Jets will end up stuck with Sheldon Richardson in 2017

The New York Jets for quite some time now have tried to trade defensive end Sheldon Richardson but have been unable to get a deal done. It looks like they’ll be stuck with him heading into the upcoming season.

The New York Jets dropped the ball last offseason by not releasing Sheldon Richardson after a litany of off-the-field incidents. Now they are stuck with him. The final two incidents are what should’ve gotten him removed from the Jets. He was suspended for the first four games of 2015 for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. That comes only if you have failed multiple times before.

After this he was quoted by Connor Orr of NFL.com:

“I told them you don’t have to worry about my name being in the news again.”

That quote came with him knowing something we didn’t know. Richardson had been pulled over by police for resisting arrest and traveling 143 MPH in his car, with a child in the back seat, and the car smelling of marijuana.

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The Jets couldn’t release Richardson at that point because of the salary cap implications. However, this offseason, they wouldn’t have been strapped with a cap hit, if they had released him in March.

According to Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk, the Jets tried trading him before the draft. However, it was to no avail.

The problem with not being able to move him is that his cap hit this year negatively effects them in 2018. The new cap rules allow teams to make adjustments based on money not spent in the previous season.

Therefore, the adjustment for the Jets will be lower. Thus, giving them a lower cap number in 2018 then they could’ve otherwise had. The problem is, that no one wants to take on that cap charge, especially given his poor performance in 2016. Now the Jets are stuck with an $8.069M cap hit.