Since the announcement yesterday revealing the Atlanta Falcons restructured the contract of LT Jake Matthews, converting base salary into signing bonus and creating about $7.1M in 2023 salary cap space, there has been a lot of speculation about why the Falcons made this move, and what the team will do with their newly acquired cap space.
Some of the speculation floating around social media has suggested that the Falcons created more cap space to upgrade the offensive line, and earlier today The Morning Shift explained why that is probably not the case.
“It ain’t happening there. There’s only one position on the offensive line where that’s even a thought at this point, and it’s the center. It’s the only one, everybody else is locked up on contracts or your rookie, Matt Bergeron, and you want him to develop, so the only spot is center.” Mike Johnson said.
Beau followed up Mike’s point by talking about the other options the Falcons have with their cap space.
“The other thing I think it could be is once we get into October around that trade deadline, which I think is in November maybe, maybe early November, is they could go get a higher gun, and that could be honestly on the other side of the ball.” Morgan said.
Beau continues by saying Is there a higher gun , a guy on a one or two year deal left, you could go trade for to play the linebacker spot, maybe you’re not getting what you want out of Nate Landman and Andre Smith, maybe you go and find a higher gun to come in as an edge rusher.
Beau finishes his thought by saying “That could be a situation where you’ve cleared cap space to pay whatever the remaining would be on that salary, and you can use that. That is something we shouldn’t rule out at this point in the season.”
The best news out of all of this is the fact that the Falcons have cap space to make moves if necessary. I’m sure most Falcons remember just a few years ago when the Falcons had no cap space to do anything, so whatever the move is, Atlanta has plenty of cap space to make it a quality move.
