As long as the NFL doesn’t follow the other sports leagues in shutting its doors, the long-awaited free agency period should finally be upon us on Monday.
The Broncos were initially projected to have roughly $80 million in cap space to attack free agency with, but now that they’ve traded for A.J. Bouye, franchise-tagged Justin Simmons, picked up the options on Todd Davis and Von Miller, and the new CBA has been passed, we have a much better idea of where they stand financially.
The Bouye trade will cost the team just over $15 million against the cap, which isn’t cheap, but appears to be a bargain when considering what Byron Jones is about to make on the open market. Franchise-tagging Simmons is pricy too and will cost the cap just over $11 million but that number is subject to change as the Broncos attempt to work out a long-term deal.
That means even with Chris Harris Jr. and his $12 million salary leaving the building, Denver’s secondary is getting more expensive by at least $14 million.
Least surprisingly, the Broncos opted to pick up Von Miller’s contract, which will pay the franchise leader in sacks $25.6 million over the next season.
All those big-ticket deals make Todd Davis’ $5 million dollar option look like chump change, but it’s still a pricy deal that wasn’t guaranteed by any means. Davis has been average at best at inside linebacker and with the emergence of Alexander Johnson, he’s become much more expendable.
It wasn’t all just one big spending spree for John Elway and the Broncos, however, as they saved the team some money too.
Rejecting veteran lineman Ronald Leary’s option is set to give the team $9 million more dollars to work with, and when the Broncos eventually cut Joe Flacco, that will free up another $10 million in cap space.
This flurry of moves by the Broncos, in total, added around $26 million to the team’s overall payroll, which is a significant amount of cap space to add. That being said, following this scramble, the salary cap was announced at $198.2 million on Sunday.
This is right around where Spotrac was projecting the salary cap to land, so Denver won’t be getting an unexpected bonus or a pay cut. With the salary cap at $198.2 million, Denver will have $38.6 million in cap space, about $7 million of which will be put towards this year’s class of rookies.
That leaves them with $31.6 million to attract available free agents, which is quite a lot when you consider even the most expensive players Denver might sign, like Joe Thuney, should only take up half of that, leaving plenty of room for them to target other veterans.