Kraft is NOT Cheap

[Oswlek]

Here's the raw spending data:

NFL.com Blogs » Blog Archive Moneyball, NFL style «

As I've said in many threads, I don't think Kraft is cheap. However, no matter how often some people insist that he's not, the reality is going to remain that one can argue that he has been, and do so with legitimate facts.

Thanks Deus. Jmt noted precisely what I expected, that the seperation in rankings is a little disproportionate to the seperation in money spent. I'd also prefer to have seen a larger sample because NE's biggest foray into the FA market happened the year before this started (Harrison, Poole, Colvin).

Not saying it would push them to the top or anything, just that a 4 year sample still has plenty of size issues to consider.

 

[Deus Irae]

This is a ridiculous statement. What legitimate facts. Just because a team doesn't resign EVERY player isn't a "legitimate" reason to call them "cheap" or even make the case. Just because a team doesn't didn't misspend $50MM over a 4 year period on player salaries, doesn't mean they didn't underspend.

2004-2008 - you want to look at the difference in performance on the field between the Cowboys and the Pats. I think a more revealing figure would be the cost/victory in those four years.

Finally spending on players ISN'T the only way a team can spend money. Coaches. facilities, etc are other ways that haven't been quantified that a team can spend or underspend. As other have stated, the Pats don't stint on how they treat their players and their work environment

Some have mentioned in this thread how the Pats have one of the smallest coaching staffs in the league. Do you really think if BB wanted another coach, Kraft would veto it????? BB's staff is exactly the number that HE wants.... NOT what he is forced to deal with.

Now DI, give me some of those supposed "legitimate facts" that show the Pats are hoarding their money.

Ken, as you're smart enough to know, it's not about misspending, it's about spending. Making obviously horrible arguments about how one team allocated its salary spending does not mitigate the cheapness/lack of cheapness of the allocated salary spending of other teams.

Now, since people seem unable to concede something as blatantly obvious as a $50 million dollar spending gap being a legitimate point when discussing the Krafts' willingness to spend, I'll step out of this thread before the insanity gets worse. Good luck to all of you who wish to keep pretending that a spending gap of more than $12 million per season isn't a legitimate point for those arguing Kraft is being cheap.

 

[Deus Irae]

Thanks Deus. Jmt noted precisely what I expected, that the seperation in rankings is a little disproportionate to the seperation in money spent. I'd also prefer to have seen a larger sample because NE's biggest foray into the FA market happened the year before this started (Harrison, Poole, Colvin).

Not saying it would push them to the top or anything, just that a 4 year sample still has plenty of size issues to consider.

My pleasure....

Just to finish up with this, since it posted before my last post was published, I understand the issue with a time window. However, any term used is going to be open to that same sort of complaint. In this case, though, the year window included big contracts for the likes of Brady and Seymour, as well as the big money paid to Samuel in 2007, so I'm certainly not persuaded that the window is unfair to the Patriots with regards to the "cheap" argument.

 

[patfanken]

Now, since people seem unable to concede something as blatantly obvious as a $50 million dollar spending gap being a legitimate point when discussing the Krafts' willingness to spend, I'll step out of this thread before the insanity gets worse. Good luck to all of you who wish to keep pretending that a spending gap of more than $12 million per season isn't a legitimate point for those arguing Kraft is being cheap.

No, DI the point you miss was that while the cowboys may have spent 50MM more on player salaries in that time period. we have no idea what they spent on coaches facilities, etc. We DO know that during that time the Pats spent lavishly on player facilities, the latest technology. etc. We also know that they do things MOST teams don't like having their own scouting system, rather than spending less and using the 2 national scouting organizations. It would be a lot more cost effective to do it the other way.

Sorry, DI, you haven't come CLOSE to making a legitimate case that the Pats have EVER been stingy under the Kraft ownership. While it would be fair disagree with some of their player personnel moves, they weren't done with the idea of "saving us some money". Not signing Seymour wasn't just about the dollars he wanted, but how it affected the entire salary structure, and who it meant that you couldn't sign. That "50MM dollar gap" is a straw man argument, and doesn't hold water.

 

[Oswlek]

My pleasure....

Just to finish up with this, since it posted before my last post was published, I understand the issue with a time window. However, any term used is going to be open to that same sort of complaint. In this case, though, the year window included big contracts for the likes of Brady and Seymour, as well as the big money paid to Samuel in 2007, so I'm certainly not persuaded that the window is unfair to the Patriots with regards to the "cheap" argument.

AD's in there, too, so you're probably right.

I still don't see it as a smoking gun. Is it a cherry on top of a mountain of other evidence? Perhaps. But not enough to make a case out of on its own, IMO.

 

[jmt57]

I agree with the title of the thread, but to be fair the Patriots couldn't cut staff even if they wanted to. For the past half dozen years at least, the Patriots have had the leanest staff in the entire league. We have fewer assistants and coaches than anyone else. We can do this because Belichick does 10 different things at once.

The original poster focused on the coaches and staff of the Patriots.

To add to Deus'es point, the Patriots have had the leanest coaching staff and assistants in the league for many years now. They simply can't cut any more people even if they wanted to, because they've been operating at bare minimum for awhile already. They can uniquely get away with it because Belichick can manage so many things at once, even managing low-wage assistants.

I agree with the title of the thread, but the point raised about the staff is not the strongest argument for it.

I agree with your overall point, but you're going too far in making some points. The Pats have not spent to the max cap every year. They also pay Belichick highly, yes, but have paid peanuts to coordinators since 2004. They also have the league's fewest assistants and smallest coaching staff for many years.

Jonathan Kraft has also been running a lot of the team over the past several years, so that's another reason why this entire discussion about Robert Kraft being cheap or not is silly.

I think you may be making a lot of assumptions based on often-repeated rhetoric rather than any factual evidence.

I'll give you the point on the Patriots having the smallest coaching staff in the league - though I would really like to see data put together to back up that claim like the data Deus provided to find out if that is true or not.

However I would definitely want to see some data that shows the Patriots pay their coaches less than any other team, or that the Patriots entire budget for all coaches or personnel on the football side of operations is lower than that of other teams.

Ironically this seems to be something that is eerily similar to the "Patriots are cheap" and "Kraft is cheap" hyperbole that many hear so many times that they assume it must be true.

 

[Shelterdog]

You have to pay your players over time. That's why a longer time period is needed, rather than just a one year window. So, show me the $50 million in unusual bonuses that the Patriots paid in 2003, and that was taken off the board when it would have otherwise put them right at the top. After all, the 2004-2008 period includes Brady's contract following the 2005 season, and Seymour's extension after the 2006 season, just to point to a couple of the team's largest payouts.

Oops, and the Cowboys gave Owens a 12.9 million signing bonus in 2008 pushing them up to 60 million in bonuses.

Large signing bonuses allow you to temporarily exceed the cap; this is why the teams who paid out a ton in 2008 and to a lesser degree 2007 (Seattle, Dallas and the Redskins) were able to bump ahead of the rest of the NFL in that survey. It doesn't let you exceed the cap over a longer period of time.

It's not rocket science.

 

[RayClay]

Ken, as you're smart enough to know, it's not about misspending, it's about spending. Making obviously horrible arguments about how one team allocated its salary spending does not mitigate the cheapness/lack of cheapness of the allocated salary spending of other teams.

Now, since people seem unable to concede something as blatantly obvious as a $50 million dollar spending gap being a legitimate point when discussing the Krafts' willingness to spend, I'll step out of this thread before the insanity gets worse. Good luck to all of you who wish to keep pretending that a spending gap of more than $12 million per season isn't a legitimate point for those arguing Kraft is being cheap.

You'd prefer he spent more and not have the best record, or close to it, in football?

I thought the point was winning games.

So, who do you want to trade places with, the Cowgirls, Seahawks, or Redskins?

 

[DropKickFlutie]

However I would definitely want to see some data that shows the Patriots pay their coaches less than any other team, or that the Patriots entire budget for all coaches or personnel on the football side of operations is lower than that of other teams.

Well we all know that information isn't public, so we'll never know. All we know is they've had the smallest staff and fewest assistants in the league for many years now, and that they've chosen to develop *mostly* unknown and low profile people on their staff who wouldn't command big money given their backgrounds before they joined.

 

[DropKickFlutie]

I thought the point was winning games.

The point is the original poster wanted to challenge a point nobody is even making, by raising something about the Patriots staff that doesn't really support his/her argument.

 

[RayClay]

The point is the original poster wanted to challenge a point nobody is even making, by raising something about the Patriots staff that doesn't really support his/her argument.

It's so ironic, because Kraft is a fan who, before the discipline of Belichick, lavished big contracts on the likes of Bledsoe, Max Lane and Todd Ruschi, among others leaving the team in this state, according to football genius Joel Buschbaum.

By Joel Buchsbaum, Contributing editor
As published in print March 5, 2001

The question posed to NFL insiders was: Which team had the least chance of making the playoffs or going to the Super Bowl in the next five years? The Patriots were a unanimous choice, but several other teams will have more than their share of obstacles to overcome as well.

Almost all the scouts we spoke to gave the following reasons for picking the Patriots.

The Patriots are in salary-cap hell because they spent money unwisely due to their inability to evaluate their own talent.

http://archive.profootballweekly.com...ist_030501.asp

 

[DropKickFlutie]

It's so ironic, because Kraft is a fan who, before the discipline of Belichick, lavished big contracts on the likes of Bledsoe, Max Lane and Todd Ruschi, among others leaving the team in this state, according to football genius Joel Buschbaum.

I'm not disagreeing with you. We AGREE on the title of this thread. As I said before, I don't recall anyone here even accusing Robert Kraft of being cheap (it may be in the poster's head), and if you go back to the very first post, the argument he/she uses is a weak argument in terms of what the Patriots did with their coaching staff and assistants, given that they have the leanest (and less experienced) NFL staff aside from Belichick.

I do remember when Bledsoe was the highest paid. I don't even know if Robert Kraft runs the team that much anymore though, so discussing this is just a waste of time. Maybe someone should make a thread about Jonathan Kraft, who I think is not the same as his father.

 

[RayClay]

I'm not disagreeing with you. We AGREE on the title of this thread. As I said before, I don't recall anyone here even accusing Robert Kraft of being cheap (it may be in the poster's head), and if you go back to the very first post, the argument he/she uses is a weak argument in terms of what the Patriots did with their coaching staff and assistants, given that they have the leanest (and less experienced) NFL staff aside from Belichick.

I do remember when Bledsoe was the highest paid. I don't even know if Robert Kraft runs the team that much anymore though, so discussing this is just a waste of time. Maybe someone should make a thread about Jonathan Kraft, who I think is not the same as his father.

Well, the middle of the thread seems to be about whether we spend as much as we possibly can, as if that has any importance.

 

[plk]

Here's the raw spending data:

NFL.com Blogs » Blog Archive Moneyball, NFL style «

As I've said in many threads, I don't think Kraft is cheap. However, no matter how often some people insist that he's not, the reality is going to remain that one can argue that he has been, and do so with legitimate facts.

This is the first paragraph from the link above:

I was able to get a look at some NFL Management Council figures on “committed cash,” which is a fancy way of saying how much each team spent in actual dollars (not salary cap funny money) on player costs during a fixed period of time. In this case, we’re looking at the gross totals spent on salaries and bonuses to players for the past five seasons — from 2004-2008.

(emphasis added)

Anyone who thinks that the salary cap is "funny money" really does not understand what is going on. The "cash out of pocket" figures reflect the fact that on large contracts players are paid years in advance.

The salary cap is an accounting device that establishes the maximum amount of money that a team can spend in a year. The Patriots spend the maximum amount that they are allowed to spend year in and year out (at least when there was a salary cap).

You cannot argue that the Patriots are cheap from the figures in the link above. I am not up to trying to explain why. If you don't understand it, you just don't understand it. Maybe someone could interest Miguel in explaining it.


I am also not up to reading carefully all of the posts in this thread, I would be delighted to hear that someone has already made the same point.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

what can i say? i think the Owners LOW-BALLED the Players big time, led by Kraft. and now the season is in jeopardy.

FWIW, Kraft was not in the room negotiating. . . . Maybe you can fault him for not being there, but even that might not be fair (since it seems like the owners wanted specific people involved/not involved).

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I'm very dubious about this survey. For starters there's been a salary cap every year but one so there shouldn't be huge long term divergences between the top teams in salaries paid. Now maybe some other teams had blips because they gave huge signing bonuses right before the survey was done but, over the long term, it's really hard to outspend other top teams.

Not vast differences (see: MLB), but the salary floor was something like 80-85% of the cap, so a team could consistently be $10M-$20M below the limit year after year.

 

[Shelterdog]

Not vast differences (see: MLB), but the salary floor was something like 80-85% of the cap, so a team could consistently be $10M-$20M below the limit year after year.

I certainly agree with that. Top teams can't outspend each other consistently-the Cowboys' 2008 spending spree was followed by a lean year in 2009-but Tampa bay or whoever can be at the bottom year after year.

I'd also dispute that "not spending as much as Jerry Jones" is tantamount to cheapness-the Cowboys have a national brand and are in the heart of a football crazy state so they probably have more revenue than our Patsies. What you'd really need to see is a chart of percentage of revenues spent on football-related activities for every team and then you could judge where Kraft ranks.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Likewise the Redskins aren't always spending more than others. now they don't always figure out the correct value of talent and they have big bonuses for some key players (*cough* Albert Haynesworth *couch*).

But, many of their big contracts are backloaded and t he players are not likely to see some of those dollars. so, it's easy to ballon a contract for the total $$, but a player can be cut before the contract ends without havign to pay up (other than guaranteed $$ which is what most players are concerned with).

 

[TruthSeeker]

I get what you're saying, but I'd probably state it as there being a more gradual step down. There's still a sizeable gap ($67.5 million) between the highest of the middle (#4) and the lowest of the middle (#29). It's a larger gap than the difference between #1 and #10, at an average of $16.875 million per year.

In the end, there was over $100 million more spent by #1 than #32. That's more than $25 million per season.

The article doesn't provide enough facts to truly analyze. I'd really like to see the overall salary cap for these five years. And I really want to see the figures for the teams that spent more than the salary total to understand exactly how they did this. We have the aggregate numbers for 2004-2008. Do we get the same results for 2003-2007 or 2005-2009? Who knows?

So it's interesting and useful in a broad sense but is still very fuzzy around the edges.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Well we all know that information isn't public, so we'll never know. All we know is they've had the smallest staff and fewest assistants in the league for many years now, and that they've chosen to develop *mostly* unknown and low profile people on their staff who wouldn't command big money given their backgrounds before they joined.

Interestingly enough, this is BBs stated strategy - not necessarily because he's cheap but because he wants people that live and breathe football and are willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead in this game like he was.