Because 30+ guys are in the bargain bin & Ballard is a dumpster diver.

Gotta be a reason they seem to be out on Blackmon

I get the feeling that JB wants to play for another team. No reason; just a gut feeling.

Dolphins get Kendall Fuller two years at $16.5 million.

Two rich for Bargain bin Ballard.

Kendall Fuller?

Yes. Sorry.

So serious question. I feel like I've been a fan of the NFL for ages but the salary cap eludes me.

The last number I looked said the Colts have like $29 million of cap space, but perhaps it's not accurate given Rigo is showing as no cap hit and they just re did his contract.

But let's say the cap was at $20 million. What exactly is the advantage of hording that cap money? Like does it keep rolling over to the point that Ballard will get a high quality FA? And if Ballard doesn't believe in high quality FAs, does it have a benefit in signing their own players? And if it has that benefit but there's money left over, does it have any benefit at all? Like does he get some sort of bonus from Irsay or does Irsay get richer or something?

I'm not trying to make this a Ballard bash fest, or say that they need to be out there spending or whatever, I'm just legitimately trying to know if that cap space is being maximized in any way.

It does continue to roll over year over year. For example, the current NFL Salary Cap is $255,400,000, however the Colts' team salary cap is $259,832,808 because the Colts had $4,432,808 of cap space at the end of the 2023 league year. So, if the Colts end up with $20 million of cap space at the end of this season, using the current projected 2025 cap number of $260,000,000, the Colts team cap in 2025 would be $280,000,000.

First of all, Ballard is not "hoarding cap money." That is a myth. He is spending it. He has doled out about $200M in contracts just in the last few days.

But yes, if a team does not use cap money during a season, that money is rolled over to the next league year. The unused cap for the Colts last year was like $ 4 - 7M (different websites show slightly different estimates) and it has been added to this year's cap space. So only 2 or 3 percent of the cap last year went unused. And that is a fairly typical number - it is usually somewhere under $10M. Again, not hoarding.

I realize that fans want him to spend more on external free agents. It is obvious that he doesn't like doing that - and I can understand the philosophy to a certain degree. I think he is more comfortable using the cap space on the Colts own free agents and "betting on them" because he knows so much more about them. However, his philosophy hasn't always worked out for him because sometimes the re-signed Colts underperformed vs the second (or third) contract. In those cases, it was usually injury-related - Leonard is a good example.

So, the issue is not necessarily that Ballard is "cheap" or not spending the money - he is spending the money. The question should be is he spending the money wisely?

Each team also has to spend at least a certain percentage of the current years salary cap, no idea what this number is though. So you couldn't get away with only paying your players $150m, and roll over an enormous amount of money to the following year.