Anyone who watched Thursday’s Ravens’ Preseason Opener against Atlanta likely saw the ankle injury suffered by DT Ryan McBean. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to see and the resulting injury was a dislocated fracture which will require surgery. More than likely McBean will be place on Injured Reserve (IR), thus ending his season.
Presently, the Ravens are $3,123,858 under the Salary Cap, but under the Rule of 51 that applies during the offseason, that number only includes the top 51 Cap numbers on the team. Once the season starts, however, all players, whether on the 53-man roster, IR, PUP or the Practice Squad (PS), will count against the team’s Salary Cap.
Presently, that means that all players on the 53-man roster, those on IR (McBean, McAdoo), those that possibly remain on PUP (Suggs, Reid, D. Reed) and the 8 players on the Practice Squad ($775,200 = $5700 per week x 17 weeks x 8 PS players) will need to fit under the Salary Cap.
Obviously, any future injuries could also impact this total.
Thus, McBean’s injury (and all other injuries) will definitely have an impact on the Ravens’ Salary Cap.
McBean’s 2012 Cap number presently counts $1,214,286 against the Salary Cap, but due to a 3 game suspension, he will only count $1M against the Ravens’ Cap ($1,214,286 ÷ 17 weeks of season x 14 weeks not suspended) once the suspension begins (players on IR do still serve their suspension, even while on IR).
So, if there is any silver lining in all of this, the Raven will have $214,286 in extra Cap space to work with as of the final cut down day (Sept 3rd) – an amount that will come in handy to offset the cost of the player that is going to replace McBean on the 53-man roster.
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