Question: might the definition of "exception" be stretched, given the impact of a one-time inflationary "bump" in 2006, and now 8M/year inflation for the next several (projected)?
I'm fascinated by the change the acceleration will or will not make in the Pats' philosophy.
Samuel will be a bellweather for their attitude toward cap acceleration. The franchise/transition tags should be more attractive this year, everything else being equal. Now, it may just be plain unappealing to use it, for other reasons... but this would be the year that it's a bargain, maybe a little less so next year, etc., as the deals comprising the top 5 or the top 10 of a position, begin to be the deals cut in the 2006 offseason (right now the tag numbers reflect deals cut prior to the big windfall between the 05 and 06 NFL seasons, caused by the current CBA extension. Until post-2005 deals make up most of those "top 5" and "top 10" numbers, they're like archaeological remnants of Jurassic Cap.)
So anyhoo, we have the possibility of a change in management philosophy, which militates for spending now, rather than finding ways to push money forward. I am not sure how that will interact with the Pats' Value Approach, which has been able to chug along with the assumption of a constant rate of inflation.
While our coming inflation rate is a little higher than, for instance, the 04-05 change, it will be a steady rate nonetheless, even if it is one that (once again) militates against pushing money forward.
Our $109M cap in 2007 is projected to grow to 148M by 2012... so lets say through consecutive slick moves, you push $1M forward from now until then. Its purchasing power would end up being about 2/3 of its current purchasing power. You will have only pushed forward $700K or so in 2007 cap dollars... and the rest? It gets eaten up like a senior citizen's savings during the Carter years. And that is assuming that we've seen the impact of the 2006 bump, which I do not believe, since most of any team's cap space was used prior to the extension. More likely, the inflation measured from the 2012 vantage point, will be greater than the push $1M forward to have $700k scenario. We might really be talking about a $1M to have $500K.
I don't know if I am overstating this effect, or whether the savants of Foxboro are factoring it in. Something tells me they are, and not in as clumsy, broad-brush strokes as I am.
And if so, a lot of aggressive "future is now" type moves might start raising our eyebrows around here... and one of those might be a rash of "exceptions" to the "wait to re-sign" philosophy.
Or, maybe not.
PFnV
