We all know what positions need improving on our team . Hopefully we can address those needs thru FA and this years draft but after last years off season i have lost a lot of confidance in Mike T and his ability to adapt to a different set of rules and circumstances . So if i was taking over the job from Mike T today how would i approach running this team .

Follow me after the jump for my answer .

First of all i would look at what the teams main problem has been over the last few years ..... Cap room

Every year we seem to be fighting tooth and nail to stay under the salary cap and this would be the first thing i would change .So my main aim would be to open up cap space to sign players this year . The 3 main moves i would make to open up cap are as follows .

1 Trade Bart Scott saving 3m

2 Trade Dustin Keller saving 3.1m

3 Trade Mike DeVito saving 3.1m

Hopefully those 3 trades would get us some additional good picks say a 3rd for Keller and 5th and 6th for Devito and Scott . We also have an additional 9.2m in cap before we restructure any contracts and cut lower tier players .

My next aim is to look at our cap for 2013 . As at stand our cap for 2013 is 105m ( minus Scott's contract )and thats without this years signings to go on the books . The moves i would look to make next year would be

1 Cut Calvin Pace saving 8.5 m

2 Cut Wayne Hunter saving 4m

3 Cut Eric Smith saving 3m

Those 3 cuts save us 15.5m and bring our cap down 89.5m . Another player i would look at cutting next year would be Mark Sanchez saving us an additional 6m but that would depend on his performance this year . Other options i would look at for 2013 would be to restructure David Harris 13m cap figure .

Hopefully with those moves we are in very good shape going into the future cap wise and with the new rookie pay scale we are looking very healthy to make some major moves in FA in 2013 .

Next thing i'd look at this year is what players this team needs . After my 3 trades we now need 3 more players at TE , MLB and D line to add to RT , OLB , FS ,SS ,WR . But we now have 3 extra picks in the draft . We also have our own FA's to resign and potential FA signings to fill some of those holes .

My list of drafted players for this years would be as follows

3 OLB's

2 WR's

2 O LINE

1 SS

1 FS

1 TE

1 MLB

1 RB

1 DE

1 Punter

If you have counted up the above list it comes to 14 players ( our 7 draft picks , 4 comp picks and 3 picks from Keller , Scott and DeVito trades ) . Approx 5m in cap should be enough to sign those 14 rookies

In FA i would look to sign Griffin FS , Quinn QB Carlson TE and Edwards WR and re sign Pouha , Maybin , Turner ,Cole ,Strickland , Folk and Tevaseu . Approx 16m in cap should be enough . I would then look to cut players or restructure guys contracts to get us under the cap this year .

Our team for 2012 would hopefully look like this

QB Sanchez ,Quinn , McElroy

HB Green , McKnight , ROOKIE , Powell

FB Connor , Baker

WR Holmes , Edwards , Kerley , ROOKIE , ROOKIE , Turner

TE Carlson , Cumberland , ROOKIE

OT Ferguson , Hunter , Ducasse , ROOKIE

OG Slauson , Moore , ROOKIE , Schlauderaff

C Mangold , Turner

DE Wilkerson , ROOKIE , Dixon ,

DT Pouha , Ellis ,Pitoitua , Tevasue

OLB Pace , Maybin , ROOKIE, ROOKIE, ROOKIE

MLB Harris , ROOKIE , Mauga

CB Revis , Cromartie , Wilson , Strickland , Cole ,

FS Griffin , ROOKIE

SS ROOKIE , Smith

K Folk

P ROOKIE

LS Purdem

Hopefully the influx of younger cheaper guys would give us a solid base to grow from strenght to strenght in the years to come , keep us out of Cap trouble and make us major players in FA in the future .I left out the actual rookies i'd draft as this isn't a mock but more of a post to show my plan for this team going into the future .The only reservation i have about my plan to be GM would be that my commute to work would be a killer lol

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment on your likes/ dislikes of my GM plan .