Brad Briggs recently ran an article in his blog about Benson's cap situation making it imposssible for the Bears to cut Benson.

He's wrong.

Here are the true ramifications.  This is a somewhat long explanation, and it involves math, so be warned. But you'll understand the cap and the Benson situaiton better if you read it.

First, you must understand the difference between cap number and cap hit, as well as cap dollars and payroll dollars.

Benson's cap number this year is roughly $3.3M. That is comprised of this year's salary (800k) and the prorated portion of his signing bonus (2.5M). Note that he already has the signing bonus, it is just accounted for this year for bookkeeping purposes. So if he plays for the Bears this year, they'll write him a check for 800k (not 3.3M).

If the Bears cut Benson, they would not have to pay him his salary this year (800k) or next year (1M), AND that money would be removed from Benson's cap number. However, they would still have to account for his prorated signing bonus (2.5M this year and next) for cap purposes.

So, if the Bears cut Benson before June 1st, his cap number would be 3.3M MINUS this year's salary (800k) PLUS next year's portion of his signing bonus (2.5M), for a total of 5M. That is 1.7M more than his current cap number of 3.3M, which means cutting Benson costs the Bears a 1.7M cap hit this year. So if they currently have 16M in cap room, that would shrink down to 14.3M.

HOWEVER!!! and this is important, they would GAIN 3.5M in cap room next year. Because Benson would be officially off the Bears books for 2009, they would not have to account for his singing bonus or salary, which amount to 3.5M next year. 

That's just the cap consequences. Cutting Benson would also save the Bears actual dollars. The salary cap is a managed number, and is often very different than the team's payroll (the checks the team writes out to players that year). If the Bears cut Benson, they wouldn't have to pay him a salary this year or next (a total of 1.8M), and they wouldn't have to potentially pay him any of the escalators in his contract for reaching 700 yards (potentially another 3 or 4M. So cutting Benson would save the team actual dollars, with no penalty.

The last point Briggs makes is that if the Bears cut Benson he could file an injury grievance. I believe this is unlikely for a few reasons. First, they would wait until he could pass a physical to cut him, thereby removing his leverage from the situation. Second, this public incident gives the Bears another reason to give for cutting him. Third, he is too young to retire, and he'd have to retire if he wanted to convince an arbiter that the Bears cut him because he was too injured to play. Lastly, even if the Bears lost the case, they would only be out his salary this year of 800k.