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Overall this offseason, the Raiders have had over $70 million in cap money to spend. With their 10 free agent signings, they were able to pare that down considerably. The question is how much do they still have to spend and how much needs to be set aside for the rookie pool? Let's take a look.
The Raiders sat at $20.95 million under the salary cap as of the morning of March 31 according to Overthecap.com.
They have yet to account for the re-signing of C.J. Wilson into that total. Wilson signed a 2-year, $4.6 million deal according to Spotrac.com. If we estimate his cap figure at $2.5 million for 2015, that brings the available cap space down to $19 million.
For those who did your own math on that and realized it was wrong, the reason for that is because the cap is only the top 51 on each team. Therefore when a new contract is added, one falls off the end. In this case it's Latavius Murray's cap hit of $611,550 which is dropped. Subtract that from $2.5 million and the total cap hit is $1.9 million.
Now to figure in the rookie pool.
The Raiders have a rookie pool number of $7,216,784. But it isn't simply a case of having to set aside that amount. There are two things one must factor into how it affects that cap. First of all, is the salary cap figure of the drafted rookie salary land in the top 51? Second, as stated before, when a player is added to the top 51, a player at the bottom must be removed, subtracting his cap hit against the total.
Only the first two picks the Raiders make in the draft will land their salaries in the top 51. The combined cap hit numbers of those two picks figures to be approximately $5 million. Subtract the two players (Nick Kasa, Keith McGill) salaries (total of $1.2 million) who are bumped out of the top 51 and you have a rookie pool cap it of $3.8 million.
Update: Shortly after this posting, the Raiders reportedly released Antonio Smith. He carried a cap hit of $4 million with no dead money. Factor in Latavius Murray's $611,550 cap hit jumping back into the top 51 and you have $3.4 million in cap releif.
This is what our result is:
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