorated portion of their original signing bonus against the cap. So the fewer years remaining in the deal, the easier it is to release a player without absorbing a significant cap hit.

For example, if the Eagles released DeMeco Ryans, Riley Cooper and Mark Sanchez, it would clear nearly $10 million in cap space.

“We’ll have the flexibility to make decisions on players here,” Roseman said. “Can we (sign) five or six guys? Those are high numbers. Historically, teams can pay somewhere between 10 or 11 guys (a ton of money).

“And it depends how much they’re paying those guys, so you have to take that into account and you have to also take into account where you’re going to be next year, where you’re going to be three years from now.

“The flip side of that too is you also want to have some guys, when you look three years from now that are under contract, that you’re paying. I think that all comes into the equation.”

Contact Us