Re: Asante wants $100 million???
Somewhat old news by now - the $100 million wouldn't be "real" money. What is real is his call for $30 million guaranteed.
I think he can get that if he only demands minimal salaries on top of the bonus.
i.e $28 million guaranteed on a 7 year deal (yes, we all know it likely won't go that long) is pretty easy to stomach cap wise.
Wellllll, the 100M is "real" to the extent that the guaranty money enforces the salary money, with the threat of dead money at the end of the contract, if I understand correctly.
So if what you're saying is $28M signing bonus (again, staying simple for the sake of simplicity,) amortized over 7 years, let's add 2M salary for this year to make his even $30M guar.
It's only 4M
per year to keep him in the deal... but then you have the salaries. What you're saying is keep his salaries minimal, and you want him on a 7 year deal, so scaling this for his 10M APY, we could call it (in cap terms)
$6M (2M salary +4M amortized out of 28M)
$6.5M (2.5M salary)
$7M (3M salary)
$7.5M (3.5M salary)
$8M (4M salary)
$8.5M (4.5M salary)
For 6 years. That gets his cap number past his 2007 cap number the first time in 2012.
Now, to get to 70M, 7 years, year 7 has to be...
36.5M (32.5M salary)
Do we really think Samuel signs that farcical a deal? Well, it works about the same way regardless of the number of years you stretch it out for.
The player's side uses the guaranty money to leverage salary years into actually happening, and is not in business specifically to screw that player over.
I think you could get year 7 in your above deal to be 20M cap space or so (representing an easy out at 4M dead money hit,) but not 36.5M against the cap, as in the "6 yrs minimal salary" example above.
That's the thing about the bonus money... it's the "gift that keeps on giving."
Hey by the way, think about this: Asante has 28M bonus money in his pocket. Let's say he
sucks so bad that by the third year he's verging on losing his starting job... you want to ditch him with 4 years left. Well, you're on the hook in the above deal for a $16M cap hit for
nothing when you divest yourself of him (in the case of a cut.)
That's what happens with guaranteed money... it gives the player leverage and loads risk on the team.
We put up with a certain amount of that. Every team has to. And I don't doubt that relatively "player friendly" teams get perhaps a period of more cheerful contribution out of their guys. (Frinstance, I bet Freeney comes back rarin to spin around in a circle for his 10M/year spin-in-a-circle deal.) I bet Freeney loooooves them Colts. But as has been pointed out, the Pats' philosophy is to be very judicious in the application of the "hey! He's good! Pay him as much as he wants on day 1!!!!" strategy.
That leaves control more in the hands of the franchise, in most cases. For individual players, it's sort of crappy. After all, if Team X drafted Asante, and let's say paid him something like the deal he asks for above, he would love Team X, because they'd be the guys that drafted them, and treated him so well. Well, he WANTS to love New England (I am sure it is something like that in his mind,) but NE is telling him to leave money on the table!
That's the bugger of cap discipline.
PFnV