Raiders could again have over $60 million in salary cap space, second most in NFL

It will be a second-straight offseason with oodles of money to spend for the Raiders. According to figures put out by Spotrac.com, the cap is estimated to be set at $142 million which would give the Raiders approximately $50 million to spend this offseason. That is second in the NFL behind only the Jacksonville Jaguars who have $57 million to spend.

And it could get better.

Should the Raiders cut ties with Matt Schaub, Lamarr Woodley, and Maurice Jones-Drew, as they are expected to do, they would save an additional $13.2 million, putting them a whopping $63.2 million under the cap. The only one of those three players with a slight chance of returning is MJD. He carries a $2.5 million cap hit which would mean the Raiders are just under $61 million -- exactly what they had last year when they set an NFL record for cap space.

In case you were wondering, the Jaguars could also add savings under the cap by cutting Chad Henne and Toby Gerhart. That would give them another $6.5 million, bringing their spending money still just a hair more than the Raiders at about $63.5 million.

Merely having a lot of cap space doesn't mean a whole lot. They didn't spend all of it last year, resulting in $7.4 million in roll over and with what they did spend they didn't get a whole lot in the way of young talent either. Even worse, they weren't able to keep their own young building blocks. Offering deals without a lot of guaranteed money after the first year of the contract won't attract many good young players.

One could use the excuse that no good players wanted to join a rebuilding project with a lame duck head coach. That's entirely possible, and if that was the case, the Raiders are in a much better position now with a new head coach in place and some young drafted players to build around such as Khalil Mack and Derek Carr.

The Raiders still need a lot of talent so it's possible we see another year of quantity over quality. Then again with that kind of scratch... for the right player... you never know.

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