The Baltimore Ravens have done a good job of freeing up some money just before free agency starts in order to accommodate their recent acquisitions. The nearly tripled their salary cap space to around $11.8 million through cuts. That has helped them sign wide receivers John Brown and Ryan Grant along with tendering all of their exclusive rights free agents. According to Brian McFarland, that’ll take them down to $3.5 million left.

But it’s not enough. Not by a long shot.

According to Over The Cap, the Ravens’ current draft picks will cost $6.7 million to sign. Luckily they’re a standardized rate these days and although draft picks are cheap by NFL terms, they’re far from inconsequential on the salary cap. Just by that measure, Baltimore would be more than $3 million over the cap.

That’s before trying to retain center Ryan Jensen, potentially adding in more depth on the offensive line, a backup quarterback or a cover linebacker. Any of those moves would add millions to the bill and the Ravens have to come up with a few extra on top of that just for wiggle room in case of injuries throughout the season.

All that boils down to a contract getting restructured soon. While there are still some potential cuts to be made, they won’t make much of a dent in the amount of money needed to be made up. However, restructuring some of the heavier contracts Baltimore has on its payroll is a sort of piggy bank scenario that can quickly create cash.

The top contenders for a restructured contract are quarterback Joe Flacco, safety Tony Jefferson and defensive tackle Brandon Williams. Each of these players have higher cap hits in 2018, meaning there’s more money to pull out. But this also means a higher cap hit in the future too.

See, when a contract is restructured, it really just turns a portion of the current salary into a bonus that gets pro-rated over the next five years. So while it might free up cap space right now, it’ll mean more dead money long term. Thus, the difficult decision on who should be asked to restructure and who shouldn’t.

Williams just restructured his deal in September. It’s the deal he signed last offseason, making it a pretty big concern if they’d have to restructure it twice in a matter of months. Still, it could free up nearly $5.8 million right now. If Baltimore believes Williams is a long-term player for them, it might be worth doing. But it will boost his salary cap hit and ensure he’s untouchable until 2021.

Jefferson was also signed just last offseason to a long-term deal. Much like Williams, if the Ravens think he’ll be around for a while, a restructure there would free up more than $3 million immediately. But that would also make him practically uncuttable until 2020 and even then, he’d have a hefty amount of dead money on his contract. If his contract is left alone, he still likely sticks around until 2020 but cutting him would free up $7 million at that point.

Flacco is the one most fans likely have their eyes on. His large contract and $24.75 million cap hit makes him the easiest target. It also makes up the largest amount of money freed up if restructured to its fullest extent. If restructured, Flacco adds $8.2 million to the salary cap. But the negative side effects are he definitely can’t be touched in 2019 and 2020 isn’t a whole lot better. It also inflates his salary cap hit the next two years by about $2.75 million each. For Flacco, it’d be the textbook definition of the idiom “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and only haunt the team next year.

And extension has to come soon. Where and how much are questions only the Ravens can answer. But now it’s a matter of who they feel is a long-term answer and who they might not want to tie themselves to any longer than absolutely necessary.