FanPost

Can the Seahawks extend Sheldon Richardson by 2018?

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

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On Friday, our defensive line went from great to extraordinary with the addition of Sheldon Richardson. He came at a price, though, costing $8M against the cap this year, and set to hit free agency next year for a huge price tag. Some have assumed that we can’t afford to extend either Graham or Richardson, because we extended Kam and Britt already this offseason. Others have argued that we now have tons of cap room, and we can afford all of them easily. Neither is actually true, and a casual glance at overthecap without diving into the numbers or knowing what to look at would deeply mislead fans.

In order to understand how much actual cap space we’ll have for extensions next offseason, it is imperative to understand what overthecap is showing, and not showing.

How much money will the Seahawks expect to carry over from this year to 2018?

Short version: almost nothing (see math below)

As of now, Overthecap is mostly complete with their "Team Cap Space" value. With the final roster cut downs complete, dead money, Injured Reserve costs, and PUP/NFI costs are accounted for every transaction to date, as well as some of the practice squad costs. In order to arrive at a final number, we will need to add in the remaining four PS squad costs (an additional $489,600). UPDATED 9/5/17 2:10 - OTC now accurately reflects practice squad costs.

When week 1 starts, we should expect to see our cap space be $3.05M. This will go down over the course of the season, when players are moved to the IR and the Seahawks will need to pay for replacements not currently on the roster (such as promoting PS players). Determining the exact amounts remaining would be impossible, though I would estimate the figure to be around $1.5M. Rounding out then, the Seahawks should expect to roll-over $1.5M over to 2018.

Does that mean we can close the books on 2017 salaries then, and move on to 2018? No, since there are cap considerations to keep track of over the course of this year, with incentives.

Michael Bennett only played in 11 games this year, and has $1.5M in incentives tied to his gameday roster status. If he plays in all 16 games this year, another $468,750 will come off 2018 cap for him.

Eddie Lacy only played 5 games last year, with $1M tied to his gameday roster status. If he plays every game, another $687,500 will come off the cap. More significantly, if he reaches his rushing yard incentives, those amounts will come off the cap as well ($250K @ 800, $500K @ 900, $750K @ 1000, $1M @ 1100, $1.3M @ 1200). It seems a safe bet (not too pessimistic or optimistic) to assume he’ll make the 800 yards incentive this year. That would be another $250K off the cap.

Like the other gameday incentives, Thorpe has another $15,625 that could hit the cap if he plays every game and Walsh has $65,625. If every player stays fully healthy and active, that’s $1,487,500 that will come off of next year’s cap, but are due to this year’s salaries. Thus, between incentives, player replacement costs, and additional practice squad salaries, effective roll-over cap space to next year would drop from its current value ($3,538,399 as of now) to about $60K.

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Ok, so we won’t have much cap to carry over to 2018. How much will we have next year?

Short version: about $18M to spend on 11 roster vacancies (see explanation below)

With our current liabilities, we have $146,961,869 between current contracts and dead money. To those cross checking against overthecap, this is slightly different than their figure, though only off by about $4K. I have tracked the actual numbers precisely here, which you can double check at your leisure should you doubt any of my work here.

With an estimated league-cap at $178M and no substantial roll-over, that would leave just over $31M to work with in 2018, so one might assume that this is how much PCJS can use on extensions for players like Graham and Richardson. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Additional cap must be used on next years’ draft picks, practice squad, injured players, and injury replacements throughout the year.

As it stands now, our 2018 draft class looks to cost closer to $5.5M, given our current draft selections. The practice squad will cost just under $1.3M next year, and it would be folly to assume we won’t have to spend at least $6M due to injuries, either to IRs before the season begins or through payments to replacement players once the season starts. This leaves the team with $18M in cap space for 2018 free agent contracts. It is important to note that the Seahawks have 21 players currently on the 53 man roster who will be free agents next year, with only 4 players coming back from IR/NFI who still appear on the books for 2018 and 7 players set to be drafted. That leaves 10 roster spots to fill with that $18M. Thus, as it stands now, a $10M contract to Graham would limit the Seahawks to $8M for the remaining 9 players, most of whom would then have to be paid at league minimum. No Walsh, Rawls, Joeckel, Lacy, etc.

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So is John Schneider out of options?

I'll let you infer the answer to that from the picture above.

(If you didn't get it, the answer is definitely not, but read below to see why it'd require tough decisions).

The obvious first choice would be to move on from Jeremy Lane, which would save $6M against the 2018 cap with a trade or post-June 1st cut. With $24M, the team could get Graham with $14M left over for 10 players (a much better financial situation), but could not afford both Graham and Richardson.

Who else could the Seahawks want to move on from, in order to get room for Richardson? The most efficient player options would be those who are free agents after the 2018 season, who have high cap savings and low dead money. The greatest cap savings would come from moving on from Sherman. That would give $25M to pay 11 players after a $10M extension to Graham, which could prove enough to squeeze in Richardson. Obviously, removing two starting CBs would create a massive hole in our defense, so this plan would be far from simple. Likewise, Earl Thomas would save $8.5M if released. We’ve seen what happens when he is gone from our team, so I will consider this option even less than Sherman. Where else could we turn for cap savings? Avril, who is one of the best cost-to-production veteran edge rushers in the game? KJ, the perpetually underrated linebacker on our team, who otherwise could remain a staple of this defense with Wagner for another 5+ years? Jon Ryan for $2M? Thorpe for $1.8M? After those players, there are simply no other cuts that would help; any savings would be negated by their replacements.

Should Malik McDowell have proven to violate his contract and the Seahawks need the cap, the Seahawks could go beyond declining to pay him any of his salary (base salary is team discretion for any NFI player) and even fight to not pay his prorated salary bonus. This avenue would not generate substantial cap savings, however, just adding around a maximum of about $2.7M over the next two years.

Could the Seahawks just renegotiate Sherman’s contract to free up space? Yes, they could, but that would just create further cap issues down the road. They could save $7.5M by converting $10M of his base salary to signing bonus and extending him for three years, but would Sherman accept a not-so-expensive back-loaded contract for his extension with fewer guarantees? Same story with Earl and a potential renewal savings of $5.7M.

In the end, there are no good answers; Richardson is going to be very expensive as long as he plays well here. If the Seahawks decide they want to keep him AND Graham over the next several years, they could do it, but it would require a reevaluation of the teams’ allocation of funds. Who knows, perhaps he makes our D-line so great, that we SHOULD prioritize him. It is impossible to tell as of now, other than to see that John Schneider will have cap decision issues (albeit great issues to have) if Richardson proves to be a truly dominant DT while playing in our system.