As free agency looms, teams will continue to make moves to free up cap space before the March 10th deadline at 4PM EST, and every general manager will eye their franchise’s cap situation and determine if a player brings the right value to their team. Since a team’s top ten salaries take up on average about 55% of their $140 million cap, those players will be the first place management evaluates for cap casualties. Those players that do not measure up will either be cut, have their contract reworked, or will be traded.

Careful consideration has to be given to a player’s performance, their contract, and dead money hit. It does no good for a team to cut an underperforming player if his dead money hit is too large. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Cortez Allen graded out at 109th of 111 cornerbacks. Allen’s cap hit for 2015 is $7 million and if they cut him, the Steelers would still take a $5.4 million dead money hit against their cap. It is not likely that they could find another cornerback to replace Allen for under the $1.6 million savings (cap hit – dead money).

Pro Football Focus (PFF) grades each player at every position, and the PFF positions were used for each player. For example, Baltimore Ravens Haloti Ngata is normally listed as a defensive tackle but he played more snaps at defensive end in 2014 according to PFF.

Overthecap.com and spotrac.com provide cap information and where that player ranks among his position in salary. Amount of cap space created from the cut is the difference between the cap hit and dead money.

* indicates the team is likely not to make cuts among their top ten salaries and this player would be the best target. Some teams have multiple targets listed as cap casualties.

Check out 2014’s 32 Cuts That Should Happen and see how many cuts Down and Distance accurately predicted.

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