Over the past couple of days the Baltimore Ravens have released two of their veterans and are working to restructure nose tackle Haloti Ngata's contract. Are they setting themselves up to re-sign wide receiver Torrey Smith?
Baltimore parted ways with wide receiver Jacoby Jones and defensive end Chris Canty this week and freed up $5.96 million in cap space. The 2015 salary cap is expected to increase to about $143 million and the Ravens already have $132 million committed to next season.
One would imagine their top priority is trying to bring back Torrey Smith, even though owner Steve Bisciotti recently said the receiver might be too expensive for the team to re-sign. Smith reportedly rejected a five-year, $35 million contract with $19 million guaranteed prior to the 2014 season, so it's possible the Ravens are shedding more salaries to make room for a bigger contract to keep him around.
For the most part they were going to be in the same salary cap situation if Smith had signed that contract or not, which leads many to believe they're simply preparing to give him a few extra dollars. Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports believes $7 million per year was fair for both sides, given that Smith has not entirely emerged as a No. 1 receiving threat.
Smith actually logged career-lows in receptions (49), receiving yards (767), yards per game (47.9), yards per catch (15.7) and 100-yard games (0), but he scored a career-high 11 touchdowns. He has emerged as one of the top deep threats in the league, which is why it's believed there will be a team or two out there that will throw a lot of money at him to lure him away from Baltimore.
The 26-year-old receiver said after the team's divisional round playoff loss to the New England Patriots that he would prefer to re-sign with the Ravens before he hits the free agent market. Perhaps that's what Baltimore is looking to do, but it's getting awfully close. The deadline to use the franchise tag ($12.6 million for receivers) is this upcoming Monday (March 2) and free agency is just eight days after that.
We'll probably have a better idea of what they'll do after Ngata's contract is restructured. If they don't re-sign Smith, there will be plenty of options at the receiver position in the upcoming draft.
