(01-31-2023, 07:47 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(01-28-2023, 04:09 PM)TheDuke007 Wrote: I mentioned cutting Griffin and extending Allen but didn't go into detail about who I would restructure.  I agree that Christian Kirk is clearly the best candidate.  He has the second highest base salary next year.  He's still young, playing well and a player that I would want to see finish his contract with the Jaguars.  I don't particularly like many of the other options with the Jaguars highest priced players.

Despite having the highest and fourth highest base salaries in 2023, I don't like the ideas of restructuring Cam Robinson or Brandon Scherff by converting salary into signing bonus.  I think they are both overpaid and restructuring will extend their time here.  If it were up to me, they would play out their 2023 season and then are cut.  Doing so would save approximately $17 million for Robinson and $16 million for Scherff.  That's a total of $33 million off the salary cap in 2024.  The remaining dead cap will roll off the following year for another $10 million or a total of $43 million savings compared to 2023.  That's a ton of money that we can use elsewhere including a Trevor extension.  Guards are a non-premium position and aren't hard to find.  As far as tackle, we have Little who can play left tackle, so we only would need a right tackle.  While not "easy", right tackles can also be found.  We can use a first round draft pick on it if needed.

Despite having the 3rd highest base salary, I don't like the idea of restructuring Oluokun.  It's not that I don't like him, I do.  It's that we drafted linebackers with a first round pick and an early third round pick.  What if they develop and turn into quality starters?  I would like to keep the flexibility to either keep or move on from Oluokun in future years based upon how our other linebackers perform.

Griffin has the fifth highest salary.  I think there's a consensus that he's cut.

Calvin Ridley has the sixth highest salary.  However, I don't see the team extending him until after the 2023 season.  We'll want to see how he plays first.

Darious Williams is seventh.  I don't like the idea of extending a player who will turn 30 before next season starts.  However, I could see him as a candidate to push money from 2023 into 2024 if needed.  

Josh Allen is eighth.  As stated previously, I would extend him and lower his 2023 cap hit.

Those are all of the players with over $10 million in base salary.  I won't go into detail on the others.  Fatukasi is a possible candidate for restructure.  Jenkins, RRH and Agnew are all in the final year of their contracts, so we can't simply restructure, we would need to extend.  Agnew seems like the best candidate of the three.  You could add one more year to Jenkins or RRH, but I don't like the idea of extending them long term.  I like Zay Jones, but unfortunately, I'm sure other teams do too.  I think his price has gone up.  With Christian Kirk and likely a Ridley extension, the Jaguars will have a lot of salary cap tied up at the receiver position in future years.  As such, we could push some of Zay's salary from 2023 to 2024, but I don't see him getting extended beyond his current contract.

I think we can restructure contracts without extending them.  

Restructure Potential | Over the Cap

There are two types of restructuring:

• A [b]simple restructure[/b] converts payments into prorated signing bonuses within the confines of the remainder of the contract. Teams typically have the ability to unilaterally execute simple restructures without any action necessary from the player.
  
• A [b]maximum restructure[/b] increases the amount of cap space via conversion into prorated signing bonuses by either extending the contract or by adding void years to a contract, years that do not extend the contract but are only used as placeholders for the proration. Maximum restructures are typically considered a renegotiation of the contract that requires the player's consent to execute.
  

So a team can effectively postpone a cap hit by doing a simple restructure without extending a contract.  And as you can see from the table in the link, if the Jaguars do simple restructures, they can go from $25 million over the cap to $27 million under the cap.  If they do maximum restructures, they can get to $92 million under the cap.  

And again, simple restructures do not require any extension to the player's contract.  

All the numbers I had listed was the simple kind of restructure which doesn't involve any player involvement and doesnt extend contracts into future years.  Just converting base to bonus and pushing out cap.  To get under the cap, sign Engram and possibly Taylor, and leave room for draft picks and some of the cheaper FA we have on the team, I'm not sure they would need to do anything other than simple restructures.  

To the Duke's point (not sure if this is what he meant), pushing out cap does reduce the cap savings in future years if you choose to cut them early.  Which could possibly keep someone here longer than you would like.  But I still think for someone like Cam, his cap saving by releasing after the 2023 season is currently so big, even if you convert some of his 2023 base to signing bonus and push $7-$8M cap into the future year, I don't think it'd impact our ability to cut him after 2023.  It would still be a big enough savings that it if you need to make more room now, you could easily do this.

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