The Baltimore Ravens are the masters of salary cap manipulation. Although the club has entered most offseasons with scant salary cap space available for use in free agency, the Ravens have managed to stay in contention during the majority of John Harbaugh’s ten year tenure as head coach by navigating the salary cap restrictions. This is quite an accomplishment considering that the Ravens have not drafted as well as usual over the few years, and also because the NFL system is designed for parity with teams encouraged to chase championships and then comprehensively rebuild their rosters.
Unfortunately, this creative cap management has resulted in some negative consequences as well.