Ramifications looking at part of the story:
Cut (or restructure) Finnegan. Dahl and Wells are vulnerable. Would that give us more than $10 million ($12-$15?). We don't have to extend Quinn in 2014 (2015 option). Though there are the rookies to account for, currently slotted at 1.2 and 1.13 (reason #111 why it is a good thing to trade down if not too far, to be able to have more cap friendly contracts, leaving more money to be players in free agency - Belichick gets a second, third and fourth to move down a few spots from the 1.31, and MIN did get a keeper in Patterson, than NE gets a ridiculous athlete in the second with former safety/OLB/MLB/DE in Jamie Collins, who broke the Combine broad jump record previously held by Calvin Johnson I think - about 11'7"?).
Here are some excerpts I posted from a different thread.
Player Cap Figure 2014 - 2013
Sam Bradford 17,610,000 - 12,595,000 =
+5,015,000
Chris Long 14,700,000 - 8,750,000 =
+ 5,950,000
James Laurinaitis 10,400,000 - 12,400,000 =
-2,000,000
Cortland Finnegan 10,000,000 - 10,400,000 =
-400,000
Jake Long 9,250,000 - 4,250,000 =
+5,000,000
Jared Cook 7,000,000 - 4,000,000 =
+3,000,000
Scott Wells 6,500,000 - 6,500,000 =
0
Kendall Langford 6,000,000 - 6,000,000 =
0
Harvey Dahl 4,000,000 - 2,750,000 =
+1,250,000
William Hayes 3,845,000 - 2,050,000 =
+1,840,000
Robert Quinn 3,002,390 - 3,002,390 =
0
Tavon Austin 2,897,955 - 2,318,364 =
+579,591
Michael Brockers 2,596,908 - 2,164,090 =
+432,818
Alec Ogletree 1,597,735 - 1,278,188 =
+319,547
So all those pink ones are increases (23,386,956). Plus we need money for signing our draftees and a cushion. From this you can get a good idea who we'd need to cut.
$31.4 million (includes the draftee salaries of $8 Million and the inseason cushion of about about $2 million minus JL's CAP decrease of $2 million) in the hole before we cut anyone.
Cut Dahl, Finn, Wells and we save $20.5 million. Only $10.9 million left to find by my calculations.
The CAP is supposed to go up a little this year ($3 million?) but we're still more than $7.9 million ($5.9 million if we forget about the cushion) in the hole
if we forget about the injury cushion. Of course that's not all of the 51 top salaries but they comprise the largest ones.
Can't sign anyone before we get into positive territory.