Either everything I ever thought was true is not true, or we are talking past each other. You are talking league-wide, so I am going to have to catch up by going team-wide first.
Basically, there are two caps:
1. The traditional salary cap, which is basically an accounting mechanism for assigning dollars from multi-year contracts to specific seasons.
2. New in the current CBA is an actual spending target (59% going up to 60% of total league revenue). All spending on players counts against this target in the year when the spending occurs. (i.e. throw out bonus proration, veterans exclusions, LTBE, NLTBE, etc. Either a player received money during the league year, or he didn't).
Both the league and union have made statements that indicate that this target is the real measure that they use to determine how revenues are allocated between the owners and the players. The salary cap is just an accounting measure used to enforce this distribution of revenues.
The salary cap is automatically adjusted after each season to make sure that the spending target is reached. If the whole league spends less, then all teams receive an increased salary cap to make up for the difference. If the whole league spends more, then teams which spent more than their share (1/32nd) get salary cap penalties proportional to the amount by which they exceeded their share. The increases or penalties are prorated across all remaining capped years under the current CBA.
The whole system attempts to make sure that spending comes as close as possible to the target. During the last capped year (likely 2011) this may break down, but the system should work well during 2006-2010. (Coming within $20M of a three or four billion dollar target was an extremely good start. I doubt that the system will always work so well.)
Let's make a fictitious offer to him and say he accepts it. It's a 6 year deal, with a signing bonus of $30M, prorated over 6 years. Let's say his salary for 2007 is $1M. That's 30/6 = 5, plus 1 for salary - or $6M to play in 2007. The Pats therefore have 1.8M more to spend. Let's say they give it to a combo of three backups, who excel in their chances to come through because of injury, during the season... each of whom have $600,000 more money in their pockets charged against the cap this year.
It seems to me that other players have benefitted by the Pats' signing of a longer-term contract for Samuel, in the one-team, one-year scenario.
I agree with your salary cap mechanics, but I disagree with your interpretation. The Patriots can move salary cap dollars between years with relative ease. If they need $1.8M extra to pay three mid-level players they can use restructuring (amongst other techniques) to move additional money into 2007. If the Patriots have $1.8M extra, they can move it into 2008 by giving a player a fake LTBE incentive (amongst other techniques).
To say the same thing differently: The salary cap is just an accounting mechanism. Ultimately every dollar the Patriots spend (less veterans exclusions) will count against the salary cap in one year or another, and the Patriots have many techniques to move dollars between years. The total salary cap hit between 2007 and 2011 for a five year deal ($30M signing bonus and $1M annual salary) is $35M.
It is difficult to compare a one year $7.8M hit with a five year $35M hit. In my opinion, given the risk of injury or diminished performance, the $35M over five is MUCH more expensive than $7.8M over one. But I can't fault anyone who takes the opposite position. The correct answer depends on what assumptions you make about Asante's future.
Now, I understand you're saying that all teams, this year, added up, are responsible to spend 59% of revenue on players. The Salary Cap divides that responsibility equally among teams.
So - 1.8 million additional dollars in our hypothetical case have gone to non franchise players, because the Pats did not use the more expensive Franchise Tag. Our portion of the 59% (that is, our cap,) has benefitted the non-franchise guys, because the would-be franchisee got the long term deal.
In our hypothetical scenario, Asante gets $31M in 2007, while the three players get $1.8M. Under the tag, Asante gets $7.8M in 2007 (and I assert that the three players would still get their $1.8M thanks to restructuring or other accounting procedures, so lets ignore them). That means that an extra $23.2M ($31M-$7.8M) is spent on players. This will decrease the total league-wide salary cap from 2008-2011 by more than $5.8M per year. If the entire league underspends, then all teams will partake equally ($181K/year for four years). If the entire league overspends, then only the overspending teams will be penalized. If an extra $23M is enough to go from underspending to overspending (as it would have been in 2006) then there would be a combination of both (all teams would lose the underspending adjustment plus overspenders would receive a penalty).
Because of the high probability that the Patriots would receive a salary cap penalty as a consequence of this bonus, the Patriots would almost certainly feel compelled to break it up over several years. You can see this around the league where guaranteed money (which almost always used to take the form of signing bonuses) now often includes years of guaranteed salaries.
I think the difference here, is that you are arguing that the Asante-level player not tagged gets the benefit of the Asante-tagging, because competition is removed from the marketplace. I am arguing that the middle class of players is rewarded by the availability of additional money.
Actually, I am saying that there is no "extra" money. An individual team's cap may go down for the year in question, but this comes at the cost of:
1. Salary cap hits in future years
2. Salary cap adjustments based on league wide spending
The accounting breaks down, as you describe it, between team and league. In the above example, we count 31M against the 59%... but how is that enforced? Every team could overpay by 31M against 59%, but is there a corrective mechanism in the CBA if the entirety of the league overspends? Given that there are teams that do not spend to the cap, I would think long-term deals like this would be evened out; however, even if that is not the case, is there in fact an adjustment to next year's 59.5%, reflecting overspending in 2007?
Yes.
If the league overspends, then the salary caps of those teams which over spent their share (1/32nd), will be reduced by an amount proportional to their share of the over spending. If 24 teams each underspend by $4M, and 8 teams each overspend by $16M, then league wide overspending is $32M ($128M-$96M). Each of the 8 overspenders will have their salary cap reduced by a total of $4M or $1M in each of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
If the opposite happens (24 teams overspend by $4M, while 8 teams underspend by $16M) then all 32 teams will have their salary cap increased by $250K in each of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.