From Matthew Cohen / SNYGiants contributor:

When one looks at the salary cap situation for the Giants as well as the starters that they have under contract, it quickly becomes apparent that Jerry Reese will have a very challenging offseason

First, let’s look at the 31 meaningful players that the Giants currently have under contract as well as their salary cap hits for 2013.

Before launching into this, I want to mention that the salary cap hit for each player equals their actual cash salary and annual bonuses plus any signing bonuses averaged over the life of the contract. So if you have an annual salary of $3 million plus a $10 million bonus and a 5 year contract, your cap hit is $3 million plus $2 million ($10 million bonus divided by 5 years) for a total of $5 million.

If you cut a player, you take a salary cap hit equal to the remaining years of the contract times the annual bonus cap charge. In the above example, if the player were cut after year 3 of the contract, the cap hit would be 2 years at $2 million or $4 million. The team would only save $1 million in year 4 (against the cap) by cutting the player. Obviously, players and agents know how much cap pain a team will incur if they cut them so the higher the cap hit, the less likely a player is to take a salary cut.

So that’s 31 players with a total cap hit of $114,764,223 (including the practice squad cost of $665,600). If Webster and Canty get cut, that goes down to $101,739,223 for 29 players.

So how hard is that to deal with? Well the Giants are missing….

1. a starting tight end (Bennett is a free agent)
2. a second starting wideout (Cruz is a free agent)
3. a left tackle (Beatty is a free agent)
4. a starting left guard (Boothe is a free agent)
5. a second cornerback (Webster will be cut)
6. a starting safety (Brown is a free agent)
7. a kicker (Tynes is a free agent).

They will also need another 17 players on top of those 29 and 7 to fill out the roster.

Let’s look at what the Giants important free agents will be worth on the free market.

So if the Giants want to sign all of the above, it will cost them in the range of $29,000,000. Which they don’t have.

Before we go on any more, we should discuss how teams can fudge their cap at the margins to shift costs to future years. This is, of course, dangerous because the salary cap doesn’t look like it will grow by more than 5-8% per year. Well run teams, like the Giants, don’t do this much because when you have to pay the piper in future years, you have to cut everyone who can be cut and you go 1-15.

So you can fudge in 2 main ways. The first is to back end salary amounts. So if a player is to be paid $15 million in salary over 5 years, you can pay $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million and $5 million. This reduces the year 1 cap hit by $2 million. Players don’t love this because salaries are generally not guaranteed and they face a risk that they will be cut before getting the higher numbers in later years. The second way is to pay a large signing bonus. The bonus is spread out over the contract. Players love this because they keep the cash no matter what. The problem is that if you cut the player, you face a big cap hit. Obviously, these 2 strategies can be combined.

So how bad is this for Big Blue? Well, it’s pretty bad. To give some context, last year the Giants had 1 hole out of the 24 starting positions (11 offense, 11 defense, punter, kicker): the tight end spot, which was filled by the signing of Bennett. This year, they have 7 holes. Plus, 2 nominal starters, Diehl and Tuck had poor 2012 seasons. If you cut them, you have 9 holes.

The Giants do not like to start rookies for the obvious reason that they need time to learn their system. The Giants’ offense is very complex.

So let’s see where we are.

Assuming that the Giants cut Canty and Webster, they have $101,739,223 committed for 29 roster spots. 7 draft picks will cost them $5 million or so in cap space, bringing the total to $106,739,223 for 36 roster spots. If the Giants filled the remaining 17 roster spots with $500,000 bottom of the barrel free agents, their payroll would be $115,239,223. That leaves them just $5,760,777 (assuming a $121 million 2013 cap) to play with to get players that cost more than $500,000 each. That is almost nothing.

Now the Giants can leverage their spending by signing some back ended contracts. They can potentially restructure a few deals for existing players. As noted, this just creates a future debt that must be paid (which the Giants are doing in 2013 because they restructured Manning and Diehl in 2012). They can also borrow a couple of million from future cap years.

They can release players like Bradshaw, Diehl, Tuck and Boley. But doing that just adds to the list of players that need to be replaced (and weakens the team talent-wise).

Another thing that should be mentioned is that 2 of the Giants offensive linemen (Beatty and Boothe) are free agents. One has underperformed (Baas) and one may be done (Diehl). Replacing that many offensive linemen in one year and getting them all to play together will not be easy.

Money is so tight for the Giants that they may be forced to do some un-Giant-like things. Could they sign Cruz to a first round tender and let him go elsewhere in exchange for a first round pick? In a normal year, I’d say that this would be very unlikely. But the Giants have a lot of holes and a desperate need for talented cheap players. I wouldn’t count anything out this offseason.