I was originally going to do these all as one post, but they were a little longer than I anticipated so I am breaking them up. To start us off, I wanted to mention the state of the cap for both the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
As the salary cap page shows the Patriots are doing well with over $10M in cap space with no major signings on the horizon. Any deals with players already on the roster would be expected to either lessen there cap hit for this year (i.e. a possible Welker deal), or add only a small increase (i.e. the Gronk deal).
In 2013, however, the cap situation is very different. First of all, nearly 40 players on the roster are not signed after 2012, while a significant number of them are recent free agent signings that aren't necessarily likely to make the 53 man roster, there are quite a few key players that have not been extended including: Welker, Patrick Chung, Kyle Love, Sebastian Vollmer, etc. Also, Tom Brady's cap hit in 2013 is gigantic, a whopping $21.8M. This is over one sixth of the expected cap space next year. No player on the 2012 Patriots has a cap hit larger than $10M; Welker tops that list with his franchise tag at $9.5M. While a restructure or extension for Brady to reduce this huge number is not only possible, it is likely, I am going to be operating under the assumption that his contract will not be amended.
As I mentioned several key players are going to be free agents at the end of this season. I am going to present possible contracts that would seem reasonable to me. I will be trying to take into account the players skill, comparable contracts around the league, the positional depth, and other factors such as leadership and injury history. So far I have plans for: Patrick Chung, Sebastian Vollmer, Kyle Love, Julian Edelman, Kyle Arrington, Sterling Moore, Aaron Hernandez and Wes Welker. I'll be posting these throughout the week.
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