Looks like the Giants restructured another contract

The topic of the Giants' cap number came up today on Twitter between @GiantsGab and myself. Here's the exchange:

Twitter Exchange earlier this afternoon

This was brought up because the NFLPA's Leaguewide Cap Report website had the Giants listed as being over the salary cap (they have the Giants listed as being -$71,052 incidentally). They needed extra salary cap room after placing Center David Baas on season ending IR, & then signing Center/OG Dallas Reynolds to fill his roster spot (Reynolds's cap number by the way is going to be $282,353). I explained why that could be, and then tweeted Jason Fitzgerald about form my favorite and the absolute best salary cap site out there, OverTheCap.com, and he responded by writing the following:

Why the NFLPA listed the Giants as being over the cap

As Jason pointed out, someone was restructured, but we may not find out who that player was until Monday on account of league transactions not being made official through the weekend (Regular business hours in the NFL are 8 am to 4 pm ET). This further reinforces the point that the NFLPA's figures aren't 100% accurate for a number of reasons. The Salary Cap accounting figures maintained by the NFL Management Council are really the only absolutely correct Salary Cap figures that are out there, as Jason Fitzgerald pointed out this past Summer, and they hardly ever get leaked.

As far as the restructuring possibilities are concerned, I wonder if it is was Rolle on account of his not liking his contract restructured or otherwise tampered with in any way. The other possibility is Eli or maybe even Snee again since there is no rule against restructuring a player on IR according to what Joel Corry told me when I asked him via e-mail.

I don't think the restructure is for much for one reason: the Giants are taking a pay as you go approach to managing their in-season salary cap needs. By doing so, they're wisely preventing any unnecessary Dead Money from being added on to the books in future years. Next year--unlike this year--the Giants are going to have a lot of money to play with. They only have 35 players under contract in 2014 for $107,694,673 and only $389,298 in Dead Money. Click HERE to see the figures for all 32 teams next year courtesy of overthecap.com's Salary Cap Spending Estimates for 2014.

Without getting into further details (I'll elaborate on that in an upcoming post in the next few days), the Giants will have lots of room to operate next year. They don't want to compromise their free cap space on account of this apparently lost season. The Giants will try their best to wade through this season.

Even if they do get lucky, and somehow win a piss poor NFC East--a la the 2010 Seahawks who won the NFC West with a 7-9 record--the Giants as an organization know that they have to re-tool their roster around Eli Manning's remaining 5 to 8 years. They'll be doing this through rebuilding their Offensive Line and Linebackers (amongst other positions). Stay tuned until Monday to see who it is that they restructured and how much the Giants gained in cap room as a result. If I had to guess, I'd say that the restructure came from someone besides "the Bank of Eli", but we'll know for sure on Monday.