Oakland Raiders: 3 Reasons why they should tank 2018 season

3. Tanking Pays

The advantages of tanking are wide and vast. But here are a few that will hit home with Raiders’ fans.

Disclaimer: The only other team to tank in the NFL has been the 2016-17 Cleveland Browns. Thus, there will be multiple references to their tank and rebuild along the way.

First, tanking will clear cap space. The salary cap is a weird and magical thing. The key to tanking is the ability to roll over unused cap space. Every team has a certain amount of money allotted to use on the salary cap. They cannot go over, but they can go under. The unused amount is added to the next season’s cap.

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For example, in 2015 the Cleveland Browns were just like this year’s Raiders. They had a lot of middle class veterans on high end contracts. Their cap space for that year was roughly 17 million. That money rolled into the 2016 Browns cap space.

In 2016, the Browns began to tank. They cut or traded of their high priced talent. They filled the roster with numerous rookies they acquired by trading the second overall pick in the draft to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles got their man. The Browns got their picks. As a result, the Browns had roughly $50 million in cap space. That cap space rolled over into the 2017 salary cap.

In 2017, the Browns did the exact same thing. They cut more veterans and brought in more rookies via the draft. The Browns continued to trade out of high draft positions to acquire more picks. As a result, they built a young, highly athletic and inexpensive team. At the end of the season they rolled over $60 million into the 2018 salary cap.

As a result, while the Raiders had spent $167 million in salaries leaving them roughly $6 million in cap space, the Browns had spent $160 million (only seven less than the Raiders) in salaries leaving them roughly $60 million in cap space. The difference is all the unused cap dollars that rolled over year after year.

Literally, tanking pays. It allows money to roll over year and year. The roll over put the Browns in position to pay top dollar for free agents when they were ready to win. The Raiders need to do the same.

But that is one advantage to tanking. What is another?