Salary Cap Update: The Jets have the least cap space in the NFL

From one place or another we've now received all of the details of new contracts given out by the Jets in the first wave of free agency so we can assess where this leaves them in terms of their cap situation.

Here's where they currently stand:

The NFLPA database currently has the Jets at $345,918 in available cap space.

Yes, that's all. Other than the Panthers at just under half a million, the Jets are the only NFL team with under $1 million in current cap space.

How can this be, when a recent Bleacher Report article put them at $22.3 million?

Well, don't forget that the savings from the Aaron Rodgers and CJ Mosley cuts will not be credited to the cap until June 1st. That's obviously the main reason.

When that date arrives, their cap hits (about $36 million) will no longer be on the books, but dead money of about $22 million will bite, creating about $14 million of cap room which is presumably already factored into the Bleacher Report figures.

The rest of the difference will mostly be attributable to Andre Cisco's contract which has obviously now been processed by the NFLPA but had not when those figures were released.

OverTheCap.com has the figure at $26.3 million, but that also doesn't include the one-year contracts for Isaiah Oliver ($2.5 million), Kris Boyd ($1.6 million) and Derrick Nnadi ($1.4 million) the net effect of which will be about $4 million once you remove other contracts from the top 51.

So, the current cap position makes sense and we know the team has money to potentially spend on paying their rookies, making a few other moves and creating a buffer.

Of course they could wait until June to do any of this - and it's really only the top picks that have a tangible net effect on cap space anyway and these sometimes don't sign until right before camp. However, if they need to create cap space to make moves before that time, they have a few obvious avenues to do so via long-term extension or salary-to-bonus restructures.

In an emergency, they could do the latter with Quinnen Williams' contract today and realize an extra $12 million of cap space.