Free Agency thread for Raiders and league-wide

[RunOverByHubbard]

Free agency opens March 11. CBS Sports has their top 50 ranking. No Raiders on the list. I am surprised at a couple rated high - Aaron Rodgers and Daniel Jones. Lots of wide receivers

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/earl ... ng-top-50/

[Attyla]

Again, there is always a point with a player like that where the reward outweighs the risk. Carter was a big reason the Eagles won the superbowl in 2025.

He def has plenty of red flags though. Not to mention, he's not really a good fit for us anyway.

And the character guys are also out there. Good players with good character are always preferred so you go after them and they tend to cost more but I will pay more for that combo

[Cruisin with Tooz]

120 million doesnt go as far as youd like when you have 24 free agents. Maybe 7 of the 10 draft choices makes the team for 20 million. That leaves 100 million to fill 17 spots. Sign 3 players at 20 million each and your down to 40 million for 14 spots yet to be filled. So if you sign a C, a WR and an OG, how do you get any big ticket defensive help?

[Attyla]

120 million doesnt go as far as youd like when you have 24 free agents. Maybe 7 of the 10 draft choices makes the team for 20 million. That leaves 100 million to fill 17 spots. Sign 3 players at 20 million each and your down to 40 million for 14 spots yet to be filled. So if you sign a C, a WR and an OG, how do you get any big ticket defensive help?

don't we have to spend quite a bit more than that due to prior year offsets?

[Cruisin with Tooz]

don't we have to spend quite a bit more than that due to prior year offsets?

IDK

[FLORIDARAYDAH]

120 million doesnt go as far as youd like when you have 24 free agents. Maybe 7 of the 10 draft choices makes the team for 20 million. That leaves 100 million to fill 17 spots. Sign 3 players at 20 million each and your down to 40 million for 14 spots yet to be filled. So if you sign a C, a WR and an OG, how do you get any big ticket defensive help?

That's what Raider fans seem to miss every year. They look at huge cap space but don't look at how many spots we have to fill. They think we can over pay the top 5 FAs with room to spare. We usually have so much space because so many crap players were on short term deals and have to be replaced.
It's nice we have a lot of cap room but it's not as much as people think

[chucker]

The cap space seems to vanish quicker than you'd expect. However if you have good players to spend it on, you can always find more money. There's always money in the banana stand.

[Xramfan]

Ive got silver dollars burning a hole in my pocket….any FA betting?

[chucker]

I always think if you have a hole or two that you absolutely need to fill, then pursue it early in FA if there's a quality guy at those positions and overpay if you need to (newsflash, you'll need to overpay).

Then you can fill a lot more with lower cost players who got overshadowed by the top guys. You're not even done FA until after the draft - every year there are some quality players let go to save cap after a team drafted a replacement.

It doesn't usually pay to try to line up a bunch of big FA contracts in the same year. I saw one list of FAs that had the Raiders as the most likely landing spot for a ton of guys - I didn't bother to add up what that cost but it would have been insane. What's weird is that the list was done by a Bengals guy.

[Cruisin with Tooz]

So whats this about extra back money we have to spend? How much is it? And if its only available this year how does it help us sign someone to a 4 year deal?

[SkullCrusher]

If Carter is up for trade, I'm assuming the Eagles want one of those 2 first round pick deals. Then it would be Max for Jalen.

[Attyla]

So whats this about extra back money we have to spend? How much is it? And if its only available this year how does it help us sign someone to a 4 year deal?

if it is there, you front load a contract

[chucker]

So whats this about extra back money we have to spend? How much is it? And if its only available this year how does it help us sign someone to a 4 year deal?

I'm not sure what you're talking about. We do have a certain amount we have to spend in cash this season because we are well below the cash spending floor - which is a 4 year percentage of the cap and this is the final year. That's cash, not cap, and we'll easily hit it because our rookie class will cost so much more in cash than it will cost in cap (for example, Mendoza will cost about $10 million against the cap as a rookie, but will get something like $35 million in cash this year).

We have a ton of cap space to spend. We also have cash. We need to find good players to spend it on who want to play for the Raiders. If we get two big ticket players, that will be a nice haul. I hope one is Linderbaum but if it isn't then you move on and improve elsewhere. Beyond that, you look for guys who are good fits within your system.

[Cruisin with Tooz]

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Unspent cap money carried over I assume. Atylla brought it up.

[GoodTimeCharlie]

4 hours and 25 minutes.

[Southshield]

4 hours and 25 minutes.

more like 16 hours 14 minutes at 4:44 PM PST