The Jacksonville Jaguars and Oakland Raiders will enter the NFL's looming free agency period with the first and second-most cap space in the NFL.
While many media pundits expect both teams to be big players in free agency, Jason Cole of Bleacher Report says that may not be the case.
Why?
The young quarterbacks with franchise-saving potential on each team.
"Well you can basically look at the quarterbacks: Blake Bortles and Derek Carr. They're the key for both Jacksonville and Oakland to get around the spending rules. The way it works is teams are required to spend at least 89 percent over a four-year period of the salary cap. These teams are both in the lows 80s right now and have to spend a lot of money to come back up," said Cole.
"But in talking to executives around the league and executives with both teams, specifically, they're saying that you can get around this by after the 2016 season giving contract extensions to both Carr and Bortles. Now, that assumes both players are going to be good, but if you give those extensions after the 2016 season that makes up for the 89 percent, they can put this off for a while."
That's not to suggest that each team won't make a free agency splash - perhaps for soon-to-be-former Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh - it just means that whoever misses out on the massive defender won't simply spend willy-nilly on other, lesser quality free agents in order to reach the salary cap floor
"Don't expect those teams to over-spend - everyone is expecting these teams to go after Ndamukong Suh and while they may and while they may pay a lot of money, if they don't get him, they're not going to just cash in and start overspending on other free agent players along the way to cover that 89 percent."
There have been several reports linking each team to Suh - the Raiders especially. There's a fit there for both organizations - then again, with a player of Suh's caliber, any team would be a fit.
While it remains to be seen who actually ends up where once NFL free agency opens, if Cole is correct, the reports that the Jaguars and Raiders are ready for a major shopping spree may not be as accurate as previously thought.
