Hat Tip: Extreme Skins.
PC updated his Salary Cap figures and per him (and I treat PC as a reliable source) the 'Skins are currently around 5M under the '07 cap. That's with just over 8M in dead space, around 4.5M of that from Archuleta (I think). We can bolster that by a few million just by cutting Renaldo Wynn, which feels likely given I don't know how far 5M will go in signing Draft Picks + roster filling.
In the "looming disaster" front, the Redskins are also apparently already over the '08 cap and damn near the '09 cap. We've got 124M lined up in '08 hit and 114M in '09. Presuming a 7M a year increase in the cap, '08 should be 116M space and '09 should be 123M. Admittedly, those numbers are inflated. For example, they include 6.5M hits from Mark Brunell in '08 and '09, which is predicated on 5M dollar base salaries in both years. We're not paying him 5M in base salaries in those years, regardless of what his contract says.
Also admittedly, though the numbers are inflated they do not include imminent dead cap hits -- Mark Brunell, for instance. The man still has 4.5+M in guaranteed money being chipped away in 1.5M intervals through '09. If we cut him prior to that, we need to add that change on our cap hit. There's also no telling who else will get cut between now and then, as someone with a concomitant ginormous salary will develop blood feud with the Coaching staff and will need to be sent packing. See: Lavar and Coach Dale Lindsey or Archuleta and Coach Steven Jackson (Hat tip: Ryan O'Halloran). Whether the Redskins can mitigate the damage (stop the bleeding!) by tricking either said player into throwing millions back at the Franchise (Lavar) or else another team into throwing millions back at us (Chicago) is for history to decide.
And thus concludes my Chicken Little, Sky-is-falling rant for the day. I'm sure we'll find some super-duper-awesome crafty way of avoiding impending cap doom so that we can all pat the team's handlers on the back for a job well done. Because, seriously, the Redskins are the only team in the league that has figured out how to (Abracadabra!) cut players to make cap space.