With the signing of Russell Okung last week, the Denver Broncos are nearing the salary cap ceiling heading towards the NFL Draft next month. There are still some moves John Elway can make to bring that cap number way down by then. He could even work in a trade for a certain San Francisco 49ers disgruntled quarterback.
The hard part is figuring out exactly how much cap space the Broncos actually have, since no two sources seem to want to report exactly the same numbers. Instead of guessing this time, I'll just provide all of the numbers from the two most reliable independent sources for cap data.
Broncos salary cap situation
The first is Spotrac who notes that the Broncos have $6,776,134 in cap space. While OverTheCap has a completely different set of numbers for both cap ceiling and contract dollars, putting the Broncos at $5,567,446 under the cap.
Which source is right? Beats me, but it is reasonable to assume the Broncos have somewhere around six million in cap space depending on who is actually right. According to OverTheCap, the Broncos will need just about that much ($6,375,173) to sign all of their draft picks this year.
How can the Broncos free up some space?
By cutting a slew of veterans in the last few weeks, the Broncos did free up quite a bit of cap room. They also accrued some dead money. Nearly half of the dead money comes from Owen Daniels and Louis Vasquez alone, but the cap savings was certainly worth it in the short term.
The next guy who will be either dealt or cut will be Ryan Clady. The Broncos will incur another $1,800,000 in dead money, but a healthy $8,900,000 in extra cap space. That would nearly perfectly match a restructured contract from a guy like Colin Kaepernick.
Could that be the next and final step in free agency for Elway and the Broncos?