AFC Notes: Folk, Gilbert, Pryor, Ravens
The Jets entered the day with the second-least amount of cap space in the league, but an adjustment to their kicker’s salary will give them some breathing room.
Nick Folk agreed to convert $1.78MM of his $2.5MM base salary into a signing bonus, freeing up more than $1.18MM in cap space, Field Yates of ESPN.com reports (on Twitter). This leaves the Jets with just more than $2.17MM worth of space heading into the season; they previously had just $985K, which was ahead of only the Saints’ $465K +, according to OverTheCap.
Folk enters the season with a $1.46MM cap number.
Here is some news from around the AFC, with Week 1 approaching for 30 teams.
- Justin Gilbert‘s road-rage incident won’t affect his status for Sunday, but the strained hip flexor the second-year Browns cornerback suffered Aug. 18 might, notes Mary Kay Kabot of Cleveland.com.
- Recently cut from the Browns after initially making the roster out of the preseason, Terrelle Pryor will work out for two teams this week, according to Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. The former Ohio State and Raiders quarterback will do so as a receiver for both teams, who were not named in the report.
- Ravens rookie defensive tackle Carl Davis will replace Timmy Jernigan in the starting lineup against the Broncos due to Jernigan’s doubtful status due to a right knee injury, Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com reports. Hensley rates Davis, a third-round pick, as the team’s most impressive rookie thus far.
- Baltimore has also ruled out Breshad Perriman and Lorenzo Taliaferro, per Hensley.
Nick Folk Re-Signs With Jets
5:50pm: Folk got $12MM over four years with $2.1MM guaranteed, tweets Joel Corry of CBSSports.com. His ’14 cap number is $3.6MM, a small increase over the ~$3.5MM it was with the franchise tag.
4:36pm: The Jets have re-signed kicker Nick Folk to a multi-year deal, according to Randy Lange of NewYorkJets.com.
Folk, who hit with the franchise tag in late February, had his his best season in a long time in 2013, hitting game-winning field goals in the season opener against Tampa Bay, on the road against Atlanta, and at home in overtime against New England. He remains among the NFL’s top three most accurate fourth-quarter kickers of the past 24 seasons, with his 92.2% career rate (47-for-51) trailing only Stephen Gostkowski (96.9%) and Denver’s Matt Prater (94.0%).
Jets Use Franchise Tag On Nick Folk
The Jets have officially placed their franchise tag on Nick Folk, the team announced today in a press release. The exact franchise figure for kickers isn’t known yet, but it figures to be in the neighborhood of $3.4MM. That would represent a sizable raise for Folk, who earned $780K in 2013.
In addition to making all 27 of his extra-point tries in 2013, Folk converted on 33 of 36 field goal attempts, including three game-winners. His 91.7% rate for the season was a career-high, and the first time since 2008 that his conversion rate was higher than 80%.
As Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News points out (via Twitter), no kickers received the franchise tag a year ago, but five kickers were designated as franchise players in 2012. The tag can be appealing for teams with free agent kickers, since the salary is so modest.