With the above in mind, I honestly think I'd take the risk in cutting Brandon Williams. $7.5M in savings and I highly doubt he gets that on the open market. I'd take the risk, cut him, let him explore his market, and try to match or slightly exceed whatever the highest offer is. I don't think it'll be $7.5M and if he does get that, good for him.
If we did this like post-draft, I could maybe understand it. I think adding some youth and depth on the Dline has to be a priority for us this offseason.
That being said...there's no way I'm doing this until I have to. Like it or not... this team values run defense, and our run defense without BWill hasn't proven to be that effective. If they like re-sign Wolfe and then add a big man or two in the draft, then I could see cutting him loose in May or June if somehow another player we like becomes available via trade or FA after the draft.
I suppose you "could" cut him now, let him test the market, and re-sign him for a couple million cheaper if he doesn't get much more in the market, but again, I think that's a huge gamble.
Plus, as I tell everybody this year, smart teams don't create cap space until they need cap space. Like there's no value in cutting Williams now, or even a week from now. If you're about ready to sign somebody in FA to a monstrous deal, and you need space, then you can think about cutting him. But I feel like fans just look at cap space and be like "yeah, lets create as much space as possible and then we'll fill it later". Really bad way of doing things in my opinion. That's a great way to end up with a bunch of cap space and nobody to use it on, because just having cap space is merely one in a list of steps that involves getting a player to sign here.
Like I'll admit I'm one of the guys saying "we can't afford to spend big in FA", because we really can't. But in the broad context, we're in the top 12 in the league in cap space available right now (roughly). I mean there's probably 8 teams or so that can pretty much sign anybody they desire because they have so much space, but there's about a dozen teams that either have to make cuts/restructures just to get under the cap, or have essentially no cap space whatsoever.
All this can dramatically change in a matter of weeks, granted. Some teams are $10M over the cap but have like a series of really easy, really obvious cuts that will not only create space but also not really hurt their team that much. And the reason why the Ravens outlook isn't spectacular is because we DON'T really have that option. If we had like 3 aging, overpaid, easy cuts to make that would free up like $15-20M, I'd be totally giddy about this offseason. But we don't. Most of our roster is paid pretty well compared to production and we want to keep it that way.