Expect San Francisco to be frugal in Free Agency and active in the NFL Draft.
The salary cap today show the San Francisco 49ers with approximately $8M in spending money (this assumes a $128M 2014 salary cap). Here are three things I expect the San Francisco 49ers to do in the near future that will increase that cap space.
1. Cut Carlos Rogers-This will free up 6.6M in cap space
This will likely not happen until SF is able to resign Eric Wright for at least a 2 year deal.
2. Cut Jonathan Baldwin-This will free up 1.4M in cap space
3. Extend Frank Gore's Contract-This will free up as much as $3M in cap space
With these transactions, SF will have approximately $16M of cap space. Knowing that last year the top 8 draft picks resulted in a $4.6M salary cap hit, it is likely SF will spend close to $6M on draft salaries in 2014. When it's all said and done SF will have $10M to spend on Free Agents, which is barely enough to sign Anquan Boldin to a 2 year deal, so don't expect SF to be active in Free Agency.
There has been a lot of speculation on some key players SF will NOT be able to keep in future years, after all there's a long list of key players currently NOT signed beyond the 2014 season. See below:
Colin Kaepernick
Aldon Smith
Mike Iupati
Glenn Dorsey
Michael Crabtree
Tony Jerod-Eddie
Dan Skuta
Frank Gore
Chris Culliver
Bruce Miller
Jon Baldwin
CJ Spillman
Adam Snyder
Raymond Ventrone
David Reed
Kendall Hunter
Daniel Kilgore
Garrett Celek
DJ Campbell
Brandon Carswell
If SF can hold tight this year and not disrupt the budget for next year, SF will have about $42 Million in Salary Cap to resign several of the key players below. I have listed them (above) in what I believe to be the order of priority. If SF is able to give some core players a contract extension next year, this will provide up to $15 Million additional cap space. At $57M in cap space, SF has enough money to resign the top 8 players with about $10M to spare.
SF continues to use the model of building the team through the draft and harnessing young talent at the forefront of big contracts.
