Tampa tried to spend their money during the offseason on Albert Haynesworth and Matt Cassel. When those two options didn’t pan out, they were left with a ridiculous amount of leftover cap room.
In numbers revealed by FOX’s Alex Marvez Saturday, the Bucs have a league-high $30 million in salary cap room.
The next closest team to the Bucs isn’t very close at all. The Packers have $17 million remaining, the Chiefs have $16 million, the Bears have $15 million, and the Browns have $15 million in salary cap room.
Marvez points out another interesting financial note concerning the Chiefs. Kansas City is the only team in the league that hasn’t reached the minimum spending floor mandated under the Collective
Bargaining Agreement. The Chiefs are a whopping $7 million short of spending 87.6 percent of their cap total on player salaries, which is the required floor.
G.M. Scott Pioli is going to have to find some young Chiefs he wants to invest in long-term before the end of the season hits.
Tampa, meanwhile, will have to explain away the perception that they aren’t doing everything they can do to win football games in an effort to save money.
Tampa offered Haynesworth more money than anyone else, gave Michael Clayton too much money, and signed K2 for the long term.
When you offer Haynes more money, they are trying everything they can to win games.
And apparently the are in the top 7 of the power rankings.
Maybe they will spend some money when they realize they are the worst team in the NFC South this year. Not a single playmaker to be found on their roster.
How are the Chiefs the only team not at 87.5% (7 million under) when they have $14 mil more in salaries than the Bucs? Is it te signing bonus given to Winslow? That doesn’t make sense.
Mustard: Bucs were 29.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/08/21/preseason-power-rankings-no-29/
@ Gregg Rosenthal
They’ll end up #32.
What is it with these cheap teams?
They’ll have plenty of money to spend on their own tickets to avoid the blackouts
too bad chicago wont chew up that cap space on the likes of matt jones, or mccalister
there’s nobody to spend money on.
I’m sure this strategy will work well for them – if their goal is to get a top 3 draft pick next year.
@brasho
Tampa has additional cap space from previous seasons (over 140 mio, compared to about 125 mio “normal”). This can (for example) be done thru the likely-to-be-earned and not-likely-to-be-earned incentives. LTBE incentives count against the cap in a given season. If the player doesn’t reach these incentives, the team gets the cap space back in the next season (because the player did not earn the money). One real-world example is giving a player a multi-million LTBE incentive for six blocked punts in a season (that is a ridiculous target which will never ever be met). That’s just a cheap trick to transfer cap space from one season to the next. Cap shenanigans.
Unfortunately, this season is the last capped, so teams either spend the space they have or it will vanish.
# Krow says: September 12, 2009 6:56 PM
What is it with these cheap teams?
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Easy answer….alot of teams are cap rich, cash poor.
The annual increases in the salary cap have exceeded team’s abilities to generate revenue that exceeds costs for players, outstanding debts on stadiums, and other expenses, while generating a profit.
Hence, teams cut areas that generate the most expenses and they happen to be player salaries. No owner is interested in coming out of the fiscal year with a net loss.
Ownership knew Gruden and Allen would want to spend that money, thats why they were fired. The Bucs will be up for sale after the conclusion of this year.
@SaintsBucsPanthersSUKK: They’ll be 2-0 against the Falcons this year.
@southernboi727: Most logical post here.
@bucco bruce: Speculation?
“G.M. Scott Pioli is going to have to find some young Chiefs he wants to invest in long-term before the end of the season hits.”
Not so fast. An uncapped year works both ways, no ceiling, no floor.
I do not care what they do the rest of the year just win tomorrow
That can be your one win for the year
Ditto on southernboi’s comment that there’s no quality players for the Bucs to spend their money on.
Of course, whether or not the Glazers will allow the GM to spend the money in the future remains to be seen.
However, giving them the benfit of the doubt, the Bucs have just gotten out of salary cap hell that was the result of McKay paying the team’s defensive stars in the wake of the Super Bowl win.
That left the Bucs with no money to pursue any offensive playmakers, which played a key role in the team’s ensuing mediocrity.
Now that the Bucs have plenty of money to spend, they should spend it wisely. Instead of offering ridiculous contracts to average players, they should bide their time until some REAL difference makers are available.
Besides, it’s not like the Bucs are a player or two away from Super Bowl contention. They need a LOT of help on both sides of the ball, so it will take them two or three years to rebuild.
One more thing: if Raheem Morris turns out to be a complete disaster, the Bucs may need every penny they can scrounge to hire a REAL coach.
Florio — You need to get your boys more involved with this story.
You’ve been dancing around the whole Buccaneer salary cap situation for a few years now — the articles out there about the the whole financing situation with Manchester United, the lack of staff (and security) at One Buc Place, the 12 year old head coach.
What is going on?
The economy is Florida, especially the Tampa area, is horrible. We know the Glazers are holding on by a thread.
I’d love to see a video segment on this topic.
And now with a cheap moron of a HC dismantling and rebuilding a team when He has ABSOLUTLY no clue and making so many ignorant decisions that this team will suffer for years. An even worse (proven less than average) QB to be their starter (what a JOKE!) then they really don’t deserve to win games. The way The HC decisions have been going, Freeman may likely be a bust as well and several more years of searching for a true quality leader.