Evaluating the Best NFL Teams for the 2023 Offseason | NFL News, Rankings & Stats

• Ready to upgrade support cast: The Houston Texans and Chicago Bears enter this offseason flush with draft capital and cap space to upgrade their rosters to support the QB.

• You may be missing an upgrade. The Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins both have very talented rosters, but they enter the 2023 offseason without massive resources to further upgrade their rosters.

• Trend continuation: The New Orleans Saints, as usual, enter the offseason with the least effective cap space, but could generate more than $150 million once they complete the biggest restructuring on their veteran deal.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

After the NFL regular season ends, about half of the teams will definitely make the playoffs, while others are looking to free agency and the draft. This year’s free agency class has some headliners in specific positions, but also teams that spend a lot of money.

Here’s a look at which teams spend the most money and how teams with less cap space free up their money. Friends of Over the Cap.

Over the Cap data can be used to quantify which teams are entering the offseason with the most resources. Every team’s offseason without looking at each aspect individually, using every team’s draft funds (using the Fitzgerald-Spielberg draft value chart), valid cap space, and pro-ratatable funds You can create an off-season composite score that evaluates your resources.

The two most important variables in the offseason are draft capital and effective cap space. The latter is a better measure of cap space than regular cap space as it takes into account the team’s roster needs of his 51 players. Plotting these two variables together makes it clear which teams are the best in each area.

The Chicago Bears have the most effective cap space in the entire NFL and are well placed to spend big money this offseason. They could use that money to build an offense around Justin Fields by improving their offensive line and wide receiver units. But given that the receiver market will be as barren as it has been in recent years, the Bears will have several in free agency before using one of their first-round picks for top receivers in the 2023 NFL Draft. Depth receivers can be signed.

The Miami Dolphins went all-in for the 2022-23 season, trading Tyreek Hill last March and Bradley Chubb during the regular season. They currently have below average cap space and the worst draft capital in the league. It could have been a wasted season, so it’s good that they snuck into the playoffs this year.

The New York Giants and Baltimore Ravens should be classified as cautionary tales. Both appear to be the highest quadrants on the graph. That said, we should be bullish about their future. Both teams could franchise-tag their quarterbacks and sign them to long-term contracts, but at this point, this doesn’t explain which of them is on the roster. off season. As an interesting hypothesis, if both teams tagged their respective QBs with his franchise, it would only shift the spot on the chart by about $32.5 million. As for the Ravens, specifically, seeing this, some may be a little worried about draft capital: General Manager Eric DeCoster (former GM Ozzy, who was on the board under Newsom ) is one of the best draft picks in the NFL. Third day.

However, the effective cap space alone does not tell the whole story. Cap spaces can be created in a number of ways and are subject to change on a team-by-team basis as the March free agency tampering period approaches.

In the chart above you can see which teams could free up cap space with a rebuild. This means that players on the roster who do not have rookie contracts for the 2023 season can rebuild their contracts to free up cap space. So it does a good job of depicting the reality of the cap situation for all teams. This shows that even teams that don’t restrict space can free up space without worrying about it at all. This is also known as Mickey Loomis (General Manager of the New Orleans Saints) Operation.

Rebuildable cap space is the amount that teams tie into their base salary and non-guaranteed roster bonuses. Up to 80% of these values ​​can be converted into prorated salary bonuses.

The saints constructed covenants in a way that provided a way out, especially in the form of pro rata money. This basically refers to the process of converting roster bonuses into contract bonuses while converting up to 80% of a veteran player’s base salary. This contract bonus can be spread over the player’s contract term to quickly free up cap space. The Saints could generate more than $159 million just by rebuilding the existing veteran contracts on their roster. Not all of the $159 million is generated, but since his legendary 2017 draft class for the Saints, which saw New Orleans go all-in for his third straight season, Cap Wizard Kai his Hurley had to do this.

Not many teams can spend a lot of money to clear up the cap space. If they’re big spenders, constantly prorating their money during and after the season, they’re probably spending more money on base salaries and non-guaranteed roster bonuses.

There is also a clear negative correlation between available cap space and rebuildable cap space, as shown in the graph. This means that as teams gain more cap space, they are likely to have less rebuildable cap space.

This method works, but has obvious drawbacks. Rebuilding a player’s contract increases the chances that the team will be tied to that player for the remainder of the contract period. This is due to the dead money likely to be created once the prorated money is spread over the remaining years of the contract, and given the risk of injury from wear and tear, what the old team really commits to the player becomes difficult. their bodies.

So we looked at three variables to see how well the team was setting up for the offseason. Now use these variables to create an off-season composite score. To create a score, you need to set different weights for each variable. When setting weights, it was important to recognize the issue of draft capital over cap space, as this would allow the team to save cap space effectively. Also, the pro rata amount of money is really useful for teams like the Saints, but he’s not as important as the other two variables.

Now you can see the final offseason composite scores for all the teams, broken down by each stat, and finally the overall score.

The Houston Texans and Chicago Bears are in a great place to give quarterbacks (whoever they are to the Texans) some help this offseason, but teams like the Buffalo Bills, Saints and Dolphins are among the others. may not be as busy in the offseason as the teams in

The Kansas City Chiefs come in 11th here. Many analysts criticized the Chiefs’ hill trade, but it shows they’re in a great position to be competitive for years to come. They’ll always be competitive, but canceling Hill’s contract freed up money and allowed them to enter this offseason with enough resources to upgrade the team if needed.

Again, Chiefs fans and their front office should be delighted to spotlight this chart. Teams don’t often pay their quarterbacks the top money on the market and go into the offseason with money to use and draft money. The Giants are also well positioned for next year. However, recent reports that they are looking to bring back Jones and Squon Barkley on multi-year deals may mean they aren’t as cash-rich as they currently are in 2023.

The Seattle Seahawks are also well positioned here, spending a ton of resources building around him at QB and reinforcing some weak links on either side of the ball after making the playoffs with Geno Smith. to be even more competitive in 2023.