voluntarysaftey

With the uncapped year, I would've thought it would be prime pickings for the top profit teams (like the patriots) to use this year to better position themselves in the next few years.

For example, Brady's (reported) extension gives you ~17million per year for the next 4 years.

Instead of the initial money being a signing bonus -- which if current rules go forward would be averaged out, why would they not just increase this year's salary by whatever the signing bonus is, and then make the signing bonus 0. The money Brady gets per year wouldn't change, but the likely cap hits next year and beyond likely would decrease.

Now its possible for the NFL to end up creating a rule that says the cap hit is the average value regardless of bonus/salary structure to protect against this manipulation, so if you really trust a player (like the patriots do with brady), why not do something like:

Re-do this year's contract so its a 1 year 60 million. With the unwritten agreement that he'll sign a 3 year contract for league minimum after the after the labor agreement is settled. That way, since its 2 different contracts, the avg value of the contract would be a few hundred thousand when the cap is eventually instituted.

Obviously the above paragraph would take a huge leap of faith on trusting the player (which i think can be selectively done with a few players like brady and welker and wilfork), but my first idea on converting signing bonus to salary really has no downside on either party's part.

jmt57

Even though we are in an uncapped year, there is still a collective bargaining agreement with corresponding rules in place. One of those rules is aimed specifically at teams that would do exactly what you considered.

2010 salary can be double what 2011 salary is. Anything beyond that is considered bonus and spread out over the full term of the contract. In this scenario when I say '2010 salary', that would include both salary and bonuses.


You have a great idea. If there was a mechanism to do it, then teams would be doing it. The owners put that wording in to the CBA to prevent teams from doing exactly what you described. Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on your point of view) teams are not able to do what you described. If they could, I'm sure we would have seen a lot of that this off-season.


By the way -- Welcome To The Board!

Looks like you have some intelligent football thoughts to consider. Looking forward to seeing your comments and analysis in the other forums.