The reality is, our salary cap situation is not good! We have 31 total Free Agents this year, 17 of them UFA's. That means we only have 22 returning players from last year's roster. We will likely have $30 million in cap space. Most of the 14 RFA's and ERFA's have to be re-signed for about $10 million, or we will have ZERO depth. We also need to save about 7 of that $30 million for our new draft class. That leaves us about $13 million in cap space to spend on UFA's including our own. We have what was considered to be 7 starters leaving in FA...Irvin, Okung, Mebane, Sweezy, Rubin, Lane and Kearse. If we were to sign just Okung and Sweezy for around $13 million, that would mean we lose all of our other 15 Free Agents, and have zero space to sign any FA's from other teams. The reality is, we have to let at least Irvin, Okung, Sweezy and Mebane walk (truth is, if the FO was planning on keeping any of these guys they'd have already been re-signed or extended). This would also double as our FA's lost that would qualify us for 4 Compensatory Draft Picks for 2017. The choices remaining would be for Rubin, Lane and Kearse...we could probably sign all three, but that again would leave us with no space for FA's from other teams, especially much-needed O-Linemen.
The problem with Okung is that he's been an injury magnet...even when he plays, he's playing through some kind of pain or injury. Is it really worth paying him like $8 million APY? Okung just hasn't been all that great the last couple of years...in 2015 Okung was even graded below average by PFF. I don't see a huge dropoff in Wilson's game when Bailey is replacing Okung either. Let Sweezy walk also...he's just not very good. Get 2 or 3 inexpensive veterans who have been cut or who haven't been signed by June 1...this way they won't count against our comp picks for 2017. Add 3 or 4 draftees for the O-Line. I'm kind of leaning toward a FA older veteran/younger backup Tackle to replace Okung; Glow to replace Sweezy; use the #26 pick for a starting O-Lineman if the right one is still available, or if not, trading down from # 26 to get an extra 2nd round pick and 3rd round pick. A trade down for #26 would give us 5 picks in the 2nd and 3rd rounds...a total of 10 picks. That would make it easy to pick 3 O-Linemen spread throughout the draft and still have 7 picks left for 2 DT, OLB, RB, CB, DE, WR.
Re-sign Lewis and Bailey, probably even Jeanpierre. Add at least 5 or 6 new O-Linemen through the draft and Free Agency. Start TC with Gilliam/FA/draftee, high pick draftee/Bailey/Britt, Lewis/FA/draftee, Glowinski/draftee, draftee/FA/Britt. They could still add Nowak, Sokoli, Jeanpierre, Poole and Pericak to the mix, giving them some 15 O-Line guys to compete in TC. Make a decision before preseason, and get an O-Line playing somewhat consistently by Week 1. If we use this strategy, I believe that we'd have a cohesive/better O-Line unit much earlier in the season than we did last year.