The League said the cap will be no lower than $175M. Which means our cap room is at least 29.78M according to overthecap. I gave Edwards a 2nd round tender, Chris Board the orginal round tender; 4 ERFA tenders and assumed $5M for the rookies. In the end we have roughly $16M left. Not much to begin with if you consider that McPhee, Judon, Ngakoue, Bowser, Wolfe, Levine, Cox, Ward are all FAs.
Exactly. $16M in cap space isn't a lot. Other teams have less, but some teams have more. Ultimately, if people think signing a big time FA receiver, like a Robinson or Godwin (don't think he'll be available) is a priority, it'll take up a large chunk of cap space to do it.
Or, think of it this way... I don't see many scenarios where you can re-sign Judon/Yannick (whoever you choose) and then pull the trigger on somebody like Robinson. That would take up every ounce, or more than every ounce, of salary cap space you have.
I think they'll resign Wolfe, because he's a Ravens-type player, played well, and won't be that expensive. Price tag really shouldn't be any more than it was this past year, which is like $5M.
If we're legitimately going to consider spending in the $10-15M+ range for a WR, I think they'll let pretty much the entire pass rush group go and start with volume in the draft. No Yannick, no Judon. I think us not retaining either is a much likelier outcome than some people realize.
At this point, I think its actually quite hard to justify paying market value for Yannick. The only thing he really has over Judon at this point is age. It's an important distinction, but I'm not sure its enough. One thing that stands out to me... he played, what, 20 snaps against Buffalo? A game where your opponent is a) no threat to run and b) doesn't even try to run, the guy you traded for to create outside pressure while blitzing less plays one of his lowest snap counts of the season. Not good. As others in the media have said, for the price tag he'll want and likely get, he's gotta be at least a 60-70% snap count player, and be a force. You can't pay that price for 20-30 snaps a game.
It will be fascinating to see how the Ravens prioritize things. But I do think Wolfe will be, to some peoples surprise, a top priority. I think a deal with him gets done quickly.
One other thing that I think will be a product of the lower salary cap... it'll be very hard for teams to sign veterans to one year contracts. Typically, in these spots, the Ravens would just sign multiple like McPhee, Wolfe type players to one year, prove-it deals. But with one year contracts, there's no salary cap maneuverability. Whatever the price is, the cap hit is. Like you sign 2-3 veterans at like $4-5M for one year, and suddenly, half your cap space is gone. I think a lot more teams will be looking at multi-year deals with these veterans.
