The Carolina Panthers still have an awful lot of the 2019 season left to play – but as the season continues to develop, it’s worth considering the context of not just what this team could be in 2020, but how the rest of the 2019 season might affect that.

The Panthers have built a roster that can be torn down after this season if they so desire, and as much as the narrative around Cam Newton will likely determine how far the Panthers go in 2019, Cam is also likely to be the determining factor in deciding the narrative for the 2020 season.

The reason for this is that the Panthers have a huge number of expiring contracts – especially on defense – and should the Cam Newton we see over the second half of this season be a shadow of the one fans have become accustomed to over the near-decade he has spent in Carolina, the front office would be in prime position to tear everything down and start their rebuild immediately. However, let’s be optimistic for a second and consider a scenario where Cam Newton comes back and looks like the pre-injury Cam Newton. What happens then?

(Don’t worry, pessimists, we’ve got you covered, too)

In this glass-half-full simulation, the Panthers would almost certainly be tasked with trying to return as many of their pending free agents as possible with a view to running things back in 2020 for another shot at a ring. However, with so many free agents – Bradberry, Thompson, Van Roten, Irvin, Williams, Addison, McCoy and Boston will all be free agents and those are just the starters – along with a less-than-immense wealth of cap space, the odds of the Panthers being able to bring everybody back are pretty much zero. So where do the Panthers stand in terms of free agents, and what might the 2020 free agency look like for the Panthers should they look to retool, rather than rebuild?

Color By Numbers

Before looking at any potential contracts, let’s first be clear about where the Panthers are from a cap space point of view going into 2020.

As things stand right now, the 2020 salary cap is expected to be around $199m (via Spotrac), with the Panthers rolling over $16m in cap space from 2019 to give a total effective cap space of $215m. However, not all of that can go on contracts, as the Panthers are also expected to have just over $10m in dead cap in 2020, almost all of which is due to Matt Kalil. This means that the Panthers have just about $205m in cap space to spend on active contracts for the 2020 season.

Should the Panthers fail to resign any of their free agents, with the players currently under contract for next season, they would have just over $47.5m in cap space left after 35 players, leaving them with just under $3m-per-player to fill out the rest of the roster. While it isn’t clear at this point exactly where the Panthers will draft and therefore how much the cap hit of those players will be – let’s throw a dart and if the Panthers end up with the 16th overall pick, the cap hit will be $6.8m for the Panthers seven draft picks.

So, in summary, if the Panthers don’t resign any of their own free agents and look to fill out their roster only with draft picks, as things currently stand, they would have $40.7m.

As Good As Signed

Of the Panthers 26 free agents – it’s worth noting that players currently on IR will contribute towards this total – eight are exclusive rights free agents (ERFAs). This means that the Panthers have the choice to resign them to one-year deals commensurate to their minimum salary, calculated based on the number of eligible seasons each player has. This essentially allows teams to resign players who are free agents having played less than three seasons in the NFL for the vet minimum.

In practice, this means the Panthers have the ability to bring back Kyle Allen, Reggie Bonnafon, Joey Slye, Damian Parms, Greg Dortch, Marcus Baugh, Kitt O’Brien and Brandon Greene for the princely sum of – by my count – $4.26m. While not all of these players are likely to make the final roster, Allen, Bonnafon and Slye all stand a good chance of doing so; this at least sets a minimum for the Panthers cap number as they enter the offseason. With all eight signed, they would have 50 players under contract with just over $36m in cap space. But is there a chance they could make this number a little bigger using some of that cap magic?

Cap Casualties And Restructuring Options

As always, the Panthers will have the chance to add to their available salary cap by either releasing players with large cap numbers but with limited remaining guaranteed money or by restructuring deals of players they plan to keep on the roster. Of course, restructuring would come at the cost of a future cap hit, but the Panthers do always have this options for the contracts of players like KK Short, Luke Kuechly and others.

As we are already assuming that the Panthers will be keeping Cam Newton around if they are going for a title in 2020, the $19m they could free up from releasing him shouldn’t be considered here. However, some other players the Panthers could at least look at negotiating into a lower number are the likes of Dontari Poe ($10m in non-guaranteed money), Greg Olsen ($8.1m), Graham Gano ($1.46m), Jarius Wright ($3m) and Tyler Larsen ($1.65) – they could all see themselves either released or pushed to take a lower number.

For Gano, it’s hard to see how the Panthers won’t either release or trade him, as while Joey Slye isn’t necessarily any better, he is a lot cheaper and lot younger. Larsen is somebody whose cap number is small enough that he likely won’t get cut until training camp, but moving on from him in terms of the final roster could free up some cap space. The final three are, however, players that the Panthers would probably ideally want to keep around.

With Olsen, there is still a very real chance that he might retire at the end of the season – in which case they could free up the full $11.8m he is owed – but if he doesn’t, the Panthers will hope that he is willing to take a pay cut to give the Panthers the best chance to compete in what would almost certainly be his final season. For Poe, the calculation is probably more simple, would he be able to get as big a contract elsewhere as he would lose out on should the Panthers end up cutting him, and would it therefore be better to take a pay cut? Poe has certainly been far more impactful this season that in his first season in Carolina, but being able to free up $10m in cap space will at least have the Panthers considering this as an option.

Wright is another interesting one – the Panthers value what he offers in terms of a rotation piece and locker room presence, but they might think that they could bring him back for less than his current 2020 cap number. As the Panthers could release him during training camp and still get the full value back, I think they probably will pick up his option for the 2020 season, but if somebody manages to usurp his as the #3 receiver during training camp, the Panthers might rethink his position.

All in all, I think the only player almost certain to be released/traded is Gano, but I do think both Poe and Olsen will be players the Panthers are keen to try and talk into taking a pay cut, even if the difference is ultimately quite small – this can be the difference between signing somebody for the vet minimum and bringing in a medium value free agent.

So Where Does That Leave Things?

What should be clear by this point is that if the Panthers do indeed look to retool for another run, they are going to be looking to save every last cent in order to try and bring back as many guys as possible. They should end up with somewhere between $40m and $55m in cap room once they have exercised the various options and either released or renegotiated a number of players, with any more than that likely being at the cost of moving on from a number of significant veterans.

Of course, with so many free agents, the Panthers are going to have to sign somebody during free agency if they want to avoid having to fill their roster out with UDFAs – with the likes of Bradberry, Addison, Thompson and McCoy all likely to get close to or exceed $8m a year in salary, there are likely going to be some tough decisions about who exactly they look to bring back, with the primary conflict likely to be between returning the defensive line or the secondary and the balance between the two, but given the amount of cap space available to them, the Panthers should be able to make sure their top free agent target returns for 2020 if they so desire – even if it’s not totally clear who that might be.

They’ll have a significant amount of cap space to work with, and the Panthers certainly aren’t in the situation they were in in the 2013 offseason where they had to effectively watch every single free agent walk to other teams, but they are going to have to move on from some players who have been regular starters over the last season at the very least.

The narrative of the 2020 offseason is going to depend a huge amount on what happens over the second half of the season, but the reality is that there are going to be changes – the question is more about how many changes, and what they are.

Vincent Richardson on Twitter
Vincent Richardson
Managing Editor at Riot Report
Fan of zone coverage, knee bend and running backs running routes. Twitter: @vrichardson444