ARIZONA CARDINALS

Arizona Cardinals have cap money to spend, but on what?

Mar 7, 2015, 4:18 PM | Updated: 4:30 pm

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There are just a few days left before NFL free agency begins, and in the meantime teams are digging through couch cushions to get a final count of how much money they actually have to spend.

Okay, so maybe the amount the Arizona Cardinals have to work with isn’t just chump change — they’re sitting in a solid position with about $21 million to work with.

The NFL announced this week about a $10 million increase in the salary cap from last season, so each team has, at most, $143 million to spend on its entire 2015 roster.

The Cardinals carried over just over $4 million of cap space from last season and the team’s top 51 contracts are calculated at a combined total of $134.5 million. Friday, the team restructured quarterback Carson Palmer’s contract and freed up over $7 million more in room.

Therefore, Arizona has about $21 million to spend as free agency arrives — or not spend, if they so choose.

That’s plenty of money for a guy like Steve Keim to work with.

In fact, it’s sort of an unfathomable total to the average person whose idea of budgeting is not buying the second bag of barbecue chips at Circle K.

So what in the world could actually be purchased for $21 million, you know, if the Cardinals weren’t looking for offensive linemen, linebackers and running backs?

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Arizona Cardinals have cap money to spend, but on what?