[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Tomorrow? Tomorrow begins now.
With a familiar sight: a big over the cap figure.

2093, the off-season has begun and we're $56.45M over the cap. Projected we'll be $84.33M over the cap, but that's only logical. We're holding a quadruple of second round picks, which is a big factor in our $27.88M draft cost projection. It's actually not absurd, it's just barely over the league median of $21.62M. Where were the times a rookie wasn't getting a million on his first contract?

We're down one player: center Butch Pearson.
After 13 seasons of service, our 2080 first round pick has said goodbye to the IHOF. A backup as a rookie, then the starter for 10 seasons, then an injury plagued '91 season and finally last season fully back in action, after 177 regular season games and 13 playoffs games, most notably the 2085 and '91 AOC Championship games. As of today, he ranks 4th all-time amongst Merchantmen players in key run blocks. One active player (Howard Humphrey) is realistically on his tail, but it's safe to assume that a decade from now, he'll still be in the top6.

Not retired: Theodore Bondy and Kirk Hitchcock!
Bondy would have been a big hit to our offense, we're not quite ready for his replacement yet, as close as Rickey Lyle may try to think he is. We've got plenty of WR2 options, but nobody on our roster can replace Bondy, our all-time receiver by 2,998 yards now (although, I'm not sure I can rank him as our best receiver ever: J.R. Mills' 17.8 yards per catch are still third best all-time in 89 seasons of IHOF football, while Terry Haskell still has 4 touchdowns more than Theo). Still, he needs 304 receiving yards to jump into the all-time top10, while having improved to sixth in most receptions. Of course, we've thrown at him an absurd 44.1% of the time. Second highest for a player with, say, 50 or more games is 37.9% and that's for a couple of guys that are known for being thrown the ball all day long.

Hitchcock tied Peter Tucker in most interceptions for a Merchantmen player and was already far and beyond leading in passes defended (46 ahead of Tai Wayne, his 181 figure has brought him into the league's all-time top 10). But... We know Hitchcock's declining, even faster than Bondy is. He was still starting last season, but more decline would make it seriously a bad business decision to have him around at a $39.72M cap hit. Even $10M would be kind of insane, given what we're paying other players, but with a signing bonus hit of $18.63M, that's not quite possible). Bondy's cap figure is $79.68M, as special as he is, we really need to trim that by at least $30M to make it more up to his currently level (he's already accounting for $41.43M in signing bonus). Both are in the final year of contract, there's no room for creative contracts. They will each demand an unaffordable signing bonus. But these guys are legends, clear cut hall of famers. Do we have the guts to release them if we need to?


Cornerback Jackie Richardson will have to be willing to trim down on his cap figure as well. On the decline and now our second highest paid player. Can we still call this guy our shutdown corner, or has he turned into a CB2? And then there's our left tackle Nathan Hadinger, like Bondy and Hitchcock in the final year of contract, with a big cap hit in signing boni. Cap hell might be bigger than anticipated, but compared to the 2092 off-season mark being near $110M, this should be easy, right?