Per multiple New York beat writers, OT Austin Howard is first visiting Oakland. Howard, who has started all 32 games the last two years for the Jets, was a somewhat surprise addition to free agency because the franchise had named him one of their priority free agents.

Howard has very good size at 6'7", 333 pounds. He is considered an ascending talent in the league.

Howard came into the league as an undrafted free agent in 2010, signed by the Philadelphia Eagles. He was able to make their final squad and started one game at LT that season.

He was waived in 2011 and eventually signed onto the Ravens' practice squad. He was signed off the practice squad by the Jets to their active roster in late 2011 and earned his way to the starting RT position by 2012, where he has started every game for the last two years.

The Raiders have agreed to terms for Darren McFadden, per multiple reports. The deal is for one year but no figures have been disclosed at this time.

This is important because the Raiders have, apparently, lost Rashad Jennings to the New York Giants. Jennings, who filled in admirably for McFadden when McFadden was injured last year, tweeted out that he has signed with the Giants because they offered him more money.

The Raiders cannot go into the offseason with McFadden as the best option because of his injury history. They hope to have Latavius Murray, who they drafted in the 4th round last year, healthy and ready to take much of the load from McFadden, who they can use in a running back committee.

The Raiders lost both of their priority free agents in LT Jared Veldheer and DE Lamarr Houston within the first 10 minutes of free agency, today, with the two signing with Arizona and Chicago, respectively.

To offset the loss of Veldheer, the Raiders signed 25 year old Rodger Saffold, previously of the St Louis Rams.

Saffold, a second round pick (number 33 overall) in 2010, agreed to a deal with Oakland for five years and that would have a max value of $42.5 million. The guaranteed money is a much more reasonable $21 million.

Saffold was drafted to play left tackle but has struggled at times. Last season he played in 12 games, mostly as a guard. He hasn’t played in all 16 games since his rookie season in 2010.

In an amusing coincidence, Saffold was drafted to replace LT Alex Barron in the Rams. Last year, the Raiders signed and tried to use Alex Barron as their LT once Jared Veldheer went down with injury.

Note: There are some conflicting reports indicating that the Raiders signed Saffold as a guard instead of a tackle. This seems unlikely to me and there is no corroboration outside one report from Tony Softi.

Here in the second part of our discussion on the salary floor, we will take the information we learned in part 1 of the piece, about what the salary floor is and how it works, and apply it directly to the Oakland Raiders franchise.

As we discussed in the first part of the piece, last year the Raiders had approximately $88.5 million of the money they spent in both active contracts and dead money count towards the calculation of “spent money.” This amount fell short of the 89% benchmark but that is okay because the Raiders have three more seasons, starting Tuesday when free agency opens up for 2014, to bring their overall number up.

What would that mean for the Raiders? We need to take a look at some examples to get an idea of how this would affect the team and their negotiations.

Special thanks on this article to OverTheCap.com and specifically @Jason_OTC, with whom I consulted to make sure my details were correct.

On Twitter, where I spend much of my free time these days (follow me @AsherMathews), I get a lot of questions about one of the additions to the newest Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the spending requirement that each team agreed to make, known as the salary floor.

NFL teams have long used the salary cap to equalize spending – the owners did not wish for the NFL to become like the MLB, where the bigger market teams can over-spend to out-buy the smaller market teams almost every year - but they have not until recently had any rules against underspending.

The NFL’s offseason essentially started this morning with three days of negotiations allowed with all free-agents-to-be and any interested teams. This comes before the official Free Agency period that begins at 1pm PT this Tuesday, which is when agreements can actually be put to paper and signed.

Both of the Raiders high profile free agent prospects, OT Jared Veldheer and DE Lamarr Houston, remain unsigned by the team. There is no indication that either is close to a deal at the time of writing, although events often move quickly in the NFL.

In the next three days, both players will get a better idea of their value as teams sift through all of the free agents and discuss numbers with their agents.

But this does not mean that either of both will be signed by other teams. Many players test the open market and find the team they are comfortable with and the town they call home are offering approximately the same deal as other teams and they re-sign with their home team, knowing they are earning their fair market value.

Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie declined to use the franchise tag on either of his priority free agents, OT Jared Veldheer and Lamarr Houston, earlier this week.
 

With the team opting against using the Franchise tag, one or both players are now eligible to go to free agency, which starts next Tuesday. Using the Franchise tag on one would have guaranteed the player on the team for 2014 would not have meant the player would necessarily sign a long term deal from there.
 

In fact, looking at the history of the tag, it appears that signing franchise players to long term contracts was at or near a low this last season.