OFFSEASON PREVIEW PART 2: Breaking Down the Cap and Resigning Our Own

OFFSEASON PREVIEW PART II
WORKING WITH THE CAP & WHO IS COMING BACK

There seems to be a lot of differing info going around about where the Seahawks stand in regards to the salary cap. Everybody knows we made a pretty big splash in free agency last year and it worked out well. However, there are now quite a few big contracts on the books. Lets take a look at where the Seahawks stand.

First off... the NFL Salary Cap for 2008 is set at 116 million. Proof of that is here

One website commonly referred to is askthecommish.com. They have the Seahawks salary cap situation listed as 9.55 under with 44 players under contract. This is in the bottom half of teams in the league.

However, John Clayton has told callers on his radio show that the Hawks are actually about 19 mil under the cap.

I am basing the information I am using in this analysis from a person named Ian Whetstone. (thanks Ian). Unfortunately for Ian, he is a Steeler fan. Fortunately for us, he tracks the salaries of many NFL teams, including the Seahawks. I posted a copy of his Seahawks spreadsheet here. I plan on using this to track the Hawks salary cap situation throughout the free agency period.

According to this, the Seahawks are currently 17.7 million under the cap. The team received 3.3 million back last year in cap credits. These usually are in the form of likely to be earned incentives that aren't earned, on purpose. Maybe i will go into more detail on that later. So lets be conservative and just say the Hawks are 20 mil under. Lets start there.

This is enough money to get our own players resigned. For Sure. However, franchising Marcus Trufant puts us in a bind. The tag is 9.46 million. Almost half of what the Seahawks have available. However, I see some very interesting cap #'s.

Here a list of who I,personally, would cut, along with the cap implications.

Shaun Alexander (June 1st cut) Saves 4.6 this year
Tom Ashworth Saves 1.1 mil this year
Jason Babin Saves .957 mil
Mike Green Saves 1.3 mil
Chris Gray (retires?) saves 1.2

None of these players aren't replaceable. In fact, one could argue they are quite expendable at these costs. Depth does take a hit, but Shaun is really the only big one, and i guess Gray if he wants to keep playing, but he almost retired last year. With this..... Voila!.... 29 million under the cap. About what we had last year. What do we do with all this mooola?

Lets see who we can resign..... WHEN THE SEAHAWKS OFFSEASON PREVIEW CONTINUES