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Salary Cap Space Needed For The Seahawks’ Rookies

By Greg Haugsven

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November 27, 2014; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider before the game against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi

In about a month the Seahawks are going to add eleven new members to the team, assuming there are no significant trades. In the summer each of them will sign contracts that will affect our 2015 off-season salary cap. The odds that all eleven players make the 53-man roster is not good, but they will all have some kind of impact on this years salary cap.

Here is a look at the projected 2015 salary cap space needed for the rookies that will be selected with Seattle’s current draft picks, courtesy of spotrac.com:

[table id=40 /]

As you can see, if the Seahawks were to not make any trades, the total first year cap hits of all eleven draft picks would equal $5,570,814. Luckily, this doesn’t mean that’s the amount you would subtract from our current cap space.

When it comes to the off-season salary cap there are three main parts. First is the top fifty-one cap hits, second is the teams dead money, and third is the signing bonus pro-rations of the remaining players under contract. Everytime you add a players cap hit that’s going to enter the top fifty-one you have to bump somebody out.

As we sit right now, our 46-51 ranked cap hits all sit at $510,000 for 2015. So when you add our second round picks cap hit (#63) to the top 51, the current 51 would then slide to 52 and would remove his cap hit from the top 51. Pick #63 has a projected cap hit of $646,802, then you remove the cap hit of the previous 51 ($510,000) and your left with a cap increase of $136,802.

When you do this with every draft pick it would look something like this:

[table id=41 /]

So as you can see, only the first five draft picks will have cap hits high enough to make the top 51. The remaining six draft picks will only count their pro-ration of their signing bonus to the cap. Here are those numbers:

[table id=42 /]

Is all your adding to the cap is the bottom column which is the signing bonus pro-ration of each player. When you add the money from the first five draft picks your cap rises by $253,523. Then you add the signing bonus pro-ration from the remaining six draft picks and you get $157,291. When you add the two together we are only adding $410,814 to our cap.

Now this can change if the Seahawks sign/release any players in the next month or make any draft day trades, but this gives you a rough idea. This is the bonus to not having a first round pick because their cap hits are much higher.

Note: Every rookie this year, drafted or undrafted, first pick or last pick will have a base salary of $435,000. Their cap hits are different only due to their signing bonus.

Go Hawks!

Next: Seahawks getting roster ready for the draft.

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