Rob, the cap is only going to go up about a million next year. We will be less than a million under the cap. We have some big FAs to re-sign. Goldson, Soaps, and Walker are unsigned. I looked at the contracts of everyone else major (it's on the last thread), and Alex will count for 9.75 million. A million is guaranteed unless we trade him. Then none of it will count. If we cut him before April, he will cost only a million. There are some other big-ticket players I mentioned. For instance, Justin counts 8 million. Is it possible to re-structure his deal to spread out some money. Akers counts 3 million. Crabtree counts 5.7. He becomes a free agent after next year. Why not extend him now with a lot back loaded? Here are the contract amounts of our secondary:

Whitner: 4.8 million
Rogers: 7.34 million
Brown: 1.9
Culliver: 700,000

We just re-signed Rogers after last year. Goldson is going to want Eric Weddle money, which is 40 million over 5 years with 19 guaranteed. Goldson plays better and better every year and is only 28. I think he is much more important than Rogers, who is 31. From what I recall, the team was offering about 6/yr. So we need to free up some cap room. It really helps having a rookie pay scale. We won't be drafting very high, so our cap expenses for rookies won't be that high. My guess is that to sign the majority of the guys we need to and maybe sign a couple FAs not on the team, we'll need to free up 12 or so. Alex would account for a huge chunk of that. And to look toward the future, we know that Kap will command a big contract a few years from now, as will Aldon. Some guys re-structured (PW was one) in order to extend Bowman. You don't know if anyone will do that to re-sign Goldson.