Voluntary OTAs are complete and mandatory minicamp is this week. My last update was in March, so time for another. I will repeat some material here but not everything. Here are my previous posts on the 2024 roster for reference:

• 2024 Roster Thoughts - Cap Compliant and Past First Wave of Free Agency posted on March 24, 2024
• 2024 Roster Thoughts - 17 Days to Get Cap Compliant posted on February 25, 2024
• 2024 Roster Thoughts - Possible Free Agent Moves posted on February 17, 2024
• 2024 Roster Thoughts - Super Bowl Eve posted on February 10, 2024
• Bye Week 2024 Cap Update posted on October 8, 2023
• How can the Chargers solve their 2024 cap problems? posted on May 29, 2023

In addition to what I wrote in those posts, there is some great discussion in the comments section for those posts.

Players Currently Under Contract in 2024

The Chargers currently have 89 players under contract for 2024. Here they are, along with their current 2024 cap hits from OverTheCap, unless otherwise noted:

Notes:

• Alt and McConkey have not yet signed, so OTC and Spotrac have minimum salary placeholders for them right now. So for this exercise, I used the projected cap hits for their draft picks at OTC.
• I covered Stick in my previous post. It seems that the Chargers are using their annual 4-year Qualifying Player benefit on Stick, lowering his cap hit by $1.375M to the figure in the table.
• Chark was signed to a 1 year, $3M contract, but part of that $3M is a $55K bonus per game he is active. The "Likely To Be Earned" amount of that bonus assumes he will be active for 15 games, lowering his cap hit by $110K.

Dead Cap Money

As of now, this is the dead cap money the Chargers have against the 2024 cap:

Roster Exclusions

I am going to take a shot at cutting from 89 players down to 53 to project a final roster as of today. These are the players I will assume do not make the final roster:

The most controversial player on the list is WR Davis. I could see him making the roster, but the challenge with that is that it seems that would bump either Rice or Johnson to the practice squad. Rice might get signed by another team, so probably Johnson. Johnson is a Michigan man who may be as good or better at being a core special teams player than Davis. Davis would obviously be better at punt returns, and possibly kickoff returns, but Johnson could be a good coverage player and could possibly play on more of the units. This is an interesting one to watch. Certainly, if the team intends to use Davis more on offense, that probably means he makes it. It just seems odd to me that the Chargers purposefully drafted Johnson with their last pick when they could have used it on any priority UDFA at any position when they likely already had a full WR room with Davis.

Beyond that a few of these guys could have a shot:

• At IDL, I'm certain Ford, Fox, and Eboigbe will make the final roster. Beyond that, I think there are 5 guys fighting for 3 spots: I am currently projecting Ogbonnia, Matlock, and Hinton to make it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Clark and/or Okoye beat out 1-2 of those guys.
• G Barnhart or G Patrick could make it as the 9th OL... but Jaimes is apparently the backup center, and it would be a surprise if any of the other top 9 OL got released with the possible exception of Leatherwood.
• I am projecting S Harper to make it as the 4th safety, but it is possible that one of the other UDFA safeties (Dent, Phillips) could make it, either with Harper or over him. I'm surprised the team has not signed a veteran safety. If that were to happen, then I think either Woods or Harper will be out and Dent and Phillips will be relegated to practice squad candidates.

Projected Interim 53 Man Roster

So here is the projected 53 man roster for this exercise:

Updated Veteran Position Breakdown

This revises the veteran position breakdown in my previous post to the following, with the first number in parentheses the current number of identified veteran players in this breakdown and the second number what I view to the be the ideal total number of players at the position for the final 53 man roster:

Offense (25):

• QB (2) - Herbert, Stick
• RB (4) - Edwards, Dobbins, Vidal (R), Spiller
• FB (1) - Mason
• WR (6) - Johnston, McConkey (R), Palmer, Chark, Rice (R), Johnson (R)
• TE (3) - Dissly, Hurst, Parham
• OL (9) - LT Slater, LG Johnson, C Bozeman, RG Pipkins, RT Alt (R), IOL Jaimes, OL McFadden, OL Salyer, OT Leatherwood

Defense (25):

• Edge (4) - Mack, Bosa, Tuipulotu, Dupree
• IDL (6) - Ford, Fox, Eboigbe (R), Ogbonnia, Matlock, Hinton
• LB (5) - Colson (R), Perryman, Henley, Niemann, Dye
• CB (6) - Samuel, Fulton, Taylor, Leonard, Hart (R), Still (R)
• S (4) - James, Gilman, Woods, Harper (UDFA R)

Special Teams (3):

• PK (1) - Dicker
• P (1) - Scott
• LS (1) - Harris

On offense, I am showing 3 WRs as starters, but I expect there will be fewer 3 WR formations this season in favor of formations with either a FB or 2 TEs... and sometimes a 6th OL.

On defense, I only highlighted 10 starters. I'm not sure if Minter will play more formations with 3 IDL or 5 DBs on the field.

Adjusted Dead Cap Money

The 2024 dead cap money grows with the assumptions I made about roster exclusions:

Functional Cap Space

In my post on February 10, I addressed cap charges for the practice squad and practice squad activations, along with the need for a reserve budget for in-season injury replacements, so I won't repeat that stuff here.

In my post on March 24, I addressed 2023 cap rollover and 2024 cap adjustments, so I won't repeat that stuff here.

Based on everything described above, this is what the salary cap charges look like:

Now we can do the math to determine the current remaining functional cap space:

This is plenty of cap space to sign (or trade for) some more veteran upgrades. Given that Hortiz and Harbaugh have clearly stated their intent to compete this season, it is surprising they continue to sit on this much cap space. I realize there aren't a lot of great players sitting unsigned today, but there are definitely players available who would help this team. Here is one list at Sharp Football Analysis... I see quite a few players there who would be upgrades. So why wait? Any such players they may ultimately sign are missing valuable preparation time.

Conclusion

I feel a lot better about the 2024 season now than I mostly did as I progressed through my posts listed at the top of this post. Barring major injury issues, I think the offense, defense, and special teams all should be in the top half of the league, each with a shot at top 10. If true, that likely means this is a wild card playoff team.

Thoughts?