Put a Cap on the Roster

With rookie minicamp starting this weekend, to be followed by (voluntary) full team minicamp starting May 15th, it time for Keim to put some finishing touches on the roster.

The Cardinals currently are $18,296,453 under the salary cap. A quick (er not so quick) subtraction of the team’s $6,607,413 draft pool cap, means that Steve Keim has $11,689,020 to work with. Typically the team would like to head into the season with $5M remaining on the cap in case it needs to accommodate new contracts via the waiver wire, veteran signings for need or trades.

Thus---what Keim is really looking at is a $6,689,020 budget---and here is a plan for spending every penny of it---in order---of course---to win the NFC West.

Move #1: Sign CB Bashaud Breeland to a 3 year $18,000,000 contract ($8,000,000 guaranteed) with a first year cap hit of $2,689,000.

Here’s a nice breakdown on Breeland’s skills:

Money left: $4,000,020.

Move #2: Sign S Kenny Vaccaro to a 1 year $1,200,000 contract plus $400,000 in possible incentives.

Money left: $2,800,020.

Move #3: Sign TE Antonio Gates to a 1 year $1,015,000 contract plus $240,000 in possible incentives.

Money left: $1,785,020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Gsx-8MlHM

Move #4: Sign FB Derrick Coleman (when I wrote this I had FB Mike Tolbert in mind, but now Coleman is a Cardinal) to a 1 year $1,015,000 contract plus $160,000 in incentives.

Money left: $770,020.

Move #5: Sign DE Cap Capi to a 1 year $770,000 contract. 4th highest PFF grade (84.8) for ALL NFL defensive players in the 2017 pre-season, which included 7 tackles, 6 solo, 1.5 sacks, 4 QB hurries and 3 QB hits in the Cardinals Week 3 24-14 win at Atlanta. Less than a week later, BA and his staff cut him in favor of keeping over-the-hill, grossly out of shape LB Philip Wheeler, who never made a tackle and got released three times. After losing Markus Golden in Week 4, who very surprisingly did not register one sack the first 4 games, all the Cardinals could get from the LDE position the rest of the year was 1 sack from Kareem Martin.

Cutting Capi was about as inane and unjust a roster decision as cutting Marqui Christian to keep an injured Drew Butler as the holder. It’s time to reverse the curse!

Money left: $20.

Give Mr. William V. Bidwill Sr. a $20 gift card to Baskin Robbins. We want him eating victory ice creams all season long and this should get him started.

That’s goshdarn right---put a Cap (back) on the Roster!

Remaining Cap Space: $5,000,000.