Cowboys and Redskins losing cap space

[TyronePoole]

Let me try to put it another way.
The league said if you have money due in future years and you accelerate it into the 2010 year, if there is a cap in the future it will be adjusted back to the years it was intended for.

Probably not 100% accurate in the terminology, but from what I've read that is the general point.

It had nothing to do with how much the could, would or did spend that year, it had only to do with taking money that would be part of a future cap charge and accelerating it to the uncapped year when cap rules before and after would have it applied to those future years.

Its not a collusion issue, its an accounting issue/
The reason it was necessary was because teams could violate the spirit of the future cap. Cap rules say bonusses get amortized over the life of the contract (in order to allow teams to pay large bonusses) In this case they were using the break in the cap take almost all of the cost of a long term contract and charge it to the year there is no cap, for no reason other than to reduce the cap charges in the years that would have a cap.
There was no mechanism to allow or disallow becuase there was no guarantee of future caps.

dude, I get it lol.

What you still don't seem to get is that inequitable does not mean against the rules.

there were no rules in place at this point and asking them to abide by a theoretical future cap is collusion even if everyone had the realistic expectation that there would definitely be one. Even if it meant that the Redskins and Cowboys were hedging AGAINST and expected cap by doing this.

Again, if the NFL wanted to avoid this they should have considered that before they opted out.

My only question at this point is how instrumental were the Redskins and Cowboys in pushing to allow the uncapped year and what they said in doing so. This could have ramifications when it comes to their fiduciary duty to the NFL as a whole.

so:

The league said if you have money due in future years and you accelerate it into the 2010 year, if there is a cap in the future it will be adjusted back to the years it was intended for.

the league saying this is collusion

 

[Ring 6]

I understand what you are saying, but there was still no rule in place to against this as those rules are still a part of a negotiated cap/one of the things a cap is supposed to prevent.

I agree that they got an advantage from it, but that's the league's fault for allowing an uncapped year to arrive in the first place and 28 other teams are going to have to pay for it imo since the more I think bout this I doubt the NFL will prevail

Its not about a rule. Its about the league (which IS the owners) all agreeing that if contracts are manipulated to give an unfair advantage in the event of a future cap, the monies manipulated will be charged to the cap anyway.
All they are saying is essentially, the portion of Austins $18,000,000 2010 salary that clearly would have been a bonus under a capped system is going to be treated like a bonus, and the 10mill that was written of in 2010 that would still be on the cap hits now.
The league didn't allow an uncapped year, they made a determination that money pushed ahead into 2010 that was really for future years would be applied back to those future years if there is a cap again.

When it happened, they approached the NFLPA, and determined that the players would not lose a penny, but the competitive advantage gained by those teams by subverting 2012-on money into 2010 unethically would be taken away.
That really looks like all that happened here.

 

[BradyFTW!]

I'm just learning the facts, but it appears they did,
They took future pay, and paid it in 2010, as a payment that would only hit the 2010 cap.
The correct way to do that would be to pay a bonus that is amortized over the life of the contract.
An example would be:

Brady's hypothetical contract salaries:
2010 7 mill
2011 10mill
2012 13 mill

New restructure
2010 28 mill
2011 1 mill
2012 1 mill

Intead of 7,10,13 cap hits it is 28,1,1
Clearly that could only be done in an uncapped year, and was a blatant attempt to bury future cap hits into the uncapped year.

I dont see how this is collusive, or how the players are harmed by this.

Does anyone have other facts that conflict with this?

That hypothetical scenario couldn't have been done, because the league would not have approved that renegotiation. Even in the uncapped year, there were still contract rules. One of them was that, if a player's base salary decreased by more than 50% from one year to the next, then the difference would be recorded as a signing bonus and prorated over the life of the contract. Another rule, as I recall, was that if a player was cut during the uncapped year, the corresponding cap hits on his signing bonus were not accelerated into that season. Rules like this were measures that had already been put into place to prevent teams from using the uncapped year for cap manipulation, and they made it impossible to make outrageous deals like the $28/$1/$1 split that you outlined. What the Redskins and Cowboys did was legal under all of those rules--without knowing the contract specifics, I'm willing to bet that it was exactly as aggressive as the rules allowed--and that's why the league approved the contracts.

And that, precisely, is the point. If these contracts were againt the rules, then it was the responsibility of the league, at the time that they were filed, to not actively approve them. But the contracts were approved, because, as written, they were perfectly within the anti-circumvention rules that had already been clearly established. If the league had a problem with what the Redskins and Cowboys did, then it should have forbidden these practices as well. Instead, they issued some vague, non-specific threat about how some teams might get punished for no specifically explained reason if enough owners got really butthurt about it and demanded action.

 

[TyronePoole]

Its not about a rule. Its about the league (which IS the owners) all agreeing that if contracts are manipulated to give an unfair advantage in the event of a future cap, the monies manipulated will be charged to the cap anyway.
All they are saying is essentially, the portion of Austins $18,000,000 2010 salary that clearly would have been a bonus under a capped system is going to be treated like a bonus, and the 10mill that was written of in 2010 that would still be on the cap hits now.
The league didn't allow an uncapped year, they made a determination that money pushed ahead into 2010 that was really for future years would be applied back to those future years if there is a cap again.

When it happened, they approached the NFLPA, and determined that the players would not lose a penny, but the competitive advantage gained by those teams by subverting 2012-on money into 2010 unethically would be taken away.
That really looks like all that happened here.

I understand the league's motivations and why they did what they did (or tried to). Unfortunately the bolded is still collusion since negotiated rules are what govern these things not "agreements" amongst owners.

 

[Ring 6]

dude, I get it lol.

What you still don't seem to get is that inequitable does not mean against the rules.

The rules are among the league. If the league agreed they would handle this situation this way, then it is within the rules. Its not a CBA issue, it is among the teams, and doesn't affect the NFLPA, other than getting concurrence about how they divy up the money that was taken from some teams and assinged to others.

there were no rules in place at this point and asking them to abide by a theoretical future cap is collusion even if everyone had the realistic expectation that there would definitely be one. Even if it meant that the Redskins and Cowboys were hedging AGAINST and expected cap by doing this.

Where would you like this rule to be to say it exists? It is a rule or agreement between the owners, if the league says it was agreement and teams were notified at least 6 times what more are you looking for?
I don't understand how there is colliusion in determining how a cap charge is calculated. That is all that is happening.

Again, if the NFL wanted to avoid this they should have considered that before they opted out.

It has nothing to do with the CBA or opting out.
It is an agreement among the leage (ie owners) that accelerating future pay into 2010 simply to avoid the future cap charges was not accpetable, and would be overturned.
Basically, they overturned the cap accounting ON EXTENISONS THAT ACCELERATED MONEY FORWARD that said it all hit in 2010, and spread it over the life of the contract.

My only question at this point is how instrumental were the Redskins and Cowboys in pushing to allow the uncapped year and what they said in doing so. This could have ramifications when it comes to their fiduciary duty to the NFL as a whole.

I don't understand what you are getting at here.
It isn't that there was an uncapped year. It wasn't that teams were colluding as if there were a cap. It is just about charging money to the life of the contract that was given up front as a humoungous salary in the first year of the contract.

In other words the league agreed that if a team took 20mill from 2013 and added it to 2010 salary, when a cap was reinstated the league would consider that a bonus, amortized over the length of the contract.

 

[Ring 6]

I understand the league's motivations and why they did what they did (or tried to). Unfortunately the bolded is still collusion since negotiated rules are what govern these things not "agreements" amongst owners.

It isn't collusion at all.
It is the league determining how contract extensions or renegoatiaions in the uncapped year would be treated if a cap returned.
There has to be a rule. Having a rule does not constitute collusion.
They are a league, acting together as a league, with a CBA in place, is not collsuive.
Collusion would be acting together to fix prices, or having an unofficial cap adhered to.
None of that happened here. This is an accounting issue, not a player/league issue.

 

[BradyFTW!]

It isn't collusion at all.
It is the league determining how contract extensions or renegoatiaions in the uncapped year would be treated if a cap returned.
There has to be a rule. Having a rule does not constitute collusion.
They are a league, acting together as a league, with a CBA in place, is not collsuive.
Collusion would be acting together to fix prices, or having an unofficial cap adhered to.
None of that happened here. This is an accounting issue, not a player/league issue.

It's the definition of collusion. It's punishing individual teams that attempted to maximize their ability to pay out the most money possible to players within the rules. That's what the Redskins and Cowboys were doing: why do you think they were trying to maximize cap hits in 2010, if not so that they could spend correspondingly more money in subsequent years? That was the entire point. They attempted to account for bad deals in a way that they would minimally impact the team's future ability to spend. The fact that the NFLPA accepted the league's olive branch proves that it's run by a bunch of short-sighted idiots.

Think of it this way: whatever the Redskins paid in 2010, it's spent money. Nothing's going to change that. Now, over the next two years, the Redskins are able to pay out $36 million less to players than they could have otherwise. NFL players will see $36 million less from the Washington Redskins, between 2010 and 2013, because of this sanction. That's not entirely technically true, granted, since you can always push cap hits into future years, etc., but it's essentially true. You just might have to push the time period out a little further.

The league got the NFLPA to go along with it by giving that $36 million to 28 other teams, and the union apparently failed to realize that what the league was really doing was setting a precedent and sending a message. That message is that teams that attempt to spend more than they're "supposed" to spend, even if it's entirely within the established rules, are going to get sanctioned for their efforts. That absolutely, 100%, is collusion. There's no grey area there, it simply is. Seriously, the NFLPA really screwed the pooch on this one.

 

[TyronePoole]

It isn't collusion at all.
It is the league determining how contract extensions or renegoatiaions in the uncapped year would be treated if a cap returned.
There has to be a rule. Having a rule does not constitute collusion.
They are a league, acting together as a league, with a CBA in place, is not collsuive.
Collusion would be acting together to fix prices, or having an unofficial cap adhered to.
None of that happened here. This is an accounting issue, not a player/league issue.

in my view setting a "rule" that prohibits contracts from being renegotiated to front load money from future years, even if it's meant to circumvent a future salary cap, IS "having an unofficial cap adhered to" since no such rules on renegotiating contracts were in place before outside of the previous salary cap. Had there been a salary cap there wouldn't need to be such a rule, so the league can't, afaik, set those kind of rules without negotiating them. What the NFL was essentially doing was removing their side of the risk that came from allowing the salary cap to elapse by trying to put in place the safeguards that come with one. if there's no cap at any given time, a team is free to sign or structure contracts in anyway they please in terms of amounts and years etc.. Telling them to act as if there's going to be a future one is basically enforcing one that isn't there yet.

 

[Ring 6]

That hypothetical scenario couldn't have been done, because the league would not have approved that renegotiation. Even in the uncapped year, there were still contract rules. One of them was that, if a player's base salary decreased by more than 50% from one year to the next, then the difference would be recorded as a signing bonus and prorated over the life of the contract.

It was hypothetical and exaggerated for the sake of making the point clear.
Here is a good breakdown on Austin. What they basically did was give him an extension and call the signing bonus a salary. The league warned in advance that if a cap came back, they would not allow that type of manipulation of money that clearly was covering the length of the contract. They are simply calling that money a bonus now.
Miles Austin extension in cross hairs - Dallas Cowboys Blog - ESPN Dallas

Another rule, as I recall, was that if a player was cut during the uncapped year, the corresponding cap hits on his signing bonus were not accelerated into that season.

No, players cut in 2010 had their hits in 2010, or split 2010/2011 just as the rules have been.

Rules like this were measures that had already been put into place to prevent teams from using the uncapped year for cap manipulation, and they made it impossible to make outrageous deals like the $28/$1/$1 split that you outlined. What the Redskins and Cowboys did was legal under all of those rules--without knowing the contract specifics, I'm willing to bet that it was exactly as aggressive as the rules allowed--and that's why the league approved the contracts.

Those are not the pertinent facts.
The ruling in question applied to how money accelerated into 2010 would be handled in the event there was a future cap.
The league approved the contract because there was no reason not to since there was no future cap, and also because the contract was legal, but once a cap returned the excessive salary was handled as the bonus it truly was.
There isnt really a rule issue here, but an accounting one.

And that, precisely, is the point. If these contracts were againt the rules, then it was the responsibility of the league, at the time that they were filed, to not actively approve them.

Again see above. The contracts were not against the rules at all. But once a new cap was enacted the accounting of those payments changed.

It makes perfect sense if you read some of the articles on it, and ignore the knee jerk message board lawyer conclusions of what must have happened drawn from the first article and having 'facts' filled in with speculation. Most of the information posted early in this thread is a bunch of incorrect assumptions based on the first kernel of info.

But the contracts were approved, because, as written, they were perfectly within the rules that were set forth in the CBA. If the league had a problem with this practice, then there should have been established, specific rules in place that expressly forbid it.

Again they were perfectly fine. This isn't about the legality of compliance of the contracts, it is about the accounting practices for applying them to the reinstated cap.

They actually did exactly that in many other respects: there were many rules in place designed to prevent teams from circumventing future cap hits in an uncapped season. Instead, the league office issued some vague, non-specific threat about how it might choose to punish teams in the future if enough owners got really butthurt about it and demanded action.

Why would you say that?
My understanding is that there was nothing vague, that in fact it was communicated at least 6 times.
I think punishemnt is the wrong concept. They are simply carrying out the accounting practices that they said they would. All of the hyperbole by people taking a side without knowing the facts and trying to find fault with the side they want to be at fault isn't fostering the understanding of the facts, it is clouding them.
There really isn't a punsihment going on here, there is an accounting method that says money that looks like it was a signing bonus is being handled like a signing bonus.

 

[Ring 6]

in my view setting a "rule" that prohibits contracts from being renegotiated to front load money from future years, even if it's meant to circumvent a future salary cap, IS "having an unofficial cap adhered to" since no such rules on renegotiating contracts were in place before outside of the previous salary cap.

That is probably correct, but it is not what is happening here.
There was no rule prohibiting contracts being renegotiated to front load them. There was a communicaiton that payments that have been handled as signing bonusses and amortized over the life of the contract under the old cap will be treated the same way if a new cap is instituted, so trying to call it a large salary instead of signing bonus is up to you, but it will be treated as a signing bonus just as it would under any cap that ever existed.

Understand what is happening here.
NOTHING AT ALL IS BEING RESTRICTED. The league is simply saying if you gave a singing bonus (or accelerated future pay into the uncapped year) if there is a new cap it will be spread over the life of the contract.
It was known by everyone.
This is not something they came up with today.

Had there been a salary cap there wouldn't need to be such a rule, so the league can't, afaik, set those kind of rules without negotiating them.

They did negotiate it. The owners (league) agreed to how they would handle those situations. When it happened, and it was realized that it would affect the cap, the league went to the NFLPA and said that since the issue was a team issue, and the cap is a league issue, it would like to spread the reduction from some teams into increases for all the rest and the NFLPA negotiated agreement,

What the NFL was essentially doing was removing their side of the risk that came from allowing the salary cap to elapse by trying to put in place the safeguards that come with one.

Not at all. This had nothing to do with the operation of 2010, Free Agency, salary cap or not, player movement or anything.
It is simply saying that if you paid money in 2010 that by practice has always been amortized over the life of the contract, ficticously calling it salary won't fool anyone and it will still be amortized.

if there's no cap at any given time, a team is free to sign or structure contracts in anyway they please in terms of amounts and years etc.. Telling them to act as if there's going to be a future one is basically enforcing one that isn't there yet.

That isn't what happened at all. They simply said that if there is a future cap we will look at transactions that resulted in accelerating money that in practice has always been charged over the life of the contract and charge them to the life of the contract.

Simplistically, what they are trying to police is this:
Joe Blow has a 10 mill salary in 2011.
We are going to pay him 9 mill of it in 2010, so even though it is really for 2011, we raise the cap charge for the uncapped year by 9 mill so that if there is a cap in 2011 we only have a 1mill cap hit.
Clearly for competitive purposes the league should have put something in place to avoid that, otherwise a rich owner could have bought his entire roster down to 500k a piece hits for the next 5 years by paying it all up front and having 500mill charged to the nonexistent cap of 2010.
Clearly thats not an acceptable allowance.

Now there was not a restriction at all against doing that, but there was a restriction against sinking future years costs into the 2010 cap, with the result being those payments are being treated as bonusses just as they always have been

 

[Boomer B]

All 6 times the league told them that they were admitting to illegal collusion. The Cowboys and Redskins did nothing wrong, and the union was stupid to allow this settlement to happen. Now, the next time there's a CBA negotiation, the league will have a stronger hammer in enforcing collusion, because teams will remember that the NFLPA sold out its members for a few bucks the last time they colluded.

I'm not arguing the legality of it or if there was collusion. You very well might be right about that.

What i'm saying is that Jones and Snyder were stupid for doing it, whether legal or not. They knew the league and other owners didn't want them to do it, and were told numerous times there would be severe punishment. Knowing this they still went ahead. Now what recourse do they have? Are they gonna sue the NFL? Very unlikely. They went all in with a 7 & 2 and Goodell and the other owners called their bluff.

 

[Deus Irae]

I'm not arguing the legality of it or if there was collusion. You very well might be right about that.

What i'm saying is that Jones and Snyder were stupid for doing it, whether legal or not. They knew the league and other owners didn't want them to do it, and were told numerous times there would be severe punishment. Knowing this they still went ahead. Now what recourse do they have? Are they gonna sue the NFL? Very unlikely. They went all in with a 7 & 2 and Goodell and the other owners called their bluff.

They were smart to take advantage of the uncapped season. It was done within the structure of the existing CBA. What's happening now is something that shouldn't have happened and something that's a product of the league taking unlawful action and the NFLPA selling out for money.

And, yes, the four teams should sue the NFL. Unfortunately, they'll probably cave because they won't want to endanger the shiny new CBA with its promise of a decade's worth of labor peace and significant revenue growth.

 

[Bill Lee]

What i'm saying is that Jones and Snyder were stupid for doing it, whether legal or not. They knew the league and other owners didn't want them to do it, and were told numerous times there would be severe punishment. Knowing this they still went ahead. Now what recourse do they have? Are they gonna sue the NFL? Very unlikely. They went all in with a 7 & 2 and Goodell and the other owners called their bluff.

:rocker:

Goodell has shown via spygate that he will do what he will do, regardless of what's actually written in the rules. The statements the Cowboys and the Redskins show that not only are they all in, they are doubling down, which is incredible bravado. Either way it's great for Pats fans: a bit of vicarious fun watching them get slapped down, or if they do find a way to kick King Roger in the groin, even better!

 

[Ring 6]

It's the definition of collusion. It's punishing individual teams that attempted to maximize their ability to pay out the most money possible to players within the rules.

It is an accounting rule in a league, that isn't anywhere near collusion.
Note, they are not 'punishing' or fining teams. They are simply saying that money accelerated into that year for future contract years will be amortized.

That's what the Redskins and Cowboys were doing: why do you think they were trying to maximize cap hits in 2010, if not so that they could spend correspondingly more money in subsequent years?

But the league informed them ahead of time that these accelerated payments would be spread out if there were a future cap.
I'm not sure why you see conspiracy in something that was communicated in advance.

That was the entire point. They attempted to account for bad deals in a way that they would minimally impact the team's future ability to spend.

But the rules said that some methods of doing that would be treated as amortized money. Note that there is nothing in this about Free Agents, nothing about cuts to accelerate dead money into 2010. It is only about disguising long term money as short term money.

The fact that the NFLPA accepted the league's olive branch proves that it's run by a bunch of short-sighted idiots.

How exactly was the NFLPA harmed? The league said they would amortize money accelerated into 2010 and pretended to be a one year charge.
When they assessed the issue, they went to the NFLPA and said that while some teams attempted to call long term money short term, and the accounting must be adjusted, the league is going to credit that back t the players by speading it among all the teams. I may be wrong, but I think that may not even be necessary to get the NFLPA to agree, because the CBA addresses total cap, not individual teams. But thats not really relevant.

Think of it this way: whatever the Redskins paid in 2010, it's spent money. Nothing's going to change that. Now, over the next two years, the Redskins are able to pay out $36 million less to players than they could have otherwise. NFL players will see $36 million less from the Washington Redskins, between 2010 and 2013, because of this sanction. That's not entirely technically true, granted, since you can always push cap hits into future years, etc., but it's essentially true. You just might have to push the time period out a little further.

I think what you are missing is that the Redskins spent that 36 million on future years, but tried to accelerate it into one cap hit. They aren't being penalized, they are being informed that the 2 moves they made in 2010 are long term amorytized moves, not one year hits, as they were instructed at the time. It would probably be a lot easier to see if it were done last year, but there just wasn't time to make those judgments that quickly.

Also, the players lost nothing. In fact they gained. The 36 mill is money they recieved that never hit the cap it was supposed to. Now it is being charged correctly. However, the league took that 36 mill and put it back in the cap and spread in amongst the other teams. The players won.

The league got the NFLPA to go along with it by giving that $36 million to 28 other teams, and the union apparently failed to realize that what the league was really doing was setting a precedent and sending a message. That message is that teams that attempt to spend more than they're "supposed" to spend, even if it's entirely within the established rules, are going to get sanctioned for their efforts. That absolutely, 100%, is collusion. There's no grey area there, it simply is. Seriously, the NFLPA really screwed the pooch on this one.

I recommend you read some of the articles that are out there. The postings that have come out of the first kernel of info are totally misinformed.
This is/was not
-A sanction
-Within the rules or not within the rules. It is an accounting method
-A precednt of any sort
-A case of spending more than they were supposed to
-Collusion by any means

It is simply idenitfying contracts that accelerated money that gets amortized over the life of the contract into the dead year, and calling it salary.
There is nothing wrong with that. (In practice it is untenable because you are accelerating cap hits) But the league addressed this practice before it occured and told the teams that it would consider those monies to be amortized.

The entire purpose was for competitve fairness. Here is a simplistic example of what could have happened without the league ruling ahead of time that what looks like a bonus will be treated like a bonus

Lets say the Pats had 100 mill in cap commitments for 2011 80mill of which was salary.
Robery Kraft could have paid 2011s salary to those players in 2010. If the league didn't see in advance that this would be subterfuge of accelerating 2011s cap cost, the Patriots would have went into 2011 with a 20 mill cap commitment, their entire team (worthy of 100mill in cap) under contract and 100mill of cap room.
Are you really saying the league was wrong to let teams know that if they did that, it would be treated as amortized money?

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

The part that kills me is there were other teams that took advantage of the uncapped year in order to go way under the existing floor. I think the fact that those teams aren't seeing any punitive actions taken against them shows that this isn't about parity or justice as much as punishing teams that were giving players what they wanted. Like many have said it's stupid for the PA to sign off on this, yes they're keeping their money now, but the forced collusion that teams are now being punished for breaking cost them a lot of money in 2010.

 

[Ring 6]

They were smart to take advantage of the uncapped season. It was done within the structure of the existing CBA. What's happening now is something that shouldn't have happened and something that's a product of the league taking unlawful action and the NFLPA selling out for money.

And, yes, the four teams should sue the NFL. Unfortunately, they'll probably cave because they won't want to endanger the shiny new CBA with its promise of a decade's worth of labor peace and significant revenue growth.

That is simply not consistent with the facts.
These 3 contracts (plus whatever minor issues the Raiders and Saints had) are the extent of the issue.
The issue with these contracts is that they accelerated future money into 2010 and expected it to not be amortized.
The league decided before it was done that they would account for such contract as amortized long term payments. There is nothing illegal at all about that.
This issue did not affect a single Free Agent. It did not affect player movement in any way.
It is an accounting method designed to treat contracts from 2010 consistently with those from any other years.

The NFLPA has not been harmed in any way.
Every penny of that money that the accounting method that was agreed to priior to those contracts charged correctly to 2012-on has been added back to the 2012 cap.

People are looking for a conspiracy theory and trying to fit something into this that doesnt exist.

Its all out there, just research it. The claims that teams are being penalized for spending too much are totally wrong. The claims that the players have lost a penny are totally wrong. The claims that this is a penalty or punsihment are wrong, it is an accounting issue, that was agreed upon ahead of time.

 

[Ring 6]

One other salient point.
The '6 times' the league informed the teams, was not informing them of any invisble cap, spending limit, or rules regarding player acquisition. It was informing them that if there is a cap in the future, money accelerated into 2010 that has always been treated as long term amortized money, will still be treated that way if there is ever another cap. And that if you call it a salary to try to reduce future cap hits, if it looks like a bonus it will be treated like a bonus.
Those teams did contract extensions that had already been determined to be moeny that would be amortized over the life of the contract, and evidently hoped it wouldn't be recognized. It was.

 

[SeymourTrophies]

So, the Bears are fine because Peppers wasn't already on the roster, even though this is the same thing in principle that the Skins and Boys did?

 

[Ring 6]

So, the Bears are fine because Peppers wasn't already on the roster, even though this is the same thing in principle that the Skins and Boys did?

I don't think Peppers contract was anything like that. They signed him in 2010 to a pretty normal contract, and restructured him in 2011 in a capped year.
Austin for example, got a 6 yr 54 mill extension with a first year 'salary' of 17 mill.
At issue is trying to hide a bonus that would be amortized over the life of the deal as a salary.

 

[SeymourTrophies]

Peppers' salary in 2010 was 20 something plus a bonus of 10+. His cap per year was then 13, 11, 15, 16, 18.

They restructured to shift some of the salary into a signing bonus in the 2011 offseason, but the fact is that Peppers' contract would have been a 34 mil cap hit in 2010 if there was a cap.