Giants finish 2013 season with only $24,947 in available cap space

The Giants made their final three roster moves of the 2013 season on Christmas day, when they placed Safety Cooper Taylor on season-ending Injured Reserve for the last game (a split in his salary kicked in as a result, netting the Giants an additional $6,882.35 in cap room to work with), promoted OG Eric Herman from their Practice Squad to the 53-man roster, & signed CB Travis Howard to their Practice Squad. As a result, the Giants went from having $41,888 in available cap space, as per the NFLPA's public League Cap Report website, to having $24,947 in remaining available cap space---dead last in the entire league (assuming the 12 playoff teams don't suffer through more injuries than is humanly possible in the next few weeks during the playoffs). Check out how I arrived at this figure below:

Now, the NFLPA doesn't always update their database as quickly a they should. These transactions took place late in the afternoon/early evening on Wednesday, December 25th. The next day was a work day for the NFL, so these figures should have been updated then by the NFLPA. They weren't actually uploaded into the NFLPA's database until yesterday---9 days after they should have been. The fact that this figure wasn't updated by the NFLPA the next day, as one would expect, is not indicative of the fact that the 3 aforementioned transactions didn't take place. All it means is that their database wasn't updated, as was frequently the case throughout the summer and at points during the regular season not counting weekends and the evenings (the NFL workday is Monday through Friday from 8 am ET - 4 pm ET).

Now, as I've been pointing out all season long, ever since Jason Fitzgerald did so on his website (OverTheCap.com), the real and constantly updated Salary Cap figures are maintained by the NFL Management council. They hardly ever see the light of day, except in only a few instances (like this one). As far as the Giants' cap numbers are concerned, I've listed them in my previous post from 4 days ago on New Year's Eve titled "Final Cap numbers for all players on the Giants in 2013 (including Dead Money)".

The NFLPA's public League Cap Report website corresponds to mine with respect the Giants having 74 players whose current contracts count towards the 2013 salary cap, not counting Dead Money considerations. They carried over exactly $1,000,000 from 2012 into 2013, ranking them 26th out of 32 teams in this category, as I write about previously (click HERE to read about it). The Giants' remaining cap room amount of $24,947 this year at the end of the season ranks them 32nd out of 32 teams in the NFL. According to the NFLPA's public records, the Giants spent $124,066,337 in cap dollars in the 2013 season, which was $24,947 short of their adjusted cap threshold. I was $612,674 short of this amount since I had them pegged as having spent $123,453,663 in cap dollars in the 2013 season.

These figures are estimates, but not to toot my own horn--which I'll do anyway--but I was very accurate with my estimated figures, 99.51% to be exact. Where I came up a little short was most likely due to missed workout bonuses, as pointed out to me by a source. In any case, these numbers were pretty damned close. Kudos to Jason Fitzgerald and OverTheCap.com's 2013 Giants team salary cap page for the assist in keeping track of all this information, without which this blog would seriously suffer.