Two big moves need to be accounted for, one of which effects the cap considerably. Of course Manuwai's contract extension is one of them, and as you can see he signed up for the next five years. Now this move doesn't effect the cap this year because Manuwai's base salary doesn't change, and because the extension came after the deadline for amortization to count in part this year. That means that whatever bonus money he did receive will be split up over the next five years. Hopefully we'll learn more about this extension soon as I begin the work of transfering over all of the '06 numbers to '07, but for right now I'm concerned with clarifying where the Jaguars ended up to conclude '06.

The other move was the $8.4 mil LTBE given to Kenny Pettway. Since he did not record six INTs in Kansas City, this money is "credited" onto the Jaguars adjusted '07 cap. The base cap for the league is set at $109 mil for 2007 (it's $116 mil for 2008). At the end of the year the NFL Management Council will look at how many LTBEs were not earned by Jaguars players along with how many NLTBEs were earned and not accounted for. I now believe that all of this money will be credited to the cap with nothing subtracted, meaning their adjusted cap will be $117.4 mil.

This is a change from what I was thinking last year at this time, and it may also help to explain why my latest cap estimates were so low (my last estimate above was $5.5 mil under, but they must have had at least $8.4 mil available to account for the incentive). In one of Vic's recent Q&As (quoted above in this thread) he seemed to imply that NLTBEs actually do count when met provided there is enough cap space, and since the Jaguars have had plenty of cap space I'll now assume that these incentives have been accounted for. So I no longer believe I need to subract money for NLTBE incentives met by Taylor or anyone else. If anyone has reason to believe I'm wrong about NLTBEs counting when met if money is available, then please speak up so I can revert back to how I've been doing the cap in past years.

On my spreadsheet to account for how much I was off I simply changed my "unknown" figures. Instead of showing $500,000 in "unknown salary," I'm now showing $2.5 mil in "unknown savings." Then in my "incentives" column I added the $8.4 mil for Pettway's LTBEs, and with other slight adjustments not worth mentioning I'm now showing the Jaguars at $12,000 under the cap. That's a negligible amount meaning they've speant their cap.

'02 Check out my CAP_INFO, and join my new WEBSITE. Coach Del Rio: "Respect every opponnent, and fear nobody."

This means that three players who finished the season on the squad won't be on the roster. The three who didn't make it are RB DeAndra Cobb, LB Kevis Coley, and WR Chad Owens. I think it's safe to assume that all three are gone and won't be with us next year.

'02 Check out my CAP_INFO, and join my new WEBSITE. Coach Del Rio: "Respect every opponnent, and fear nobody."

• $2.35 mil - 1st and 3rd round picks
• $1.85 mil - 1st round pick
• $1.3 mil - 2nd round pick
• $850,000 - round drafted

The Jaguars have several key free agents they'd like to retain so it's important to consider the tender you'd need to offer them in order to do so. Keep in mind that loopholes now exist that if a team does want a player they can make it almost impossible for the original team to match their offer. For instance, they can state that bonus money is guaranteed if he plays in two games in Jacksonville meaning the Jaguars would likely not want to match such an offer. So you have to make sure that the compensation if the player is lost is worth it.

The Jaguars restricted free agents (along with the round theyw ere drafted in) are...

• Quinn Gray (not drafted)
• Bobby McCray (7th round)
• Josh Scobee (5th round)
• Ernest Wilford (4th round)
• Jorge Cordova (3rd round)
• Ahmad Carroll (1st round)

I previously thought that Brian Jones and Elton Patterson were RFAs as well, but according to Vic they're not. I assume they're not because this season ended up not being accrued for them. These two were placed on the waived-injured list at first, and then more recently were placed on IR. Players can still accrue a season while on IR, but I believe in their case they were not on IR for enough weeks to qualify.

I'd expect the Jaguars to offer both Gray and McCray at least the first round tender. Scobee should at least get the 2nd round tender. The other four should all get the minimum qualifying tender since the round they were drafted in would be worth the pick.

'02 Check out my CAP_INFO, and join my new WEBSITE. Coach Del Rio: "Respect every opponnent, and fear nobody."

I would tend to think that the only one there that would get any real play would be McCray. I would definately go with the first round option on him. Depending on what the long term plans for QG are I would not think he would get anything over a second along with JS.

It does seem like somewhat of a farce to allow this type of manuevring, but putting a stop to it is easier said that done. How would you propose wording a rule to ban this action without altering how LTBEs work?

'02 Check out my CAP_INFO, and join my new WEBSITE. Coach Del Rio: "Respect every opponnent, and fear nobody."

Garrard has so many incentives in his cotract that he likely reached some of them, although it's hard to know anything about them. How much? What were they? Were they LTBE or NLTBE? I still don't even know if my guess is right that NLTBEs count immediately if there is money to cover them. I always heard that they count against the following years cap, and it was just how Vic worded one of his Q&As that makes me think otherwise. If traded, any incentives deamed LTBE for '07 would become an additional savings, but there's not much more I can do to speculate on that.

David's dead money is simpler to figure out. If released, David's base cap hit (without incentives figure in) would drop from $1.5 mil to a $1 mil dead money hit.

Byron's cap hit is tougher to figure out. I keep hearing it reported how he has a $5.2 mil salary in '07. I think that refers to his base salary after an escalator is tacked on, but it might instead refer to his overall cap hit. For now I'm assuming that's what his base salary is going to be, which in turn has me estimating a cap hit of $7.02 mil. Again it's tough to know if incentives work into Byron's contract, although his incentives were mostly high-end wherein he likely hasn't earned any. Last year he counted an additional $500,000 "playing-time bonus" that I'm guess won't count this year.

Leftwich's dead money if traded should be $5,333,000. If I'm right about his cap hit being $7.2 mil, this represents a savings of roughly $1.9 mil. But that's a whole lot of dead money which is something teams often go out of their way to avoid. Also, if the $5.2 mil figure actually represents his total cap hit, then this means trading him will actually cost the team money against the cap.

'02 Check out my CAP_INFO, and join my new WEBSITE. Coach Del Rio: "Respect every opponnent, and fear nobody."