Titans get under cap with $6M to spare
By Terry McCormick, tmccormick@nashvillecitypaper.com
March 03, 2006
Last year, Tennessee Titans General Manager Floyd Reese was searching under the couch cushions looking for cap space after having to release six players in a major off-season purge.
After going through that, making Thursday’s moves to get under the $94 million cap, Reese must have felt like he’d just won the lottery.
Not only did the Titans squeeze under the cap by releasing just one player — 13-year veteran tackle Brad Hopkins, who was let go Wednesday — they managed to hang on to quarterback Steve McNair, despite a ridiculously high cap number and still have about $6 million to spend in free agency.
“We went through and we had a tough time. We purged, we got past that,” Reese said. “We said this year we’d be 100 percent better off. We are 100 percent better off.
“We will be able to participate in free agency. We will not be a big player, but we will be able to participate.”
With free agency pushed back until Sunday at 5 p.m., the Titans could come out big winners with a new collective bargaining agreement over the weekend. It would give them about $10 million more to spend in free agency.
As reported Thursday in The City Paper, the Titans declined the $50 million option bonus on McNair’s contract Wednesday night and now must pay a $1 million non-exercise clause to keep McNair if no new contract can be agreed upon by Sept. 1. That voided the final three years of McNair’s contract back to 2006, meaning he could head into free agency after the upcoming season.
However, the most amazing part of the current situation is McNair’s cap figure. According to McNair’s agent, Bus Cook, who double-checked the cap hit with the NFLPA, the quarterback’s 2006 cap hit is $23.463 million or roughly 25 percent of the Titans’ cap space.
Full article
http://nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?se...s&news_id=48253
