Why do some NFL teams have a ton of cap space?

Got a question for you NFL guru's. Why do some NFL teams have so much cap space? Teams like the raiders, jaguars etc who have a ton of space, why aren't they spending the money on players who will improve their respective teams?

Originally posted by NJNiner:
Got a question for you NFL guru's. Why do some NFL teams have so much cap space? Teams like the raiders, jaguars etc who have a ton of space, why aren't they spending the money on players who will improve their respective teams?

A. Not every player entering free agency fits their scheme.
B. No one really wants to play for the Jags or Raiders.
C. Not every player in free agency is worth the money they are asking.

With that being said the Raiders spent money in FA last season (Jones-Drew, Tuck, Carlos Rogers, Terrell Brown, Charles Woodson). The Jags picked up some guys as well.

Originally posted by 24plus25er:

Originally posted by NJNiner:
Got a question for you NFL guru's. Why do some NFL teams have so much cap space? Teams like the raiders, jaguars etc who have a ton of space, why aren't they spending the money on players who will improve their respective teams?

A. Not every player entering free agency fits their scheme.
B. No one really wants to play for the Jags or Raiders.
C. Not every player in free agency is worth the money they are asking.

With that being said the Raiders spent money in FA last season (Jones-Drew, Tuck, Carlos Rogers, Terrell Brown, Charles Woodson). The Jags picked up some guys as well.

And the ones that do are all on no guarantee or one year contracts.... So, every year, the turnover allows for excessive space.

Originally posted by 24plus25er:

Originally posted by NJNiner:
Got a question for you NFL guru's. Why do some NFL teams have so much cap space? Teams like the raiders, jaguars etc who have a ton of space, why aren't they spending the money on players who will improve their respective teams?

A. Not every player entering free agency fits their scheme.
B. No one really wants to play for the Jags or Raiders.
C. Not every player in free agency is worth the money they are asking.

With that being said the Raiders spent money in FA last season (Jones-Drew, Tuck, Carlos Rogers, Terrell Brown, Charles Woodson). The Jags picked up some guys as well.

and, drafting poorly. if you can draft well, you're going to be paying those guys big money to stay after their contracts are up.

They have stoopid contracts guys. We do not.

Oakland cleansed/gutted their rosters so that they could go out in get players in FA. They had a lot of dead money bcuz they cut the bad contracts. Used the draft to rebuild the culture/mentality of the team, then they use that money to get whoever they really target. But they don't wanna overpay for players because that's the mistake they made in the first place.

I think the other guy had it right with Jax and Cleveland as well, they draft pretty bad and players that are good don't wanna stay there.

The guy above me.

The rest i cant speak for, but the raiders have all the space because after al died they did it right. And they did it right last offseason as well. The only thing they are doing wrong, they are a bad team in california. The taxes are super high, the cost of living is high. And they have not found their guy to lead the franchise yet.

This is just an educated guess, but cap credits are probably part the reason.

If a team doesn't use all of their cap space, they can rollover the unused money and apply it as a credit for the next season's salary cap. For example, let's say the 2014 salary cap was $140M. The Raiders, knowing they won't compete in 2014, decide that they're not going to use all of their cap (instead of signing a good free agent, they'd rather start a scrub player, increasing their chances of a higher draft pick). They only spend $130M of their cap money. Because they were $10M under the cap, they now get a $10M rollover credit for 2015.

Suppose the league salary cap is $145M in 2015. Well, because of their credit, the Raiders are now effectively working with a $155M cap. I believe that teams have to spend Competitive teams are usually close to the cap limit, because they want to sign as many contributors as possible. Bad teams might see incentive in punting a season to get a higher draft pick, and having the benefit of having extra cap room the following year.

Also, I believe there is a salary cap floor -- teams are required to spent at least 89% of the salary cap. So, a team can't spent $45M and rollover $100M or anything crazy like that.

But there are also playoff teams like Indy & Philly that have a s**t ton of cap space. It seems like the Niners are always trying to scrape it together from somewhere.

Originally posted by ninerjok:
But there are also playoff teams like Indy & Philly that have a s**t ton of cap space. It seems like the Niners are always trying to scrape it together from somewhere.

philly dumped their top tier rb, one of their best pass rushers, a long time o-lineman and a cb they paid pretty handsomely a couple of years ago in order to get that space

Originally posted by martysofresh:
Oakland cleansed/gutted their rosters so that they could go out in get players in FA. They had a lot of dead money bcuz they cut the bad contracts. Used the draft to rebuild the culture/mentality of the team, then they use that money to get whoever they really target. But they don't wanna overpay for players because that's the mistake they made in the first place.

I think the other guy had it right with Jax and Cleveland as well, they draft pretty bad and players that are good don't wanna stay there.

Ya, it really is that simple. Look at us 15 year ago, were in bad shape for almost 10 years after Mooch was gone. When you draft that bad and you stink for 5+ years, FAs then don't want to go there and you don't have any good players to really pay for.

Allot of them, like the raiders, seemingly have been dumping bad contracts for years and are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Similar to our dark cap years and finally getting to the point where we could finally sign big names like J. Smith and Clements… even though Clements was overrated.

Any reason the Browns arnt making too many moves? They have 40mil and have holes.

Would you want to go to the browns?