Interesting Take on Team Spending

[Delhommey]

Logic suggests teams with less dead money will do better, since they can afford to pay more for current talent. But this year's playoff teams had an average of $11.1 million in dead money, $3.3 million more than the average non-playoff team. The Colts, Patriots and Texans were among the league's top five dead-money leaders.

The reason for that, said former Colts executive Bill Polian, is that perennial winners such as the Patriots have better players they want to keep. The only way to do that is to offer contracts as long as six years, even if the players are in their late 20s. "They know full well that the player will not complete the contract," Polian says. "But if you're competing for a championship, that's a thing to do."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323874204578217830553459320.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[KendrickPanther]

Part of the Panthers problem is we IR 17 guys a year. Mike Pollak? IRed in preseason? 500k cap hit! Every time we bring in a guy that's a few thousand more off the cap we can't roll over to next season.