Playing GM

[Suhsyourdaddy]

I see there is a new draft simulator out there that a lot of you guys are having fun with. I stumbled across this one last year. Maybe some of you have seen it before, but if not sorry for not sharing earlier because it's a lot of fun.

First-Pick.com

Pretty much the same concept as the other one except you have the ability to make trades and it ranks your team drafts. The trade offers to trade back can get pretty ridiculous and it's hard to trade up, but it still adds a pretty fun element to it...

Another really cool tool is overthecap.com's salary cap calculator that allows to make moves with the current roster and our own FA's such as restructuring, resigning, extending, and cutting players to see what kind of impacts they have on each teams salary cap this year, and into the future. I've had a lot of fun with this with one too:

Salary Cap Calculator - Over the Cap

 

[Suhsyourdaddy]

Maybe I should start a different thread about this, but here is what I would do I'm Trent Baalke in order to give us the BEST shot at winning the Super Bowl this year. Luckily the way Paraag Marathe has handled the salary cap and our players contracts is pure genius to put it lightly. I fully expect that trend to continue, however I for one am tired of seeing other teams raise the Lombardi over the course of the last 3 years while I truly feel we were the best team in the league. So I'm going to get a little more aggressive with my moves.

We have approx. $10 M in cap space as of now, with one 'bad' contract on the books, and that is Carlos Rodgers. Sorry Carlos, but you are gone. June 1st cut designation. Obviously we have some camp fodder/practice squad type players that most likely won't be making the roster, especially with 7 picks in the first 4 rounds, and another 6 after that, so I'm just going to assume that most guys at the bottom of the payroll won't be on the active roster, with a couple exceptions like TJE.

I'm not going to address how extensions for the Big 4, Kaep, Crabs, Aldon, and Iupati would/could affect our future cap. If I'm Baalke I'm not worried about it anyway. Iupati is good, but not worth the investment as a team stand point. As it's been pointed out here, we can use the 5th year option on Aldon, and with his issues there is no reason to address any extension before next offseason anyway. Crabs is a baller and I hope we do what we can to keep him, but certainly not at Top 5 money.

I just read an article about not kidding ourselves about Kaep settling for $18m 'ish a year and he'll want $20m+....meh...who cares. It's all about how it's structured. IF I was convinced he was a franchise QB then yeah, it makes sense to take care of the deal this year. There are some pretty glaring holes in his game yet, and while I love the guy, I'm not going to go crazy with his guaranteed $$ just to get a deal done sooner than later. Considering he has such a low cap # this year, we essentially already have him on a 3/$37M or at worse a 4/$65M deal anyway, which is lower than averages of Romo, Cutler, and Stafford deal we would probably like to get him at.

Anyway.....if I'm Baalke these are the moves I'm making tomorrow, and the net effect on this years cap and the next future years cap:

With the salary cap carry over rules being the way they are, if there is anyone I know that is going to be around I'm going to be doing some big time restructuring. There are several teams that have gotten in a big bind by doing this too much, namely Dallas, Detroit, and the Saints, but with our team having having such little guaranteed money, a plethora of young cheap talent, and a shit of picks who will turn into young, cheap talent, it will have minimal effect on us.

Vernon and Justin are pretty easy ones for me. Vernon will likely get an extension next off season, and this will probably be Justin's last rodeo. Restructure both and split the money between the two years. If we don't use the cap savings this year, we carry it over to next and it's literally a wash.

Patrick's base is relatively low, as is his guaranteed $ going forward. Restructure this year, and either extend or do the same next year and then extend in '16. Taking his bonus $ hit in 2012 has given us a ton of freedom with him moving forward. No reason to think he doesn't have another solid contract in front of him in the near future.

I cringe every time I see Ahmad's contract #'s...considering he is our 4th best lb. Then I have to remember he would be best LB on about 1/2 of the other teams out there. Luckily, while his base is high, his bonus isn't, and he has 4 more years on his deal, so even if we restructure his deal this year, he is still plenty cuttable in the future.

McDonald gets the job done but I have a feeling he might be supplanted in the near future by one of the younger guys. Even so, restructuring him this year won't hurt us because there is still a significant cap saving by cutting him vs paying him next year, which I would expect to be a certainty IF Justin Smith plays out his contract.

Bowman is another guy with very low pro-rated bonus money that we can expect to be around for a long time. Moving his cash forward almost no negative consequences.

All in all kicking the salaries of 6 of our highest paid guys down the road will free up an extra $17 million this offseason, that we are most likely going pay out anyway. It will have the same net decrease in cap space over the next 4 years. If we don't spend it, oh well, it carries over.

I have an idea of what I would do with the money, but my fingers are tired, so I'll get to that tomorrow.