I think misread our cap table, thinking we'd be able to get under by renouncing our cap holds on our various free agents, but I guess that's not a thing of we're over the cap
Yeah, given all the players we have right now, and our pick (at #9), and mandatory roster charges for empty roster spots...if we clear out every penny of unguaranteed money and free agent cap holds we'll be at $107M on a cap of $112.4M.
Basically there's no way for us to use
cap room to sign Holmes without clearing salary, and since we can assume that won't be Fox, it would mean we would have to trade away Buddy, Barnes, Bagley, or Wright while getting back at least $7M less to allow us to use cap room to sign Holmes. That's not something I would recommend as a strategy. Now, maybe something comes along and there's a team that wants to send us a couple of future firsts for Buddy and eat some of his money and we decide it's a good deal, and incidentally it gives us the ability to go after Holmes with cap room, that's OK. But we shouldn't be chasing after bad deal to dump salary so that we can give Holmes a tad more than $10M per year.
The best we can likely offer is four years at the Early Bird exception with 8% annual raises. Since the Early Bird came in at $10.05M last year, we can probably assume that it will come in at the top end around $10.5M this year. We can give an 8% annual raise with Early Bird, if we gave a four-year deal with a full 8% raise, that contract would come out to 4 years $47M, so $11.75M per year.
Another team with cap room would only be able to give Holmes 5% raises per year, so they would basically have to start at $11M per year to match that (they would actually beat it by a few hundred K).
Bottom line is that any team with $11M in cap room will be able to offer Holmes a bigger contract than we can, unless we clear salary. But I would think that my following take is in general agreement with several posters on this thread in spirit, if not in specifics:
1) The maximum Early Bird contract that we can offer Holmes (4y/$47M) is likely to slightly exceed his expected value over the duration of the contract. If we have to go that high to sign him it would likely be OK, but letting him walk (or a sign-and-trade) is also an option to consider.
2) Aggressively clearing salary in order to sign Holmes at a higher rate than this using cap space is a bad idea. If Holmes is offered a contract from another team starting at $12M+ and asks us to match (and we haven't independently cleared salary) then we should thank him for his time and wish him the best.
2a) If we have already independently cleared salary in a trade that was beneficial for us, and the market dictates that Holmes will be getting more than the Early Bird, we could consider giving him an overpay starting at $12-13M. I would lean against it, but going that high is probably not a disaster. However, there are probably going to be ways to spend that money that would help us more than Holmes.
3) If we can start Holmes on the Early Bird at $9M (so, 4y/$39M) or less, we should do it.
