Walking the Financial Tightrope

Edition #279

Good morning!

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve been pondering the cap reality for the Jets. With the Mets having inked Justin Verlander to a big-money contract (Head over to Mets Fix for all the Winter activity) it got me thinking about how I both loved and loathed the salary cap. Love it because it adds some parity to the sport, loathe it because the Jets are going to have to make some very difficult decisions come next season.

That’s what today’s newsletter is all about. I’m no cap expert but I do have a rudimentary understanding of how it fits together, so let’s take a little look.

Congratulations to Solomon Thomas on being named as the Jets’ nomination for the Walter Payton Man of the Year award. Solomon does an incredible amount of work in the community and he’s been very vocal about mental health over the last few years. Every week I receive information from the Jets PR department on what the players have been doing in the community, and pretty much every week Solomon is in there.

According to ESPN stats and information, there have been 22 fourth-down plays run from the 1-yard line across the NFL this season. 14 of those have been passing plays and 8 have been running plays, only one of those plays have featured an empty backfield set, the Jets on Sunday. I hated that decision at the time, mentioned it in Monday’s newsletter and there’s probably a reason we’re the only team to do it.

Yesterday coach Saleh was asked if there was a possibility that Mike White was the long-term answer at Quarterback and while he refused to answer electing for a coach speak “One week at a time” response, the answer is clear, yes there is a possibility that White is the answer going forward and not Zach Wilson.

That got me thinking about the Jets’ cap space situation because after making $2.5 million in 2022, Mike White is set to become an unrestricted free agent. If he continues to play as well as he has, then he’s going to cost more than $2.5 million next season and beyond. Joe Flacco signed back with the Jets this year for $3.5 million, someone like Brissett got $4.6 million, Teddy Bridgewater got $6.5 million, you get the picture.

The magic number for the Jets right now is $9.6 million, that’s the estimated effective cap space they’ll have for 2023 if you project the NFL salary cap to increase to $222 million, which many predict it will. Here’s how the breakdown works according to Spotrac:

So $209 million is already taken up by existing active contracts and Joe Douglas has done a good job of avoiding dead cap with just $2.8 million counting against the cap next season, here’s a breakdown of that dead cap, showing that it’s largely dominated by one player in Jacob Martin.

So once you realise that the Jets don’t have a lot of cap space to work with, you look at the players that we’re set to lose, or at least the players who will be hitting some form of free agency.

In total we have 26 players on this list, 19 of who are unrestricted free agents. 5 are restricted free agents and 2 are exclusive rights free agents. An exclusive rights-free agent is any player with fewer than three accrued seasons and an expired contract. If the Jets offer any EFA a one-year contract at the league minimum (based on his credited seasons), the player cannot negotiate with other teams.

In short, as of today, the Jets have 37 players signed for the 2023 season, which leaves a lot of holes to fill and not a whole lot of money to do it. Obviously, the Jets can cut some players to open up some cap space, but the leading candidates who would open the most cap space don’t seem likely to be released, CJ Mosley would open up around $8 million after accounting for dead cap, Conklin would open up about $6 million, Becton could free up around $6 million, Reed would free up around $13.5 million. Corey Davis and Carl Lawson are two players I’d watch, the Jets could cut both and open up $25.5 million of cap space while eating just $1 million in dead cap. It doesn’t mean both players wouldn’t return but do I think both will be back for a combined cap hit of $26 million (which is what it is now)? absolutely not.

It’s more likely we’ll see some restructured deals. Quinnen is set for a big payday, and the Jets will likely hand him a huge signing bonus to reduce his cap hit in 2022 which is set to be over $9 million. This is something a lot of “good” NFL teams do, they kick the can down the road when more space will be available and it allows them to fit good players into a tight cap. We could see the Jets have this approach with several players they want to sign to longer-term deals. Someone like Connor McGovern would be the perfect candidate for this alongside Quinnen Williams and potentially even Mike White if they deem him worthy of say a 3-year deal.

I’ve had a look around and Sportrac has Quinnen’s market value at around $16.5 million annual value, but the way he’s performing this season that number is going to continue to rise and personally I think we’ll be looking north of $20 million annually if we want to ink him to a long term deal. Chris Jones is getting $20 million AAV and DeForest Buckner is there at $21 million AAV, Aaron Donald is in a world of his own at $31 million AAV, but would it surprise me if Quinnen is looking to close the gap between Donald and the rest? Absolutely not.

Why could this be appealing to the Jets? They have just $139,879,359 committed to the cap in 2024 and $49,763,096 committed to the cap in 2025. When you give out contracts that have big signing bonuses and small first-year cap hits, they tend to be back-loaded and carry significant cap hits down the line. It’s a balancing act that you have to maintain between long-term flexibility and short-term contention.

Another option is to restructure a contract, which is basically turning base salary into a prorated bonus spread over the length of a contract. We saw the Jets do this with C.J Mosley back in September when they converted $14.88M of his base salary into a signing bonus (while adding two void years), creating $11.904M in 2022 cap space. There’s a chance they could do more of this to create cap space in 2023.

The point is that with the likes of McGovern, Herbig, Rankins, White, Kwon, Quincy and Zuerlein hitting free agency, the Jets are going to have to get creative to bring most of them back, if they want to bring all of them back of course. We also need to remember that we need to save cap space for the draft class as well as a few million for in-season manoeuvring. It’s a tightrope to walk, and Joe Douglas is going to have to walk that walk and earn that dollar.

As Jets fans, the off-season has been our entertainment. We’ve walked into the last couple of off-seasons with plenty of cash to spend and multiple high first-round picks, if you’re expecting a showcase this year I fear you may be disappointed. There’s going to be a lot of work to bring back familiar faces and then sprinkle some later draft picks in to complement what we already have. This is what it feels like to be a good team and a team in contention. The entertainment is now on the football field and not in the negotiating room.