The Redskins and Cowboys Loss Is The Packers Gain

Redskins Docked $36 Million In Salary Cap Space Between 2012-13, According To Report - SBNation.com. This is a weird story. The Green Bay Packers, along with 27 other teams, will have an extra $1.6 million in cap space because the Redskins and Cowboys were playing games with the salary cap.

I'm not exactly sure what the Boys were doing, but they will lose $10 million in either 2012 or 2013. The Redskins are still paying for the free agent mistake that was Albert Haynesworth. Of their $36 million cap hit, according to Andrew Brandt, $21 million was because of Haynesworth, and $15 million for DeAngelo Hall.

It also puts a new spin on the Robert Griffin III trade. While the Redskins were losing a lot of draft picks, it appeared that they had some room to sign free agents to fill out their roster. I can't imagine the Redskins didn't know this was going to happen at the time they agreed to make the trade with the Rams, so this shouldn't mess up their plans. But now they'll be counting on a lot from Griffin because they won't have the salary cap room or draft choices to give the rest of their roster much help.

UPDATE: Surprise! The Redskins found out about this today. I'm sure their fans are just thrilled with their lousy management.

UPDATE 2: It's still not clear what the teams did wrong, except overpay for players who weren't worth it. Maybe the Redskins and Cowboys did break the rules, or maybe Roger Goodell just made up some new rule, or maybe they just needed to do something to increase the salary cap by $2 million per team and this was the excuse.

I finally figured out what the Cowboys and Redskins did wrong two years ago:They refused to engage in collusion.

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) March 12, 2012