Ravens likely to be very tight to the cap on Opening Night

At this time of year, everyone is trying to guess at who is going to make their favorite team’s final roster.  For the Ravens, the roster looks pretty set, but there are always a couple of surprises.

For this article, we’ll propose a likely roster the intent of which is to gauge where the Ravens’ Salary Cap can be expected to be rather than as a true forecast of the final 53 man roster.

During the regular season, all players – no matter whether they are on the 53-man roster, IR, PUP or Practice Squad – count against the team’s Salary Cap.

53-Man Roster:

QBs (2): Flacco, Taylor
RBs (4): Rice, Leach, Pierce, Rainey
WRs (6): Boldin, Smith, Jones, LQWilliams, Doss, Thompson
TEs (3): Pitta, Dickson, Bajema
OL (8): McKinnie, Osemele, Birk, Yanda, Oher, Williams, Gradkowski, Reid

DL (7): Ngata, Cody, Kemoeatu, Jones, McPhee, Hall, Tyson
LBs (9): Kruger, McClellan, Lewis, McClain, Upshaw, Ellerbe, Ayanbadejo, Kindle, Chavis Williams
CBs (7): Webb, Smith, Williams, Graham, Gorrer, Brown, Jackson
S (4): Reed, Pollard, Thompson, Considine

ST (3): Tucker, Koch, Cox

PUP: Suggs, D. Reed

IR: McAdoo, McBean, Cook, Blackstock, Baggs, Bynes (not yet on IR, but hurt for weeks)

Several of these guys – Blackstock, Baggs, Bynes – could very well end up with injury settlements and then released from IR.  Those injury settlements would be for a portion of the season until they are healthy enough to play again (for example, 3/17ths, 7/17th). 

So, for those players, their Cap number would only be the amount of the injury settlement, but for the purposes of this projection, since there have yet to be any injury settlements, we’ll count their entire salary.

PS:  The Practice Squad will consist of 8 players, who will make $5,600 per week.  The PS is constantly turning over as players are signed, released and/or elevated to the active roster.  So, the names don’t matter: 8 players x $5,600 per week x 17 weeks = $775,200 for PS for the season.

Using these players, the Ravens will be only $672,944 under the Salary Cap at the start of the season.  (See attached Projected Salary Cap Spreadsheet)

This number is subject to the actual breakdown of the roster when cuts are made on Friday, but because of the salaries involved, there isn’t likely to be a whole lot of fluctuation, up or down, unless there is a surprise release of a highly paid veteran.

Again, injury settlements with several players would increase that number, but the team may need to restructure a contract at some point in order to create some additional space if further injuries occur.