Steve Davis: Salary Cap Challenges Are Real
I was looking at the Ravens salary cap and I think one of the big issues facing the team is that their highest paid players underperformed this year. Every single one of them.
In order, here are the six highest paid guys regarding the salary cap in 2014:
Haloti Ngata
Joe Flacco
Terrell Suggs
Lardarius Webb
Ray Rice
Marshall Yanda
Ask yourself this. If any of these guys were out in the market as free agents, would they get the salaries that the Ravens have to pay them? The answer is maybe none of them.
Definitely not Ngata, Suggs and Rice.
I still think Webb is very good, and I have to assume Yanda will be too. Flacco is a QB, and that fluctuates, but if he was a free agent, he would get paid a lot.
For half of those six, however, to be overpaid and possibly past their prime is a problem for the Ravens. You need your highly paid players to be great. Rice and Flacco were cheap when the Ravens won the Super Bowl.
The Ravens are at kind of a crossroads, because they don't have money to pay other players big bucks, which means if they high salaried guys underperform again, they are in some trouble.
I doubt there are many great teams that are in this situation, having six players eat up nearly 50% of their salary cap, none of whom are close to the best at their position, at least not anymore.