Do Salary Cap Troubles Await the Redskins?

[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

Last year I said Michael Boulware was going to be the best linebacker to come out of the draft. People laughed at me and said I was crazy. Well lookie here. While guys like DJ Williams, Jonathan Vilma, and Karlos Dansby have played great ball in Denver, New York, and Arizona, Boulware looks like a perennial pro-bowler.

So, I want people to commit here and now to this talk about the salary cap. I want to be the one laughing in a few years. We had more than TEN MILLION dollars in dead space this year. Does anyone, absolutely anyone have even the remotest idea of what we could have done with that ten million dollars? We could have afforded Kearse for one.

We have more than six million dollars against next years cap and are likely to have over ten million against the cap after offseason cuts are made. If we end up cutting Barrow, Morton, Brunell, and a few others (as has been suggested by many on this site), we are looking at over FIFTEEN MILLION dollars in dead cap room. That's more money than it costs to keep Walt Harris, James Thrash, Clinton Portis, Jon Jansen, Shawn Springs, Sean Taylor, Cornelius Griffin, and Taylor Jacobs on the roster COMBINED.

By 2006, just nine players (Arrington, Portis, Jansen, Coles, Springs, Brunell, Thomas, Griffin, and Washington) will account for $50 million of the cap. We are projected to get an additional $4 million of cap room via the TV deal and an additional $3-4 million per year to account for other increases in revenue.

I by no means think this team will be completly dismantled by 2006, but I have the feeling that those tremors we are feeling right now (in $10 million in dead cap space) is just the tip of the iceberg. I would like people to commit to whether they think our team has or will have any cap issues. I think a lot of people dismiss the idea of the salary cap without doing any investigative work, just making a guess, assuming we'll get big breaks somehow, or are in just plain denial.