Cap Status

[Miguel]

Adamjt13 emailed me and other amateur capologists on Saturday,April 1st.

"These figures might not include contracts finalized in the past couple of
days, and they include standard workout bonuses for only some players --

San Diego $19,466,169
Green Bay $19,016,905
Philadelphia $18,547,770
New England $18,421,546
Cincinnati $15,890,557
Jacksonville $15,296,861
San Francisco $14,948,415
New York Jets $14,534,778
Arizona $14,243,309
New Orleans $13,949,208
Dallas $13,168,002
Chicago $11,885,922
Seattle $11,500,888
Cleveland $10,937,554
St. Louis $10,784,941
Minnesota $10,207,388
Tampa Bay $9,776,635
Kansas City $9,754,260
Indianapolis $8,911,598
Denver $7,323,642
Baltimore $6,868,492
Houston $5,161,429
Miami $4,839,380
Buffalo $4,787,014
Washington $4,355,562
Pittsburgh $3,964,514
Oakland $3,946,505
New York Giants $3,931,281
Detroit $3,509,526
Atlanta $3,493,489
Carolina $3,325,365
Tennessee $462,285"

My take - What's amazing about these numbers is that the average team has close to 9.5 million in cap space (taking into consideration offseason workout bonus money) AFTER the free agency frenzy.

Please note that my numbers for the Pats includes offseason workout bonus money for all Patriots players that are NOT playing in the NFL Europe league.

 

[Pats726]

Could backloaded contracts have something to do with that??

 

[BelichickFan]

Thanks, I've been waiting for Clayton to update his but to no avail.

Not the best of news, I guess, with so much money sitting around. Hopefully we can get some of our own signed.

 

[oldrover]

I will be fascinated to see how the Pats spend to the cap this year.

 

[BelichickFan]

I will be fascinated to see how the Pats spend to the cap this year.

It can only be done, from what I can tell, 3 ways :

- Signing our own players long term.

- Making a trade for a Javon Walker type.

- Using the LTBE loophole to pass the money to next year.

One or more of those seems the only way. We can't come close signing Caldwells and Mitchells.

 

[flutie2phelan]

I will be fascinated to see how the Pats spend to the cap this year.

Yes, indeed.
How very strange to see New England sitting high near the top of such a list!

 

[oldrover]

Let's see... how many vet min contracts would that buy?

$400,000 exclusion, right? That means each vet contract would be $400,000 or so. So we can sign 47 guys.









Kraft's gonna start a new team!!! LMAO!!!

 

[PatsFanInVa]

It can only be done, from what I can tell, 3 ways :

- Signing our own players long term.

- Making a trade for a Javon Walker type.

- Using the LTBE loophole to pass the money to next year.

One or more of those seems the only way. We can't come close signing Caldwells and Mitchells.

We had a fun discussion of how to do this using frontloaded Seymour money, until someone brought up the incentive problem. As in, give him X dollars in his pocket right now, and he might dog it for 4 years... or worse yet, get injured with all your money in his pocket.

That cap money goes bye-bye real quick once you redo Seymour and Branch, take into account for inevitable injury pickups (say, 3 mill set aside?), sign your draft picks, and target a couple more free agents - my faves for these roles are Peerless Price and Brad Kassel. But it would be great to see a good deal of front-loading this year.

Imagine that - a good team AND a comfortable cap future.

PFnV

 

[BelichickFan]

That cap money goes bye-bye real quick once you redo Seymour and Branch, take into account for inevitable injury pickups (say, 3 mill set aside?), sign your draft picks, and target a couple more free agents

Seymour doesn't eat up that much because he has $4M or so of new money that could go away ($2M of SB stays, of course). Branch costs more to do as he has only $1M or so of new money.

 

[tkayo]

That's an unprecidented amount of available money.

I'm going to make a prediction here: Agents of players under contract are going to continue to determine the FA value of thier clients (its in thier best interest) by breaking tampering rules. So, this year, there will be some big time hold outs and trades. Teams trying to extend thier own FAs are going to have to compete with fantom offers for players from other teams trying to improve thier rosters.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Seymour doesn't eat up that much because he has $4M or so of new money that could go away ($2M of SB stays, of course). Branch costs more to do as he has only $1M or so of new money.

So you're saying that Seymour has $4M of his rookie contract left that is not prorated signing bonus, due to him this year, which will be the "starting point" for what he's paid, so he'll be relatively cheap this year...?

Okay, 2 things.

1. Seymour's only got $2M showing as not being remaining signing bonus this year ("new money")

2. If you're talking about the $8-9M/year AVERAGE a new deal will take, it makes a lot of sense to use as much as possible of this year's money on Sey, if we do value him as the "defense's equivalent of Brady." I don't know whether that idea is a press creation or something the Pats believe.

So, we could, if we wanted to, be $9+M per year in the hole for the guy, by putting a 5 year deal on the credit card (that is, prorating a large signing bonus and paying minimally this year, costing zero over our present commitment by paying proration plus a minimal salary only in 06.) This is widely regarded as a Bad Idea. We could be on the hook for say $8M this year in cap costs ($4M over our current cap hit,) structuring the deal as Miguel suggested in an earlier post. Or, we could go one "better", and get ourselves on the hook for say another 4 mill this year, while the money is available. Going that route, the later hits become downright manageable.

Obviously there are a million ways to cut this pie - my point is, however you do it, you eventually pay. I'd rather pay now and have Seymour locked in with room to grow elsewhere on the team in future years. Same with Branch.

Personal opinion? I would love to see the Pats continue to disregard the high dollar free agents and pick up "projects" and "prospects." If they don't pan out, there's enough of a core to pull through. We know how Seymour and Branch have panned out, not somewhere else, but in the Pats system. It all depends on how BB/SP value those guys, but I think they go in the "worth it" column.


PFnV

 

[Pats726]

Agents of players under contract are going to continue to determine the FA value of thier clients (its in thier best interest) by breaking tampering rules.

You aren't saying there is tampering are you??? That that goes on........

 

[Fumblerooski]

I was thinking that the Pats might make a few RFA offer sheets to try to steal a few players from teams who don't have the cap room to match, but with so many teams having surpluses, that is probably not going to happen.

Also, here is the list of UFAs and RFAs, nothing to wiite home about. http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/Features/Free+Agency/2006/recap.htm?mode=nfcsouth

That kind of leaves the Seymour and Branch extensions taking some of the 2006 cap money, say @ $2.5 mil for rookies and $4 mil for PS and injury reserves, and moving some money into next cap year via LTBE bonus clauses reworked into contracts for this season.

Bottom line, unless they make a splash at a FA, it is going to be difficult for them to spend to this years cap. Maybe Kraft has made a business decision to spend less if he has to revenue share with the weak sisters of the league. With so many teams having surpluses, he isn't alone and maybe that CBA cap is going to be an imaginary ceiling few teams will be able to hit?

 

[BelichickFan]

1. Seymour's only got $2M showing as not being remaining signing bonus this year ("new money")

It changed, Miguel must have updated the page. He used to show Seymour with a $2M roster bonus too, making about $4M.

 

[Brady'sButtBoy]

the "incentive" issue raised here about giving Seymour a 'front-loaded' deal is a really a non-starter because siginging bonuses are given to the player as a lump sum the moment the contract is inked. the team may spread the dollar value of the signing bonus out over a few years (up to 5, I think) but the player already has all that money so the idea that the money will be an incentive is moot.

Seymour will get a signing bonus, say, between $10-15mil and that will represent the bulk of his deal for the first 2-3yrs. For argument's sake alone, imagine the Pats charge all that against the cap for this year. Then next year they would be in awesome shape as Seymour's salary alone would count against the cap and that would likely only be a few million. In many ways this huge cap space the Pats have could serve very well to help tie up some key players Branch, seymour, Koppen, etc., AND dispose of the cap hits of those deals sooner than usual which, again, would leave the Pats in great shape down the road since they will have their core players signed but stiill have lot's of cap space since those deals have already been amortized much more quickly than usual. Such a set-up would give the Pats great flexibility to sign big name FA's in the future. Ooops, I forgot, we don't do that around here...

 

[tkayo]

You aren't saying there is tampering are you??? That that goes on........

Of course it goes on; what's different this year is the money available.

 

[ilduce06410]

what else can they do?

You aren't saying there is tampering are you??? That that goes on........

IMO tampering has gone on since the nfl and the telephone came into (juxtaposition?).
coaches and players, players among themselves. howya gonna stop that?
it's a community. players who have played for certain coaches before, or in college, aren't gonna stop talking to them because of nfl's tampering rules. players who've been teammates must talk all the time about playing together again, or complain about coaches, etc.
i don't even know how/why the nfl isolates certain iinteractions and calls them tampering.

 

[spacecrime]

i don't even know how/why the nfl isolates certain iinteractions and calls them tampering.

Because if a player is under contract to a team, other teams should not be allowed to make job offers.

The fact that tampering is hard to prove does not make it right.

 

[Gumby]

I don't know why it seems so impossible to some of you to give Sey a front loaded contract. I mean I dont see the difference between giving him a big signing bonus or a huge salary in his first year. Just try it like this (numbers for example only - not necessarily my preference for a contract)

2006: $9M in salary and no signing bonus = all cap hit
2007: $2M in salary and $4M Bonus = cap hit 3.33
2008: $3M in salary and $2M bonus = cap hit 5.33
2009: $4M in salary and no bonus = cap hit 6.33 and dead money 2.33 if cut

He earns a total of $24M over a 4 year contract ($6M per year). But the big cap hits are in first and last years and middle years are below average. And in later years with so high a percent being paid in salary can also be spread out with another extension if necessary.

 

[Miguel]

I don't know why it seems so impossible to some of you to give Sey a front loaded contract. I mean I dont see the difference between giving him a big signing bonus or a huge salary in his first year. Just try it like this (numbers for example only - not necessarily my preference for a contract)

2006: $9M in salary and no signing bonus = all cap hit
2007: $2M in salary and $4M Bonus = cap hit 3.33
2008: $3M in salary and $2M bonus = cap hit 5.33
2009: $4M in salary and no bonus = cap hit 6.33 and dead money 2.33 if cut

He earns a total of $24M over a 4 year contract ($6M per year). But the big cap hits are in first and last years and middle years are below average. And in later years with so high a percent being paid in salary can also be spread out with another extension if necessary.

Some of us know about this provision in the CBA:
"In the event that a Player Contract calls for a Salary in the second year of such Contract that is less than half the Salary called for in the first year of such Contract, the difference between the Salary in the second contract year and the first contract year shall be treated as a signing bonus."