A Preview of the Redskins’ Future Salary Cap
By Steve Thomas
Now that the Redskins have signed the bulk of their free agents for 2017 and the draft has come and gone, we have a pretty clear picture of the salary cap situation for the coming season. That’s not to say that another Josh Norman might not fall in their laps between now and the start of the season, plus, training cap will most certainly bring cuts and the bottom of the roster will churn. However, absent something dramatic (care for a dose of Sheldon Richardson, anyone?), the payroll is more or less stabilized. Our salary cap chart is on our website at http://www.thehogsty.com/hog-sty-projects/cap/. We do our best to keep the chart as current as possible, but this time of the year it’s something of a living, breathing document in constant need of attention. As of this writing, May 7, 2017, the Redskins have approximately $8.2M in space not including the 2017 draft picks. Once the draft picks are signed, they will be at approximately $6M under the offseason rule of 51.
What about the next few years, though? Are the Redskins in good shape, or not? Let’s take a look.
The Redskins currently have only 7 players who are in the midst of 5 year contracts: Ryan Kerrigan, Stacy McGee, Josh Norman, Jordan Reed, Morgan Moses, Trent Williams, and Tress Way. Moses’ contract runs through 2022; McGee and Reed, 2021; Kerrigan, Norman, Way, and Williams, 2020.
Another 29 players are on 4 year contracts, including the 2017 draft class, none of whom are signed yet.
In total, 30 players are signed through at least 2019. The contracts for all of the rest of the players on the roster expire either in 2017 or 2018. Of those 30 players, with the exception of this year’s draft class, only one single player, Morgan Moses, has a contract in which the dead money is more than the cap hit in 2019 or beyond, meaning that, if management is so inclined, the team can replace every other player on the roster but Moses by or before 2019 without losing cap space. Besides the 2017 draft picks, Moses is the only player to whom the Redskins are bound for the long-term future. As far as this year’s draft class, realistically, the first round pick, Jonathan Allen, is the only draftee with significant long-term salary cap ramifications beyond this season and 2018. In terms of salary cap management, at least, this is an outstanding place to be.
The following are the current total salary cap obligations and projected cap space for the 2018, 2019, and 2020 seasons:
Year Current cap obligations Projected cap Current approx. cap space
2018 $118,615,733 $177,000,000 $58,000,000
2019 $97,857,969 $187,000,000 $89,000,000
2020 $74,797,500 $197,000,000 $122,000,000
A few caveats to this data: first and foremost, the current salary cap obligations shown above do not include the contracts for the 2017 draft picks, which will occupy slightly less than $7,500,000 for 2017. Second, most reasonable estimates have the salary cap increasing by approximately $10,000,000 each year, but this number is a complicated calculation based on the NFL’s annual income, so $10,000,000 is not firm and could change. Third, the Redskins, like all teams, will benefit from rollover cap space from the prior season, so the projected cap will most likely be slightly higher than shown here. It is not possible to make even an educated guess as the amount of available rollover space in the future; just know that it will likely be there to one extent or the other. Regardless, the team is in good shape for the foreseeable future.
Clearly, a long-term deal with Kirk Cousins will dramatically effect the Redskins’ long term cap prospects. I described what a Kirk Cousins contract might look like in a previous column (read it here: http://www.thehogsty.com/2017/03/27/kirk-cousins-and-his-coming-king-sized-contract-part-3/). There’s no doubt that he would become the highest paid player on the team and the proud owner of the most burdensome contract on the roster; still, even with such a deal on the books, the Redskins would be in great shape for the future. As stated in my Cousins piece, such a contract is doable in such a way that he is paid handsomely and the team’s payroll is not put in a stranglehold. Unlike most, I remain hopeful that Redskins management will come to their senses, Cousins will be properly motivated by many, many zeros, and this deal will eventually get done.
So: kudos to Bruce Allen and his team for their cap management work over the past few seasons, because they’ve done a great job. Wait….what?? Did I say that? Why yes, yes I did. I realize most our listeners and readers harbour a healthy amount of hatred towards Mr. Allen; say what you want about Bruce’s role in the Scot McCloughan firing debacle – there’s blame enough for everyone – but they deserve credit for putting the Redskins in such an enviable salary cap position. The payroll is not riddled with an abundance of overly burdensome contracts that will have to be renegotiated in order to create enough space to sneak in under the cap, as used to be the case under prior regimes and is currently the case for other franchises. The team is not in a position where it will have no space to sign major free agents if it so chooses. Going forward, the Redskins will be able to manage the roster for the next 4 seasons without fear, and that bodes well for a team on the rise.