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Despite being over the salary cap according to the NFL Players Association report, the Seattle Seahawks had Eddie Lacy active on the roster on Sunday.
As has been noted previously, Lacy has per game active roster bonuses of $62,500, meaning that the team will be required to take a salary cap charge in 2017 anytime he is on . With Eddie Lacy not being inactive for the beatdown Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams, that means that there will be an additional $62,500 that goes against the salary cap for Seattle this season
Seahawks inactives vs. Rams pic.twitter.com/ANRu8fevHU
— Seattle Seahawks (@seahawksPR) December 17, 2017
This has been discussed time and again as the value, or lack thereof, Lacy brings to the team has been debated. However, what is particularly infuriating about Lacy being on the active roster for the Rams game doesn’t become clear until perusing the snap counts for the game.
Snap counts carry much less meaning in a lopsided loss like the one the Seahawks suffered yesterday, but here's what they looked like for Seattle's offense. Russell Wilson was in for all but three offensive snaps despite the... https://t.co/dSNYWfZChQ pic.twitter.com/3BENGx1qg2
— Brady Henderson (@BradyHenderson) December 18, 2017
Did you see how many snaps Lacy played in the game? Of course you didn’t, his name isn’t on that list, even though that list includes every Seahawks offensive player who saw the field on Sunday.
That means Seattle, already the only franchise in the NFL over the salary cap according to the NFLPA, just took $62,500 in cap space, put it in a 55 gallon drum and dumped it at sea. Or burned it. Or whatever. In any case, they didn’t choose to save $62,500 in cap space and keep Thomas Rawls active in place of Lacy. They didn’t choose to put their $62,500 investment to work in any way that afternoon. All they did was blow some spare change they had lying around.
For those who are old enough, it reminds me of this commercial from the dot-com boom back in 2000 when money was everywhere and everyone had millions to blow. And recordings were in low quality because lots of people still used VHS tapes.
In any case, with two weeks left in the season, there is not a lot more the team can do in terms of continuing to run up its salary cap tab, and in particular over the next couple of weeks I’ll be taking some time to look at a couple of things that might help the team free up some cap space going forward.