Debate: Salary Cap.

by **Deadskins** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 10:39 am

Not if we renegotiate a few key contracts to put off the payments until future years.

by **admin** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 10:51 am

JSPB22 wrote:Not if we renegotiate a few key contracts to put off the payments until future years.

It's not like the money disappears... when you re-negotiate a contract you CANNOT, I repeat you CANNOT string out the EXISTING bonus money over the new term of the contract. Period. When the contract is re-negotiated, the new cap hit has the old bonus money AND the new bonus money.

You re-negotiate contracts when players have HIGH annual salaries with marginal signing bonuses... you move the salary money to bonus money so that you can try and gain some IMMEDIATE cap relief, but the end result is that you have huge amounts of bonus money on a player's contract and that is the ONLY part of a contract that is guaranteed and thus GUARANTEED to impact the cap as well.

look at trotter... it will cost us 5 mil in cap space next year! next year. That's what happens when you lose the signing bonus juggling act. And all of the above players can kill us in 2006 if they are not still productive players.

And I'm not judging whether we will be able to juggle it or not... but it will take a helluva lot of juggling unless that cap goes to 100M.

by **tcwest10** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 11:21 pm

admin wrote:Look at Trotter... it will cost us 5 mil in cap space next year!

...and he's in the Pro Bowl for another team.
Isn't that just weird ? You'd think the league would offer some cap relief for a slap that hits you so hard. Wouldn't you say something along those lines should be a gimme ? How about a compensatory pick for a guy that you're still paying for who makes the PB for another team ?
Rose-colored glasses firmly set upon nose, I think it's something worth looking into. Sorry to get off-topic, but it burns me to see what's happened here with that particular guy.

by **General Failure** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 11:44 pm

Why should teams get help because they made bad choices in free agency? It's one thing to let a guy go when his contract expires, it's another to let him go after you drove a dump truck full of money up to his door to get him on the open market.

by **Deadskins** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:29 am

General Failure wrote:Why should teams get help because they made bad choices in free agency? It's one thing to let a guy go when his contract expires, it's another to let him go after you drove a dump truck full of money up to his door to get him on the open market.

I agree with you GF. But Trotter should have never made the Pro Bowl anyway, so we shouldn't need any compensation.

by **Skinsfan55** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 9:14 am

Trotter was supposed to be awesome for us. He was coming from the Eagles with bad feelings towards them and really had something to prove...

Nope, he was garbage with the Redskins.

by **tcwest10** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 12:06 am

Well, I guess I can see both sides of the argument. There's merit leaking out everywhere. Still...it's just weird that you are still paying a guy who is a Pro Bowler on athe roster of a heated rival.
It's mind-numbing, almost.

by **Texas Hog** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 10:50 pm

hell, we're still paying for Peion aren't we?

as for the cap, I feel it's a necessary evil :evil:

by **bcg301** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 9:23 pm

I agree that the Salary Cap is a necessary evil. I used to be almost as big a fan of baseball as I am of football. I now pay very little attention to baseball because I despise what it has become. I do wish they would change the rules for CAP implications if you trade a player to another team.[/img]

by **Sanjoso** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 11:11 pm

The NFL NEEDS the salary cap :!:

What do you think makes it so interesting, fair, and exciting? Without the salary cap, the NFL would turn into Major League Baseball, and thats just sad.

by **skinpride1** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 7:51 pm

I never thought about it that way.I mean ever since the salary cap came along, the great teams have vanished.Except for the patriots,but there not as good, vs. the past great ones.I say the cap needs to be re-worked.

by **die cowboys die** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:35 am

i'll admit right off the bat that i'm no expert on this subject. but a few things stand out to me...

why on earth does the signing bonus accelerate when a player leaves your team? that seems completely asinine to me. why is the team further punished for the poor performance of an individual player? take the trotter example for instance--
trotter was a pro-bowler, so we give him a bunch of coin to come here. he plays like a festering pile of garbage, so we get rid of him. we already had to waste a bunch of money and a season getting poor play out of this loser, and would still have to pay the prorated portion of his signing bonus every year after we cut him. that isn't punishment enough? we have to end up paying a sack of money all at once for a player who didn't even deserve to be paid in the first place?

that just makes no sense at all, and all it does it keep teams from being able to improve. if you have a overpaid/underperforming player, you can barely afford to get rid of him, and you can't afford to replace him!

please, just let the signing bonus keep being paid in prorated portions over the length of the original contract.

the problem is really that there is any guaranteed money in the first place. i work as a substitute teacher in HS sometimes and once i was teaching gym class at centreville HS in VA, where don warren now coaches the baseball team. during the lunch period, we were all talking about the upcoming draft (this was a couple years ago) and football in general, and i thought i remembered him saying that when he was playing you didn't get any of this guaranteed crap- if you got cut, tough crap for you, you didn't get paid.

we take it for granted that athletes get a "signing" bonus, but really it's completely and utterly absurd. how many of you got paid a bunch of money simply for getting hired at your job?? being a football player is just a job, like any other job. you should not get paid for promising or agreeing to work, you should get paid to WORK!!

think about it-- if there were no signing bonuses (or even if they were regulated at a max of 5 million), teams would be free to cut dead weight and improve their roster. the point of the salary cap is to create parity, equal opportunity so to speak. would a ban or $5million max limit on guaranteed bonuses give any team an unfair advantage? absolutely not!
it would simply benefit everybody. there is absolutely no reason not to do this.

(a whining NFLPA doesn't count as a reason... people deserve to get paid for WORK, not agreeing to work, PERIOD).

by **air_hog** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:43 pm

what happens if a team goes over the salary cap? dont they lose a first round draft pick?

by **BossHog** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:01 pm

why on earth does the signing bonus accelerate when a player leaves your team? that seems completely asinine to me. why is the team further punished for the poor performance of an individual player? take the trotter example for instance--
trotter was a pro-bowler, so we give him a bunch of coin to come here. he plays like a festering pile of garbage, so we get rid of him. we already had to waste a bunch of money and a season getting poor play out of this loser, and would still have to pay the prorated portion of his signing bonus every year after we cut him. that isn't punishment enough? we have to end up paying a sack of money all at once for a player who didn't even deserve to be paid in the first place?

So don't offer him the contract then smarty pants. if you wanna gain CAP RELIEF in the first place by putting money into signing bonus instead of annual salaries, then why shouldn't you suffer the slings and arrows for doing so. You want a player with no upfront money and bigger salaries... all you gotta do is get the player and the agent to agree to it.

The reason it is accelerated is because it is a SIGNING BONUS... it should be due the moment the player signs the contract... the rule in the CBA says that you can prorate that value over the length of the contract... well, news flash... to cut a player... you TERMINATE HIS CONTRACT... therefore making it's length to prorate the signing bonus over... FINISHED.

it makes perfect sense. Same with if you trade a guy... you prorate the bonus over the term of the contract he spend with the team that he signed with... if he moves teams.... once again, the term with the signing team is OVER.

we take it for granted that athletes get a "signing" bonus, but really it's completely and utterly absurd. how many of you got paid a bunch of money simply for getting hired at your job?? being a football player is just a job, like any other job. you should not get paid for promising or agreeing to work, you should get paid to WORK!!

It doesn't matter if you think it's absurd... it's a LEGAL CONTRACT... it's not like both sides don't know what they're getting themselves into. They both put their name on the dotted line and THEY BOTH KNOW THE CONSEQUENCES.

think about it-- if there were no signing bonuses (or even if they were regulated at a max of 5 million), teams would be free to cut dead weight and improve their roster. the point of the salary cap is to create parity, equal opportunity so to speak. would a ban or $5million max limit on guaranteed bonuses give any team an unfair advantage? absolutely not!

pure naivete. This is in the collective bargaining agreement... you do understand that what makes it an agreement is that both sides AGREED TO IT.

how can you worry about who you're going to cut if you don't have any players? These guys would never sign a contract with NO GUARANTEED MONEY. How do you think it came about in the first place? When the CBA was put into place and the organizations realized that by increasing the signing bonus money and decreasing the annual salaries, they could circumvent that magic cap number every year... they started doing it. nobody made them... they were just trying to gain a competitive advantage. in order to put a $5 million cap on signing bonuses... you don't get to just 'make it so'. you'd have to add it to the collective bargaining agreement... which would mean both sides would have to agree...

... WHICH WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.

by **BossHog** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:12 pm

air_hog wrote:what happens if a team goes over the salary cap? dont they lose a first round draft pick?

it depends on what the infraction is specifically...
like most things in the CBA, it's not that cut and dry:

b) Clubs. In the event that the Special Master finds a violation of Section 1(a) of this Article, for each such violation, the Commissioner shall be authorized to: (i) impose a fine of up to $3,500,000, payable to the NFL, upon any Club found to have committed such violation; (ii) order the forfeiture of up to a maximum of two draft choices (without limitation as to round) by the Club found to have committed such violation; (iii) impose a fine of up to $250,000 on any Club executive or other Club personnel found to have committed such violation; and/or (iv) suspend for up to one year any Club executive or other Club personnel found to have committed such violation. In the event that the Special Master finds a violation of subsection 1(b) of this Article, for each such violation, the Special Master may: (i) impose a fine of up to $3,500,000, payable to the NFL, upon any Club found to have committed such violation; and (ii) impose a fine of up to $250,000 on any Club executive or other Club personnel found to have committed such violation. In addition, in the event that the Special Master finds a violation of subsection 1(b) of this Article, for each such violation, the Commissioner (i) shall be authorized to order the forfeiture of up to a maximum of two draft choices (without limitation as to round) by the Club found to have committed such violation; and (ii) shall, unless the parties agree otherwise, suspend for up to one year any Club executive or other Club personnel found to have committed such violation. In imposing sanctions pursuant to the immediately preceding sentence, the Commissioner shall apply the same standards that he would apply in the event of a violation of subsection 1(a), taking into account the sanctions, if any, imposed by the Special Master. By amending this Section 6 in December 2000, the parties have not waived or affected their respective positions as to whether the Commissioner does or does not have authority to impose discipline for such violations against any Club, Club executive, or other Club personnel greater than the sanctions set forth in this Article, and such amendment shall not be considered in any resolution of that issue. For purposes of this subsection 6(b), the term "Club personnel" shall not include players.

So the league reacts on a per incident basis, and it's hard to get a firm grasp on what exactly befits each crime so to speak because of the 'up to's.

Miami lost a third rounder this year for some sort of cap violation.

I'll post something better if I find it.