Cowboys and Redskins losing cap space

[Ring 6]

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

Thats not accurate. 6.5 mill of 2010 money was signing bonus. 12.5 was roster bonus, which is basically salary and 900k was salary.
So that is 13.4 mill in salary in year one on a deal that averages 14 mill.

Austin got a 17mill salary on a deal that averaged 9.
The equivalent would have been Peppers getting pad about 27 mill in year one.

They just are not the same thing.

Bears can pull the plug on Peppers after one year | ProFootballTalk

 

[Ring 6]

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.

His cap hit in 2010 would have been 12.5(roster bonus) + 900k salary + 6.5 sgining bonus divided by 6 < 1.1 mill for a total of 14.5 or barely more than the average of the 6 yr 84 mill deal.
That just isnlt the same as extending a player 6years and 54 mill and giving him 17 mill up front and calling it salary rather than bonus.

 

[SeymourTrophies]

Thats not accurate. 6.5 mill of 2010 money was signing bonus. 12.5 was roster bonus, which is basically salary and 900k was salary.
So that is 13.4 mill in salary in year one on a deal that averages 14 mill.

Austin got a 17mill salary on a deal that averaged 9.
The equivalent would have been Peppers getting pad about 27 mill in year one.

They just are not the same thing.

Bears can pull the plug on Peppers after one year | ProFootballTalk

Peppers contract details - NFC North Blog - ESPN

But you're right, it's not the percentage that the Austin or Haynesworth contracts were.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

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.

This is it in a nutshell. And while the union might have claimed collusion, as they often do while seldom actually persuing the claim let alone prevailing, the league killed two birds with one stone (it's called doing business as business is done, via compromise and concession).

The cap a week ago projected to as low as $113.5M and no more that $116M via the formula the two sides agreed to under the CBA of 2011. That had the potential to cost NFLPA members lots of jobs. In exchange for ownership agreeing to increase that number to $120.6M or a hair over last season's cap, as well as agreeing to credit the amount by which two teams were found to have manipulated the league's accounting cap rules in an attempt to gain competitive advantage back to the teams who did not, the NFLPA on behalf of it's members agreed not to even make the contention.

The league took no issue with the contracts because as written they did not violate any rule. The rule was violated in how the teams chose to account for a portion of the money paid to those individuals after the fact, in 2010 and going forward. The league never contended the contracts themselves were illegal, nor are they questioning those teams rights to overpay for said players as it turned out they did... Just how those bonus money contained in those contracts will be treated against the cap for accounting purposes, as they clearly informed teams it eventually would be.

The number of fans here with Don Quixote complexes never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Ring 6]

Peppers contract details - NFC North Blog - ESPN

That appears incorrect. It looks as if he is listing total pay and calling it salary.
In any event, it still just isn't the same thing. And your claim that his cap number would have been 34 mill doesn't hold up if this article is correct.

Again, to equate to Austins he would have had to recieve a 27 mill salary in year one and an average of 9 the remaining 5 years.
Instead he got 13.5 plus a 6.5 signing bonus.

By the way, I have found at least 8 articles confirming the 6.5 mill signing bonus, and none that confirm he was paid 20 mill of salary in 2010.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Peppers contract details - NFC North Blog - ESPN

This would fall under the category of believe half of what you read and none of what you hear. That blogger just regurgutated the simplified explanation Schefter chose to use to explain the contract in terms of guaranteed money. Florio meanwhile actually detailed the terms of the agreement. The $20M Peppers got in 2010 wasn't all salary...

 

[MoLewisrocks]

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.

So either you employ an oddball definition of smart or they weren't... What they are is arrogant, and what they did was gamble, and they lost. And they won't sue any more than Polian would have although he threatened to back in 2006 when he was told he couldn't convert roster to signing bonus on Manning and Harrison's deals because of the little known rules of an expiring CBA that were in existence when those deals were approved. The deals didn't violate anything, only his desire to treat them differently via conversion did.

Jerry wants another shot at hosting a Superbowl. Snyder may want a shot at a cold weather one some day too, or want something else like an 18 game schedule or expanded rosters or whatever. You don't sue your partners if you want them to support your agenda unless your name is Al.

 

[Ring 6]

This is it in a nutshell. And while the union might have claimed collusion, as they often do while seldom actually persuing the claim let alone prevailing, the league killed two birds with one stone (it's called doing business as business is done, via compromise and concession).

The cap a week ago projected to as low as $113.5M and no more that $116M via the formula the two sides agreed to under the CBA of 2011. That had the potential to cost NFLPA members lots of jobs. In exchange for ownership agreeing to increase that number to $120.6M or a hair over last season's cap, as well as agreeing to credit the amount by which two teams were found to have manipulated the league's accounting cap rules in an attempt to gain competitive advantage back to the teams who did not, the NFLPA on behalf of it's members agreed not to even make the contention.

The league took no issue with the contracts because as written they did not violate any rule. The rule was violated in how the teams chose to account for a portion of the money paid to those individuals after the fact, in 2010 and going forward. The league never contended the contracts themselves were illegal, nor are they questioning those teams rights to overpay for said players as it turned out they did... Just how those bonus money contained in those contracts will be treated against the cap for accounting purposes, as they clearly informed teams it eventually would be.

The number of fans here with Don Quixote complexes never ceases to amaze me.

In fairness, though, this issue is perfectly set up to be misconstrued.
1) The anti-owner bias immediately leads to the assumption that somehow this is the owners penalizing the players
2) At the point that this thread started only a small part of the facts were known
3) Whenever something like collusion is implied there is a faction that concludes guilty until proven innocent
4) This is really just a matter of the league making a decision on how to apply those contracts to the cap. Of course since it applies to a labor stoppage, that creates an impression of wrong doing. More importantly since there is a 2 year delay before the calculation is implemented, due to it being unreasonable to deal with in the short time available last year, it appears to be a witch hunt.
In the end what we have is an accounting principal agreed to in advance.
It appears the goodwill gesture to the NFLPA of adding this money back on top of the cap by increasing 28 teams caps is being looked at as wrongdoing as well for some reason.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

look at some of the other deals that gave teams a huge cap hit in the uncapped year to give a lesser one in other years.

Matt Schaub, Peppers, etc.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y188/thehoofbite/Untitled1-1.jpg

 

[ctpatsfan77]

His cap hit in 2010 would have been 12.5(roster bonus) + 900k salary + 6.5 sgining bonus divided by 6 < 1.1 mill for a total of 14.5 or barely more than the average of the 6 yr 84 mill deal.
That just isnlt the same as extending a player 6years and 54 mill and giving him 17 mill up front and calling it salary rather than bonus.

Bonuses can be, IIRC, amortized over five years, whether roster or signing, so it could actually have been:

12.5/5 + 6.5/5 + 1.1 = 2.5 + 1.3 + 1.1 = 4.9

 

[MoLewisrocks]

look at some of the other deals that gave teams a huge cap hit in the uncapped year to give a lesser one in other years.

Matt Schaub, Peppers, etc.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y188/thehoofbite/Untitled1-1.jpg

I hope you aren't the one who did all the work to produce that graphic because it doesn't prove the desired point. The Peppers deal has already been debunked. Most of the others didn't create anywhere approaching the kind of imbalance the Cowboys and Skins created when they constructed deals that absent engineering massive hits into an uncapped season would have exceeded any cap by $30-40M... Including possibly the now much anticipated 2014 one. Some were constructed at a point in time, before the new CBA closed some loopholes, where teams were opting to up guaranteed money in lieu of signing bonus because they could still persue it if the player screwed up whereas recovering signing bonus money was unrecoverable. And it looks like some of those deals were set up moreso to conservatively approach what have turned out to be 3 flat cap seasons at best.

 

[Ring 6]

look at some of the other deals that gave teams a huge cap hit in the uncapped year to give a lesser one in other years.

Matt Schaub, Peppers, etc.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y188/thehoofbite/Untitled1-1.jpg

Where is the source? Peppers numbers are not correct.
Most of the rest look pretty normal and not anything that would be part of this issue.

 

[Ring 6]

Bonuses can be, IIRC, amortized over five years, whether roster or signing, so it could actually have been:

12.5/5 + 6.5/5 + 1.1 = 2.5 + 1.3 + 1.1 = 4.9

I don't think the roster bonus is amortized, it is treated like salary.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I don't think the roster bonus is amortized, it is treated like salary.

Depends. If it's guaranteed, then it can be amortized.

 

[Ring 6]

Depends. If it's guaranteed, then it can be amortized.

Wait, I thought it was the other way around? If you guarantee it, it all counts in the year it is paid?
In any event, as far as Peppers is concerned, it is clear that the 12.5 roster bonus in 2010 counted 100% in 2010, and the 6.5 was amortized.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Roster bonuses, as opposed to signing bonus and option bonus, are not amortizable unless you convert them into signing bonus, which in the case of larger ones most teams tend to do.

Here is some perspective on what happened from Andrew Brandt. It was the obvious move of not doing what you always did, then reverting to doing just that after the uncapped year that led the other owners to determine that in at least the two top instances those owners and FO's were basically thumbing their noses at their partners in order to create a competitive imbalance going forward in addition to the one they already have as the top two revenue generating franchises by a large margin.

NFL -- League sends signal with penalties for Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins - ESPN

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

Roster bonuses, as opposed to signing bonus and option bonus, are not amortizable unless you convert them into signing bonus, which in the case of larger ones most teams tend to do.

Here is some perspective on what happened from Andrew Brandt. It was the obvious move of not doing what you always did, then reverting to doing just that after the uncapped year that led the other owners to determine that in at least the two top instances those owners and FO's were basically thumbing their noses at their partners in order to create a competitive imbalance going forward in addition to the one they already have as the top two revenue generating franchises by a large margin.

NFL -- League sends signal with penalties for Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins - ESPN

Great stuff. I wonder why the league, if they felt so strongly and warned the teams repeatedly, never bothered to put anything in writing...

 

[brady199]

Looks like Jerry Jones is gonna sue the NFL. Hope he kicks their A**

NFL.com news: Jones says Cowboys will protest NFL's salary-cap penalty

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Looks like Jerry Jones is gonna sue the NFL. Hope he kicks their A**

NFL.com news: Jones says Cowboys will protest NFL's salary-cap penalty

You lose. So did Jerry and Snyder. Special Master Burbank ruled today to dismiss their claims because they simply failed on their face to be appealable (as the teams and the NFLPA agreed to them) under the theory they contrived to create a competitive imbalance. Never even got to present their detailed arguments against the validity of the penalty.

And while they could theoretically go nuclear and pull an Uncle Al and sue the league, the potential penalties to themselves as well as their partners if they even prevailed will preclude that.