PFT Live: Redskins must protect their future

Mike Florio runs down the list of off-season needs for the Redskins and says Washington’s main concern should be protecting Robert Griffin III. After suffering a devastating knee injury in the postseason, Florio says an upgrade of the offensive line is necessary.

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After being unable to pry Michael Bennett away from the Seattle Seahawks, the Chicago Bears have turned their attentions toward another pass rusher set to hit the market.

According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Bears are now pushing hard to sign Oakland Raiders defensive end Lamarr Houston.

Chicago is in need of pass rush help. The team is attempting to trade high-priced defensive end Julius Peppers and could end up releasing him if unable to find a trading partner. With a massive cap number for 2014, a trade of Peppers would seem to be unlikely. Losing Peppers would only increase the need for capable pass rushers in Chicago.

Houston is coming off the best season of his career with the Raiders. Houston compiled 69 tackles with six sacks and two forced fumbles this season for Oakland. He’s also been durable, appearing in all 64 games over the last four seasons.

With Bennett signing with Seattle and Greg Hardy and Brian Orakpo being tagged by Carolina and Washington, respectively, Houston – along with Cincinnati’s Michael Johnson – could be the top defensive ends to actually reach free agency on Tuesday. With competent pass rushers always in demand, it could make the fight for their services more lucrative than initially anticipated.

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Earlier today, Tom Pelissero of USA Today reported that the Redskins opted not to carry over $1.3 million in cap space.  That was news to the Redskins.

Per a source with knowledge of the NFL’s calculations, the Redskins had no extra cap space in 2013.  They actually ended up over the cap by $834,732, based on the computation of so-called “not likely to be earned incentives.”

As a result, Washington’s cap for 2014 is $132,165,268, down from the $133 million available to every team.

Pelissero’s report presumably was based on the NFLPA’s calculations, which often differ from the NFL’s numbers.  For these purposes, the NFL’s figures are the rock, and the NFLPA’s are the scissors.

The Giants and Rams, also reported by Pelissero to have cap space that wasn’t carried over, also ended up over the cap due to incentives that are paid in one year and charged to the cap the next.

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With free agency starting Tuesday and plenty of deals getting done, we’ll be staying up late tonight in advance of the looming frenzy.

Feel free to stay up with us.

Tomorrow night, we’ll be up all night, cranking out update after update after update in the hopes of catching every piece of news that arises.

The next 48 hours should be intense, followed by a more deliberate process of negotiations and signings.  Like every year, the crush comes in the first few days.

Five years after the Great Hamster Massacre of 2009, we’ll be here for every minute of it, with no outages or slowdowns or any other problems.

Now that I’ve jinxed us, look for the whole thing to crash in the next few hours.

By all appearances, the Seahawks had two major priorities in unrestricted free agency:  defensive end Michael Bennett and receiver Golden Tate.

Now that Bennett has opted to sign a four-year, $28.5 million contract, what happens with Tate?

It could be that the Seahawks are handling Tate the same way they handled Bennett, letting Tate look for offer(s) elsewhere and swooping in once it appears that Tate has a suitor or two.  With Bennett, showing up after another team thought the big free-agency fish was on the line worked, even with the Seahawks undercutting what he could have gotten elsewhere.

With Tate, there’s no guarantee the player will take less than he could get elsewhere to stay put.  First, Tate has to have a serious suitor on the line.  With a buyer’s market at the receiver position, Tate may not be getting significant offers; definitely not the five-year, $35 million package that as been floating around the Internet.

Regardless, the Seahawks seem to be content with letting someone else set the market before getting involved.  For now, it’s unclear whether anyone is.

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Well, that was fast.

We speculated within the last hour that, if the Buccaneers can’t find a trade partner for cornerback Darrelle Revis, perhaps they’ll cut him.  “Perhaps” has now become “will.”

Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Bucs will indeed cut Revis on Wednesday if they can’t find a trade partner.  The move would avoid a $1.5 million roster bonus due Thursday.  It also would cause the Bucs to avoid having a fourth-round pick upgrade to a third-round pick as the final piece of compensation to the Jets for the trade that sent Revis to Tampa last year.

(Per a league source, the fourth-round pick upgrades if Revis is on the roster after 4:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday.)

Last year at this time, he was due to be a free agent in 2014.  If he’s cut, he’ll be a free agent in 2014.  And he will have made $16 million in 2013 from the Bucs, along with a $1 million roster bonus from the Jets.

It’s unclear what he’ll get on the open market.  But if he’s cut he’ll be exactly in the same place he would have been but for the trade.

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The Colts have re-signed another impending free agent.  But it’s not cornerback Vontae Davis.

The team announced on Monday night that defensive end Fili Moala has agreed to terms.  No terms have been disclosed.

A second-round pick in 2009, appeared in every game last season, with eight regular-season starts.  He started 16 games in 2011 and 14 in 2012.

Moala has 64 career appearances with 45 starts.  He would have been an unrestricted free agent on Tuesday.

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After the Buccaneers hired Lovie Smith, we explained that the decision could end the Darrelle Revis experiment in Tampa.  And we promptly were shouted down on Twitter and elsewhere as idiots, crackpots, and/or nincompoops.

While we still indeed may be those three things (and more), our analysis of the Revis situation won’t be proof of it.

Per a league source, the Buccaneers are actively shopping Revis.  The development was first reported by Alex Marvez of FOX Sports, who explains that the Buccaneers are “stepping up” efforts to trade Revis.  This implies that they previously were trying to trade him.  Before Monday, they apparently weren’t.

There had been a theory in league circles that the Broncos and/or the Patriots were trying to shake Revis free from the Bucs.  Suddenly, the story is that the Buccaneers are affirmatively trying to move him.

And here’s an intriguing angle.  While it’s believed that the fourth-round pick that the Buccaneers owe the Jets to complete the trade becomes a third-round pick on the third day of the league year, it’s possible that the draft pick accelerates at 4:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday.  (We’re currently trying to nail that down.)  If true, this means that, if the Bucs trade Revis, they need a deal that compensates for the loss of a higher pick, since there’s no way to trade him before the draft pick upgrades.

Revis also is due to receive a $1.5 million roster bonus on Thursday.

So since the Broncos and Patriots were believed to be interested in trading for Revis, they’ll now try to do it, right?  Not necessarily.  Now that the Bucs have decided to move Revis, the Broncos, Patriots, and any other interested teams may decide to wait for the Buccaneers to cut Revis, which may be the team’s only option now that the trade cat is out of the bag and clawing up the furniture.

One way or the other, it looks like Revis will end up being a one-year player in Tampa.

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On the final day of the 2013 league year, the Patriots waived seven players.

The club announced Monday it had parted ways with defensive tackle Cory Grissom, running back Sam McGuffie, wide receiver T.J. Moe and linebacker Taylor Reed.

The club also waived offensive tackle Elvis Fisher (failed physical), running back Quentin Hines (failed physical) and offensive tackle Brice Schwab, the NFL disclosed in its Monday transactions.

All seven players are undrafted free agents who entered the league last spring.

Fisher, Grissom, Hines, Moe and Schwab spent the 2013 regular season on the Patriots’ injured reserve list. McGuffie and Reed had been signed to reserve/future contracts earlier in the offseason.

Moe was a productive wide receiver at Missouri, catching 188 passes in his collegiate career.

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As recently as this morning, it looked like brothers Michael Bennett and Martellus Bennett would be playing together in Chicago this year, as defensive end Michael was expected to sign with the Bears, where Martellus plays tight end. But then Michael had a change of heart and decided to stick with a team he loves in Seattle.

Martellus had been talking about his enthusiasm for playing with his brother, and Michael said on SiriusXM NFL Radio that it was tough to break the news to Martellus that they wouldn’t play together after all.

“It was so hard to tell my brother that I was going to re-sign in Seattle but he understood, he knows its best for me,” Michael Bennett said.

Ultimately, Michael decided that he had a good thing going with the Seahawks, and he didn’t want to leave the defending champions.

“Sometimes guys go to different places and sign big time contracts and it just doesn’t work out. I love playing in Seattle,” Bennett said.

He loves playing Seattle so much that he was willing to leave money on the table to stay there, and walk away from a chance to play with his brother.

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In 2012, the NFL took $36 million in cap space away from the Redskins for treating the uncapped year of 2010 too literally. The league spread the penalty over two years, taking $18 million from Washington in 2012 and another $18 million in 2013.

Despite the penalties, the team still had $1.3 million in remaining 2013 cap space. Under the current labor contract, that money can be carried over, no questions asked.

According to Tom Pelissero of USA Today, the Redskins opted not to carry over the $1.3 million in cap space.

That’s right.  The team owned by a man many believed would spend like the Yankees if there was no salary cap elected to forego the ability to expand this year’s spending limit by $1.3 million.

There’s no logical reason for it.  Unused cap space can now be carried over year to year automatically, with none of the games teams used to have to play to push cap space artificially from one year to the next.

The only plausible explanation, other than negligence, is spite.  Still miffed that the league unfairly took away $36 million in cap space, the Redskins essentially said to the league (and to the union, which agreed to the cap penalties), “No thanks.  We’ll manage without the extra $1.3 million.  After all, we managed with $18 million less in each of the last two years.”

It’s still odd that any team wouldn’t carry over every dollar.  It costs nothing, and it doesn’t count toward the current 89-percent spending requirement on a four-year rolling average.

Per Pelissero, the Rams chose not to carry over $172,000, and the Giants chose to pass on $17,000.  That’s nothing compared to the decision to not retain the ability to spend an extra $1.3 million.

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One of the Chargers’ veteran front seven defenders has had his 2014 compensation reduced.

Outside linebacker Jarret Johnson, who was due $4 million in salary this year, will instead receive a $2 million signing bonus and is slated to make another $1 million in salary, Michael Gehlken of the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday.

Johnson, who will be 33 in August, recorded 33 tackles and three sacks in 11 games (nine sacks). Johnson joined the Chargers in 2011 after nine seasons in Baltimore.

A collegiate defensive end at Alabama, Johnson has had long, productive career as an outside linebacker in 3-4 fronts.

The reworking of Johnson’s contract will save the Chargers $1 million in salary-cap space, Gehlken reported.

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Ike Taylor will remain in Pittsburgh.

Taylor, the veteran cornerback who was considered a possible cap casualty, announced on Twitter that he will be staying with the Steelers. He is presumably agreeing to a pay cut to give the Steelers some cap relief.

In announcing the new deal, Taylor referred to himself as a “lifer” who plans to retire playing for the Rooney family and for longtime defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau.

Taylor, who will turn 34 in May, joined the Steelers as a fourth-round draft pick out of Louisiana-Lafayette in 2003. He started all 16 games for the Steelers in 2013.

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Michael Bennett isn’t the only player the Seattle Seahawks looked to keep in-house before the start of free agency on Tuesday.

According to Rand Getlin of Yahoo! Sports, the Seahawks have agreed to terms on a deal to keep tight end Anthony McCoy in Seattle. A team source said the deal is expected.

McCoy missed the entire 2013 season after suffering a torn Achilles during offseason workouts with the team in May. He was waived/injured by the team and landed on injured reserve with Seattle after clearing waivers.

McCoy was a sixth-round pick of the Seahawks in 2010 and caught 31 passes for 437 yards in three seasons with the team before missing last season. He had his most productive season in 2012 with 18 catches for 291 yards and three touchdowns serving as a backup to Zach Miller.

McCoy was set to become an unrestricted free agent on Tuesday. A short-term deal with Seattle would help him recoup some value before hitting the market again.

Seattle currently has Miller, Luke Willson and Travis Beckum under contract at the tight end position for next season.

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Giants guard Chris Snee was willing to take a pay cut. Which was wise. Because if he hadn’t been willing, he’d likely be a former Giant right now.

Instead, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Snee has dropped his compensation by more than $5 million, reducing his pay from $7.2 million to $1.1 million plus up to $1 million in incentives.

With bonus proration of $4.5 million still on the books, Snee will count for at least $5.6 million in cap space this year.

Snee, the son-in-law of coach Tom Coughlin, is entering the final year of his contract. He arrived via round two of the draft back in 2004, Coughlin’s first year with the team.

Last month, we reported that the Giants had approached both Snee and center David Baas about reducing their pay. Baas declined, and now he’s gone.

A four-time Pro Bowler, injuries limited Snee to three games in 2013.

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With the Panthers and receiver Steve Smith on a collision course, here’s an important fact to keep in mind: If they cut him, they’ll owe him up to $3 million.

Per a league source, $3 million of Smith’s 2014 base salary of $4 million is fully guaranteed. The guarantee voids only if a $3 million option bonus is exercised in June. And if the option bonus isn’t exercised, the team owes Smith a $3 million non-exercise fee on July 1.

It adds up to a total obligation in cap and cap space of $7 million for 2014. The Panthers can avoid $4 million of it by cutting him before July 1. But they’ll still owe $3 million in guaranteed base salary.

If the contract has offset language for the guaranteed money, the Panthers would get a credit if he plays elsewhere in 2014. Unless a new team will pay him more than $3 million, he’ll get a total of $3 million, with the Panthers picking up the difference between the guaranteed salary and what another team pays.

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