New England Patriots: Salary Cap Savvy?

Randy Moss and Tom Brady get all the headlines, but do they get all the money? Let's see if the heralded Patriots Front Office staff lives up to the billing in looking at the distribution of how they spend their cap dollars. Let's start with the offensive numbers:

Offense

• Line - 14 %
• QB - 12.4%
• WR - 11.9%
• RB - 6.9%
• TE - 2.1%

You can see how the Patriots have leveraged well constructed rookie contracts with their offensive linemen and running backs to keep their cap numbers. Tom Brady eats up 12 percent of the cap number himself, but it is still a good deal. Moss and Welker both have cap-friendly deals that spread the hits pretty evenly.

Defense

• Line - 15.8%
• LB - 11.1%
• DB - 8.3% (Fernando Bryant not included)

Bill Belichick likes big guys. There are less linemen on the roster, but they make substantially more on average than their defensive counterparts. Three first-rounders manning the trenches contributes to this, but even two of the backups, Mike Wright and Jarvis Green, either make more or as much as guys like Tedy Bruschi. With Asante gone, the DB number has gone substantially.

Others

• K/P - 1%
• Dead Money - 7.4%
• Cap Room - 9%

Corey Dillon's generous contract contributed 3.85 million to the "dead money" amount, while Roosevelt Colvin and Kyle Brady contributed $1.8 and $1.0 million, respectively. The 10+ million dollars of cap room should be enough to sign our rookies, but look for a creative deal if we end up picking at No. 7.

Tom and Randy got theirs, but you can see that the Patriots' priority lies within inches of the ball on the offensive and defensive line. Mr. Pioli and company have lived up to their reputation.