Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap on Patriots' cap management

The MMQB: You’ve been a cap-watcher for a while. What team, or which GM, handles the cap the best?

Fitzgerald: If I had to narrow my choices down to two teams I would select the 49ers and the Patriots. The 49ers I appreciate because everything is done on their terms. Almost every player on that team, even the stars, has large amounts of money tied into being healthy and productive, which is not common in the NFL. For instance last year Navorro Bowman missed out on $750,000 in salary because he was hurt.

But if there is one team that stands out head and shoulders above anyone else it’s New England. To have the kind of success that they have had in a salary cap era of football is incredible. While everyone deals in two- and three-year windows, this team operates in decades. What sets New England apart isn’t so much the financial acumen (the Patriots have had more than their fair share of bad deals), but their steadfast approach to valuation of a player. They don’t waver or allow themselves to be taken advantage of. They are cold as ice when it comes to their players. It goes back years, to the team cutting Lawyer Milloy on the eve of the season. No player is bigger than the organization. Whether it was Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Richard Seymour, Logan Mankins, Mike Vrabel, Deion Branch or a number of other players, the team either turned the players into draft picks or walked away without getting stuck in a bad contract. Just the fact that they would approach Tom Brady about accepting a contract that would pay him in the ballpark of $10 million a year is something to appreciate. The Patriots can also be very quietly generous with their players to build that trust with a player who performs. Last season the team reworked the contract of Sebastian Vollmer to give him a better chance of earning incentives in his contract that he missed the year before because of injury. Often they give even their practice squad players a boost in salary at the end of the year. When the time comes to ask players for a pay cut later on, I am sure that these things are remembered. They play a different game than anyone else in the NFL.

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Rob0729 said:

From Peter King's MMQB in his interview with Fitzgerald:



http://mmqb.si.com/2015/03/16/sam-bradford-chip-kelly-jimmy-johnson-eagles-nfl/6/

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SteveKiner said:

Felger's head just exploded.

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Tunescribe said:

Someone should call this to his attention, because I doubt he's read it.

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SteveKiner said:

Felger's head just exploded.

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It sure was nice of Felger and Mazz to license their show for Dan Shaughnessy to use almostword-for-word as his column today.

I’m curious though, just where are these Patriots toadies who are trashing Revis right now and saying that he can’t play and how he only had two interceptions this season?

Did Dan make them up like characters in a Mike Barnicle column? Because I haven’t heard them. It’s been pretty universal to me that fans wish the team could’ve found a way to keep Revis.

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SteveKiner said:

Felger's head just exploded.

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Sicilian said:

Unfortunately, Felger doesn't believe that the cap really exists, so all this says to him is that the Patriots manage their own imagination well. Stuff like this isn't going to mean anything to him.

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Galeb said:

I disagree. Felger absolutely understands that the cap is real and has seriously implications... listen to him talk about the Bruins cap management. The "cap is crap" thing is just spin that he uses to generate buzz.

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The question here isn't whether or not the guys on this list were good players or not...they're all good players. The question is on the quality of the deal, and whether a team gets the return on the investment they expect. For the majority of this group, good ROI is nearly impossible from this point on, and ROI is what it's all about in the business of football.

The smart teams in the NFL are very aware of this list. Somehow, not taking part in this year's round of big money, big risk transactions is publicly framed as "losing" in free agency.

It isn't.

The whole concept of "winners" and "losers" in free agency is beyond stupid until we find out years later if the team got the production and value from the deals. No team wins anything by signing somebody. The team "wins" if they player plays up to the deal. They lose if the player doesn't.

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Sicilian said:

He actually uses the NHL cap to CONFIRM his disbelief in the NFL cap, saying that the NHL has a real hard cap (which it does, to be fair), and the NFL's version is so soft that it doesn't even matter. That's why he shifts his Bruins criticism from "They don't spend enough" to "They don't spend their cap on the RIGHT players." He's a professional troll, he knows what he's doing.

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DarrylS said:

This weekend while out an about would tune into talk radio, who continue their obsession about how the Pats could have resigned Revis.

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Ivan said:

Felger was reasonable early on until he saw how much controversy Borges generated by being an outright @sshole and realized he could make a name for himself be playing the contrarian and making Boston fans as angry as possible. I stopped paying attention to him shortly thereafter and haven't since.

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Tunescribe said:

Dale, Holley and Thornton on WEEI have a better show anyway. They're much more reasoned and balanced, and Jerry Thornton genuinely likes the Patriots, which helps.

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