Ike restructures

[steelerfaninCO]

Hopefully the first of a couple vets restructuring their deals. They need all the cap room they can get.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4091464

[Finnegans Wake]

Some guys can be extended with cap savings, but I forget who.

It's going to be tought to extend everyone we want, though.

[DCSteelers]

Troy, Ben, anyone who has more that 1 year remaining can be restructured.  Hines can be, if he were to extend for another year or two.  That seems to make sense to do now that Harrison is done, but I'm not Colbert.

Need room for the draftees and hopefully being able to obtain a veteran WR for an insurance policy.  It'd be ashame to have to resign Lee Mays if Hines/Ton got hurt

Personally, I hope the cap trouble doesn't have to come to cutting Larry Foote.  We have fantastic depth a LB with him, Fox, and Dre as the backups.  If Woodly or Harrison got injured, I think Timmons could be a beast at OLB and Foote would resume his familiar starting position.

[OhioU_Stlrs_Fan]

Am I mistaken, I was under the assumption that the rookies you draft already have a set cap room set aside from the players you already have. Anyone know for sure how rookie contracts affect the cap room we have, lets say, today, thursday?

[KeystoneKC]

Am I mistaken, I was under the assumption that the rookies you draft already have a set cap room set aside from the players you already have. Anyone know for sure how rookie contracts affect the cap room we have, lets say, today, thursday?

My understanding is that the Rookies have a "cap within a cap".  There is a hard ceiling that you can spend acquiring rooks, but that number still has to fit inside the overall team's salary cap.  I musta killed the brain cell that was storing the exact figure, but each team would need to clear up to "X" to sign their draftees.  I don't believe that they need to have the space available on Draft Day... but they need to clear it before the pups start signing contracts.

[jcharding]

In addition, the rookie cap is scaled somewhat.  Meaning that teams with higher picks have a bigger rookie cap than teams with lower picks.