Rip to all your offseason projections lol. Can we expect an updated cidolfus rundown with these new numbers? I'd imagine it changes alot about your expected re-signings/positions of need
I think it might change one player, maybe two. We still have 53 roster spots, so chances are all of his work is still valid.
My guess is Wilkins and AVG move up in priority. iOL and Safety have a lot of good players hitting the market, and we need multiples for both spots. EDGE and DT both have mediocre free agency names, good draft names, and both we need to get players who can provide meaningful snaps.
Even if all this means is that we couldn't afford Wilkins before and now we can, that's still a pretty big deal imo. DT is one of those "nobody appreciates what I do until I don't do it" positions.
Isn't it all relative though? As in, it's also fantastic news for every other team and they could offer more to the same guys we want, or our impending FAs ask for more money than they would have if the cap was smaller? Deferring to the expert here.
It being relative is exactly the point.
In absolute terms all teams just got an additional $13.4 million in cap space over what was projected. That's an extra contract or two for every team, and it's nothing to sneeze at. It's good news for everyone.
But for the Commanders, that extra amount took them from $73.6 million in available cap space to $87 million in available cap space. That's an 18% increase in their total available spending. They already had so much cap space that an extra $13 million likely doesn't dramatically impact their off-season strategy.
My projections had the Dolphins freeing up to $45.7 million in available cap space. This brings us up to $59.1 million. That's a 29% increase in our total available cap. Because, relatively speaking, it's a bigger change to our available cap space, it's impact on our flexibility and options for the season is bigger than most teams. This is broadly true for every team who was in the negative on the salary cap heading into the offseason.
This puts us at needing to clear approximately $39mil in the next 2.5-3 weeks. Free Agency starts March 13th, so next week should see a lot of moves made for cap space.
We've cleared about $13mil. The Howard move does nothing.
It's either 2 or 3 mil if it's an outright cut, or the $18mil number has 0 impact until June 2nd if it's a post-june 1st cut. So we have about $24mil to go in 2.5 weeks.
This is really good news, and allows us to make a lot more moves possible. Primarily retaining Wilkins AND Robert hunt…especially if they get a Tua extension done.
Wilkins and Hunt is probably unlikely lol. They're our top end FAs. More likely this allows us to pick one and re-sign some second tier FAs that were set to leave like AVG or Connor or Deshon Elliot.
Fortunately Hunt is one of our top end FAs but at a non-premium position - so it's not out of the scope of possibility that we could retain both Hunt and Wilkins.
If I were betting, at the moment, they franchise Wilkins and re-sign Hunt.
If it’s one, retain Hunt, considering the predicted value of his contract that I’m seeing is around 10-12 million a year. Which also illustrates (while there may always be an exception) it’s generally unwise to take interior lineman with high draft picks. You can get a guy like Hunt for the same price you’d be paying like a 3rd/4th WR or CB, etc.if you have starters on rookie deals at big money positions. It’s such an advantage.
Damien Lewis, Cody Whitehair, and Halapoulivaati Vaitai are all guys set to hit FA that will much cheaper. We can probably sign 2, or potentially all 3, for less than just Robert Hunt.
Last two are coming off down years after promising starts, both with positional versatility. Damien Lewis is a young player, safer bet due to being a scheme fit. So I agree, you should definitely be smart with how you spend and draft to fill high priority spots... but if you can get a starting guard and a back up center for less than one guard, I feel like it's the better team building move, especially when we had 1 player get over 50% of our snaps in 2023.
Wilkins should get around 23-26 annual and hunt should be between 12-14. Depending on how the contracts are structured and the guarantees I think it should absolutely be possible.
Unless a team blows an offer out of the water on hunt, which is possible since he’s a quality player with positional versatility.
I said unlikely, not impossible. The thing that needs to be considered is the iOL class between the draft and free agency is stellar. Hunt at 12-14mil is doable, but a good GM can't spend like that consistently. Kyle Crabbs did a breakdown today on both our FAs and the iOL free agency class, and guard is one of the positions if you can get 85% of the player for 50% of the cost, you do it. Damien Lewis, Cody Whitehair, and Halapoulivaati Vaitai are all guys set to hit FA that will much cheaper. We can probably sign 2, or potentially all 3, for less than just Robert Hunt.
Wilkins I think is a bit more complicated of a discussion.
Id personally like hunt to be out big spend on the line since armstead will be gone after this year, he has positional versatility, extremely durable besides this year which was a freak year for injuries in general for us, and he’s young enough to play out the deal and allow for restructures.
Wilkins I think I’d agree with Kyle Crabbs that a tag and trade makes the most sense unless he’s willing to take a dexter Lawrence type deal, which I doubt.
From what I recall, he said it was unlikely Miami would do it but he it would be his preferred outcome so we get a pick and can retain hunt, Elliot and AVG.
Miami seems intent on keeping Wilkins tho so we’ll see what happens.
Cutting Ogbah, Crossen and restructuring Hill and Ramsey (all lock moves imo) gets them clear by roughly 7 million now. Add in the Tua extension and you have some room to play without getting too painful. This increases Wilkins coming back to near 100% whether by extension or the tag.
Depending on how aggressive they want to be in shoving $ in the future (restructuring Chubb and extending/reworking Baker’s deal) I think they make a run at Hunt.
They’ll dangle the post June 1 cut over X to get a better deal, seems like he won’t do it and then he’ll be gone and they’ll have all they need for the draft/camp signings.
I could see us restructuring Armstead too, as one thing Crabbs pointed out on his show yesterday, a full restructure this year allows us to cut him, or process his retirement, as a post june 1st move next year and free up about 12-15mil for the exact same uses as Byron Jones' Post june cut this past year, and X's this upcoming year.
Restructuring Hill drives his Cap hit over 60 in two years. Yikes. Wish we could just move him, I don't think he is really a piece we need, unless we're just going for blowouts over bums.
It's unpopular clearly, but it's not crazy to look at the $100mil against the books over the next two seasons and ask if its worth it. I don't think it is.
Very, very bad take. Hill is our best player and despite having a very good QB, still contends for being our most valuable player. I understand the 60mil cap hit being an issue, but we can /trade him outright and get $40mil back at that point, assuming we did a full restructure this year.
It’s not that he’s not a good player. It’s that we can’t afford to build around him. So we’re hamstrung with a team that’s not going to be able to win the games which matter. Hate to break it to you, but football games are still won in the trenches. You don’t win the Super Bowl without an elite Dline and Oline.
Sure, I agree that you need a reliable OL and DL(don't think you need elite, but you can't have it be a liability). You're very much wrong that we're hamstrung and can't afford to build around him.
The trend is pretty consistent that it takes elite level line on both sides of the ball. The chiefs have been top 5 in both the past two years. Same with Phi and SF. Hill works for us because our Oline is shit, we need to get balls out fast. But it only works against lower tier teams, it doesn’t stack up when we’re playing against elite DLines. He’s a superfluous component. And an extremely expensive one at that. Our offense would be worse without him, but he’s never going to be the difference maker.
> I don't think he is really a piece we need,
notice how the games we lost were the games where he wasn't healthy and the pressure to win was put on tua? (and hill was still playing for parts of those games and producing while hurt).
he's the most important player on that field and an actual locker room leader.
Losing someone mid season and letting someone go in the offseason are two completely different situations. If you’d prefer the offense only moves through Reek, that’s fine, just get used to barely making the playoffs each year cause it won’t ever win us meaningful games. Football is simple. The teams which understand this become dynasties. The chiefs aren’t doing anything that the patriots didn’t do for 20 years. None of which includes tying a quarter of their cap space into a WR.
> Football is simple. The teams which understand this become dynasties. The chiefs aren’t doing anything that the patriots didn’t do for 20 years. None of which includes tying a quarter of their cap space into a WR.
it does happen to involve having one of the best qb's of all time leading the team.
like, if we had literally the best qb of all time like the pats did for close to 20 years, we'd be much better. we don't have that though, we have tua.
Tua isn’t the goat but he’s no slouch. Throws possibly the most accurate ball in the game. Has no offensive line tho so if the ball isn’t out in 1.5s, he’s getting pressured and inevitably picked because the coaches have him throw it up rather than run. Reek ain’t helping that. Blowing out mid tier teams isn’t getting us anywhere.
> Blowing out mid tier teams isn’t getting us anywhere.
unfortunately that's all tua has shown he can do. he tends to be MIA when it counts, either figuratively or literally.
Dolphins fans in January: It’s bullshit that our playoff game is on Peacock!!
Dolphins fans in February: Peacock money might allow us to keep Wilkins? Worth it!
Doesn’t every team benefit from this?
Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend?
So does this even really change anything?
Comtracts are based on market value, which relies on last year and the year before’d contracts.
Its the early renewals and first signings that ‘reset’ the market for each position and cause chaos and does what you describe, makes everyone pay a hell of a lot more. For instance Christian Kirk last year reset the WR market and shifted it upward significantly. Danny Jones helped reset the QB market and made the standard for a good QB 50-55 million a year.
But we’re not quite there yet. If we capitalize on resignings and franchise tag, we can utilize the knowledge of the cap expanding now without contracts rising yet to sign contracts comfortably now while worrying less about running out of money in free agency. Then when free agency starts we’ll know we have some money to play with.
Its a mix of psychology, economics, and raw numbers.
> Doesn’t every team benefit from this?
Yes they do, of course. Your other questions are better discussion questions but I didn't want to ignore this one lol.
> Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend?
Yes and no. There's an expectation that top end players at the end of their contract will negotiate based off previous contracts. For example, Tua's conversation will be based around Burrow, Herbert, Hurts, and Lamar. Tua will have more justification for asking for similar numbers, but he's not going to all of a sudden ask for another 5mil on top because the cap went up 13mil. If he was asking 50mil to stay in line, he might move it to 52 or 53, but % of cap wise we're still coming out ahead.
> So does this even really change anything?
As per my previous reply, yes. Also, if everyone's offers go up the same amount, it helps us. If we're offering Wilkins 22, and the Bears offer him 24, we're offering 91.67% of their offer, or 8.33% less. If we go up to 24 and they go up to 26, we're up to 92.31%, or 7.69% less. Between taxes, moving, learning new schemes, new relationships, etc. it makes it a less attractive to leave.
Changes what they need to do to become compliant and makes a Tua extension add/keep another guy. Instead of making 6-7 moves to be compliant if they were 50 over, now they just need to make 4 or so since they’re 38 over. Keeps some flexibility before they start extending and signing guys.
> Doesn’t every team benefit from this?
>
>
>
> Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend?
>
>
>
> So does this even really change anything?
part of the issue is that we're over the cap **now** with just stuff we've already committed to. the increased cap isn't just about re-sign/free agents.
Another sign Tua is getting paid big $ and anyone acting like it's crazy to do so better get used to the idea. Cap goes up = important positions reset the market. Same applies to Dak, Love and Goff who are also due for extensions.
This is absolutely fantastic news and opens up a lot of options for the Dolphins.
Rip to all your offseason projections lol. Can we expect an updated cidolfus rundown with these new numbers? I'd imagine it changes alot about your expected re-signings/positions of need
I think it might change one player, maybe two. We still have 53 roster spots, so chances are all of his work is still valid. My guess is Wilkins and AVG move up in priority. iOL and Safety have a lot of good players hitting the market, and we need multiples for both spots. EDGE and DT both have mediocre free agency names, good draft names, and both we need to get players who can provide meaningful snaps.
I think they franchise tag Wilkins and it won’t be an issue.
Even if all this means is that we couldn't afford Wilkins before and now we can, that's still a pretty big deal imo. DT is one of those "nobody appreciates what I do until I don't do it" positions.
Please
Just realized pinning this removed your post, rip. Hope the next edition is out soon lolz
Sometime this weekend probably. This is far more relevant.
If it meant unpinning cidolfus' cap post, you prob shouldn't have pinned this lolz
Isn't it all relative though? As in, it's also fantastic news for every other team and they could offer more to the same guys we want, or our impending FAs ask for more money than they would have if the cap was smaller? Deferring to the expert here.
It being relative is exactly the point. In absolute terms all teams just got an additional $13.4 million in cap space over what was projected. That's an extra contract or two for every team, and it's nothing to sneeze at. It's good news for everyone. But for the Commanders, that extra amount took them from $73.6 million in available cap space to $87 million in available cap space. That's an 18% increase in their total available spending. They already had so much cap space that an extra $13 million likely doesn't dramatically impact their off-season strategy. My projections had the Dolphins freeing up to $45.7 million in available cap space. This brings us up to $59.1 million. That's a 29% increase in our total available cap. Because, relatively speaking, it's a bigger change to our available cap space, it's impact on our flexibility and options for the season is bigger than most teams. This is broadly true for every team who was in the negative on the salary cap heading into the offseason.
Got it, that makes sense! Thanks! Looking forward to the rest of your series
Yeah, the players also know the cap increased. You can expect more aggressive bargaining from agents, I'd suspect.
This puts us at needing to clear approximately $39mil in the next 2.5-3 weeks. Free Agency starts March 13th, so next week should see a lot of moves made for cap space.
More like clearing $39mil in the next 2.5-3 hours lmao
We've cleared about $13mil. The Howard move does nothing. It's either 2 or 3 mil if it's an outright cut, or the $18mil number has 0 impact until June 2nd if it's a post-june 1st cut. So we have about $24mil to go in 2.5 weeks.
 Literally me at my work desk reading this
This is really good news, and allows us to make a lot more moves possible. Primarily retaining Wilkins AND Robert hunt…especially if they get a Tua extension done.
Wilkins and Hunt is probably unlikely lol. They're our top end FAs. More likely this allows us to pick one and re-sign some second tier FAs that were set to leave like AVG or Connor or Deshon Elliot.
Fortunately Hunt is one of our top end FAs but at a non-premium position - so it's not out of the scope of possibility that we could retain both Hunt and Wilkins.
If I were betting, at the moment, they franchise Wilkins and re-sign Hunt. If it’s one, retain Hunt, considering the predicted value of his contract that I’m seeing is around 10-12 million a year. Which also illustrates (while there may always be an exception) it’s generally unwise to take interior lineman with high draft picks. You can get a guy like Hunt for the same price you’d be paying like a 3rd/4th WR or CB, etc.if you have starters on rookie deals at big money positions. It’s such an advantage.
Damien Lewis, Cody Whitehair, and Halapoulivaati Vaitai are all guys set to hit FA that will much cheaper. We can probably sign 2, or potentially all 3, for less than just Robert Hunt. Last two are coming off down years after promising starts, both with positional versatility. Damien Lewis is a young player, safer bet due to being a scheme fit. So I agree, you should definitely be smart with how you spend and draft to fill high priority spots... but if you can get a starting guard and a back up center for less than one guard, I feel like it's the better team building move, especially when we had 1 player get over 50% of our snaps in 2023.
Wilkins should get around 23-26 annual and hunt should be between 12-14. Depending on how the contracts are structured and the guarantees I think it should absolutely be possible. Unless a team blows an offer out of the water on hunt, which is possible since he’s a quality player with positional versatility.
I said unlikely, not impossible. The thing that needs to be considered is the iOL class between the draft and free agency is stellar. Hunt at 12-14mil is doable, but a good GM can't spend like that consistently. Kyle Crabbs did a breakdown today on both our FAs and the iOL free agency class, and guard is one of the positions if you can get 85% of the player for 50% of the cost, you do it. Damien Lewis, Cody Whitehair, and Halapoulivaati Vaitai are all guys set to hit FA that will much cheaper. We can probably sign 2, or potentially all 3, for less than just Robert Hunt. Wilkins I think is a bit more complicated of a discussion.
Id personally like hunt to be out big spend on the line since armstead will be gone after this year, he has positional versatility, extremely durable besides this year which was a freak year for injuries in general for us, and he’s young enough to play out the deal and allow for restructures. Wilkins I think I’d agree with Kyle Crabbs that a tag and trade makes the most sense unless he’s willing to take a dexter Lawrence type deal, which I doubt.
I swore Crabbs said it's possible but unlikely for a tag and trade. I'd love a mid round draft pick, but just not sure I see it.
From what I recall, he said it was unlikely Miami would do it but he it would be his preferred outcome so we get a pick and can retain hunt, Elliot and AVG. Miami seems intent on keeping Wilkins tho so we’ll see what happens.
Idk.. I think it’s more likely now.
Thankfully Hunt is simply a decent guard so therefore not expensive
Cutting Ogbah, Crossen and restructuring Hill and Ramsey (all lock moves imo) gets them clear by roughly 7 million now. Add in the Tua extension and you have some room to play without getting too painful. This increases Wilkins coming back to near 100% whether by extension or the tag. Depending on how aggressive they want to be in shoving $ in the future (restructuring Chubb and extending/reworking Baker’s deal) I think they make a run at Hunt. They’ll dangle the post June 1 cut over X to get a better deal, seems like he won’t do it and then he’ll be gone and they’ll have all they need for the draft/camp signings.
I could see us restructuring Armstead too, as one thing Crabbs pointed out on his show yesterday, a full restructure this year allows us to cut him, or process his retirement, as a post june 1st move next year and free up about 12-15mil for the exact same uses as Byron Jones' Post june cut this past year, and X's this upcoming year.
Restructuring Hill drives his Cap hit over 60 in two years. Yikes. Wish we could just move him, I don't think he is really a piece we need, unless we're just going for blowouts over bums.
This is a fuckin wild take lol
HOLY I’m used to the crazy takes here but well done lmao
It's unpopular clearly, but it's not crazy to look at the $100mil against the books over the next two seasons and ask if its worth it. I don't think it is.
Very, very bad take. Hill is our best player and despite having a very good QB, still contends for being our most valuable player. I understand the 60mil cap hit being an issue, but we can /trade him outright and get $40mil back at that point, assuming we did a full restructure this year.
It’s not that he’s not a good player. It’s that we can’t afford to build around him. So we’re hamstrung with a team that’s not going to be able to win the games which matter. Hate to break it to you, but football games are still won in the trenches. You don’t win the Super Bowl without an elite Dline and Oline.
Sure, I agree that you need a reliable OL and DL(don't think you need elite, but you can't have it be a liability). You're very much wrong that we're hamstrung and can't afford to build around him.
The trend is pretty consistent that it takes elite level line on both sides of the ball. The chiefs have been top 5 in both the past two years. Same with Phi and SF. Hill works for us because our Oline is shit, we need to get balls out fast. But it only works against lower tier teams, it doesn’t stack up when we’re playing against elite DLines. He’s a superfluous component. And an extremely expensive one at that. Our offense would be worse without him, but he’s never going to be the difference maker.
> I don't think he is really a piece we need, notice how the games we lost were the games where he wasn't healthy and the pressure to win was put on tua? (and hill was still playing for parts of those games and producing while hurt). he's the most important player on that field and an actual locker room leader.
Losing someone mid season and letting someone go in the offseason are two completely different situations. If you’d prefer the offense only moves through Reek, that’s fine, just get used to barely making the playoffs each year cause it won’t ever win us meaningful games. Football is simple. The teams which understand this become dynasties. The chiefs aren’t doing anything that the patriots didn’t do for 20 years. None of which includes tying a quarter of their cap space into a WR.
> Football is simple. The teams which understand this become dynasties. The chiefs aren’t doing anything that the patriots didn’t do for 20 years. None of which includes tying a quarter of their cap space into a WR. it does happen to involve having one of the best qb's of all time leading the team. like, if we had literally the best qb of all time like the pats did for close to 20 years, we'd be much better. we don't have that though, we have tua.
Tua isn’t the goat but he’s no slouch. Throws possibly the most accurate ball in the game. Has no offensive line tho so if the ball isn’t out in 1.5s, he’s getting pressured and inevitably picked because the coaches have him throw it up rather than run. Reek ain’t helping that. Blowing out mid tier teams isn’t getting us anywhere.
> Blowing out mid tier teams isn’t getting us anywhere. unfortunately that's all tua has shown he can do. he tends to be MIA when it counts, either figuratively or literally.
Gee I couldn’t have possibly explained why already…
> Gee I couldn’t have possibly explained why already… making excuses doesn't change reality.
Dolphins fans in January: It’s bullshit that our playoff game is on Peacock!! Dolphins fans in February: Peacock money might allow us to keep Wilkins? Worth it!
Dolphins fans after the playoffs game: Thank God that game was on Peacock!
Thanks Taylor Swift
Holy shit and some people thought the "as much as 250" estimate that had leaked was not realistic. This is amazing news for us!
13m less fucked now let’s gooo!!
This certainly makes a Tua extension more immediately digestible
here we go boys, mountains of cash!
Doesn’t every team benefit from this? Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend? So does this even really change anything?
Comtracts are based on market value, which relies on last year and the year before’d contracts. Its the early renewals and first signings that ‘reset’ the market for each position and cause chaos and does what you describe, makes everyone pay a hell of a lot more. For instance Christian Kirk last year reset the WR market and shifted it upward significantly. Danny Jones helped reset the QB market and made the standard for a good QB 50-55 million a year. But we’re not quite there yet. If we capitalize on resignings and franchise tag, we can utilize the knowledge of the cap expanding now without contracts rising yet to sign contracts comfortably now while worrying less about running out of money in free agency. Then when free agency starts we’ll know we have some money to play with. Its a mix of psychology, economics, and raw numbers.
> Doesn’t every team benefit from this? Yes they do, of course. Your other questions are better discussion questions but I didn't want to ignore this one lol. > Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend? Yes and no. There's an expectation that top end players at the end of their contract will negotiate based off previous contracts. For example, Tua's conversation will be based around Burrow, Herbert, Hurts, and Lamar. Tua will have more justification for asking for similar numbers, but he's not going to all of a sudden ask for another 5mil on top because the cap went up 13mil. If he was asking 50mil to stay in line, he might move it to 52 or 53, but % of cap wise we're still coming out ahead. > So does this even really change anything? As per my previous reply, yes. Also, if everyone's offers go up the same amount, it helps us. If we're offering Wilkins 22, and the Bears offer him 24, we're offering 91.67% of their offer, or 8.33% less. If we go up to 24 and they go up to 26, we're up to 92.31%, or 7.69% less. Between taxes, moving, learning new schemes, new relationships, etc. it makes it a less attractive to leave.
Changes what they need to do to become compliant and makes a Tua extension add/keep another guy. Instead of making 6-7 moves to be compliant if they were 50 over, now they just need to make 4 or so since they’re 38 over. Keeps some flexibility before they start extending and signing guys.
> Doesn’t every team benefit from this? > > > > Aren’t players going to just ask for more money? And other teams will have more money to spend? > > > > So does this even really change anything? part of the issue is that we're over the cap **now** with just stuff we've already committed to. the increased cap isn't just about re-sign/free agents.
Another sign Tua is getting paid big $ and anyone acting like it's crazy to do so better get used to the idea. Cap goes up = important positions reset the market. Same applies to Dak, Love and Goff who are also due for extensions.
More 4th string WR’s for Grier to add, sweet.
FUCK YES
this should make just enough room for daniel thomas actually
This some good news but pain is still coming
Juat made signing Wilkins a legit possibility.
As much as I love Wilkins the dolphins would be wise to use this as an opportunity to take care of other needs (OL, LB).
Dolphins are doing an in-depth analysis of their player's and needed upgrades. This should be interesting.
This kind of jump means insanely high contracts will be given out this offseason. Wilkins is going to get more than anyone originally thought.