Current Redskins Salary Cap Status - 2009

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

I don't even pay attention to the cap anymore. It's almost useless. For the most part we sign anyone we want and never go into cap hell.

In many ways though, we have been in cap hell for the last three years. The veteran purge in 2006 that Peter King spoke of never, ever came to reality, but that doesn't mean the cap hasn't helped shape our refocus on the draft.

It seems though, that the cap affects the Redskins much more subtlety than anyone would have thought. The cap this year ultimately didn't prevent us from getting Haynesworth, chasing Cutler, or releasing Jansen, but we went almost exclusively defense in the draft because we created a majority of our cap room by parting ways with Springs, Washington, Evans, and Taylor, and at least three of those players would still be on the team if 2009 were uncapped.

It's also led to poor planning. If I told you we could keep Washington simply by keeping Jansen, you'd obviously take that. But we released Washington figuring we'd need that cap room in some way. Turns out, we didn't need it, so we used it to eat Jansen's cap hit. So now, we're down two veterans: one half cap casulty half personnel decision, and one personnel decision. We probably would have been better off with Marcus though.

Plus, we haven't been able to offer market value extensions to young talent on our roster like McIntosh and Rogers because of cap constraints, not to mention that Montgomery could have easily gotten away if another team had been daring enough to offer him a competitive contract. We would have gotten a 5th rounder in compensation for a 25 year old nose.

The thing is, if we continue to draft will, the salary cap is not designed to prevent us from competing. If we draft poorly, the free agency structure isn't sufficient to save us from the bottom of the barrel. It's just life in the NFL; our hand is often forced by cap constraints. Just not so overtly.