There is NO reason to not spend cap space

[JayNM]

OFC contract extension's are always trade-off situations. The player is looking to shift injury risk to the team, the team is looking to leverage that for not just a more favorable contract than they might otherwise get if they waited but also to achieve a degree of roster stability and cost certainty. That last is often overlooked but to a team looking to establish their long range vision, it is no small thing.

The Patriots are the only team that can put more money in either of their pockets while they are under contract. From the team's perspective, if the obvious goal is to keep a player, it only makes sense that they would look at opening negotiations while they have some leverage. From the year 3 player's perspective, the risk of a career ending/impacting injury or a down season make locking down guarantees almost as appealing as the present day cash.

Successful 1st round QB's on their initial contracts regularly get extended in the year 3-4 window, It happens more often than not. OFC the volume of successful 1st round QB's to unsuccessful ones skews the results on the overall contract volume. I think we can both agree we hope and expect Maye to be in the former rather than the latter group.

Gonzalez has been in the league 2 years and has already seen injury derail a season. He has more real life experience with how quickly everything can go to hell than many players in his contract position. That alone certainly gives him incentive to negotiate .

In both cases, the player and team should be motivated to get something done sooner rather than later. Although clearly, more incentive for Gonzalez's position group than Maye's.

Great post, agree on everything here

So to me speculating on these ifs is pointless....

 

[Bill Lee]

To me carrying over cap space that the team isn't likely to be able to spend is more wasteful than going above an assigned player value to make sure the player ends on your team. The Milton Williams and Harold Landry deals are almost certainly above the players assigned value in the league, but I'd rather have the player than not have the player.

No need to be conservative with billionaire money!

It seems these days the trend is to spend cap and cash is to keep your own players. Example: Cincy with Chase and Higgins.

Very little elite talent makes it to FA, so one does overpay and one takes the risk that a player on the rise will continue to rise or one with an injury will bounce back.

The ideal is to draft well then re-sign your own, but since our drafts have been poor the last several years we're left with over-paying and risk-taking.

 

[Ring 6]

What makes 3 years any worse than 10 years? Spending is spending. If Kraft has been spending more recently then that should be pretty relevant.



So you don't have evidence?



Ahhh got it. Well who am I to argue with an AI output?

3 years is a poor sample size because of huge variations. Cash spending depends upon your roster makeup. Cash is salary plus signing bonus. If you have a stacked roster and no cap space your cash spending will be low. If all your players leave and you have to sign new ones your cash spending will be high. 3 years isn’t a good sample size to establish a trend.
Generally if you want to make a point but don’t care if it’s accurate you can use small sample sizes and manipulate, but using as large sample size ensures accuracy.

Yes there is evidence, it’s on this board. If it’s important to you, by all means look it up. I dint have to because I’ve sen it.

Well grok pulled from over the cap and sportrac so feel free to fund something to refute it if you want.

Really there is no point in going back and forth over a fact you don’t like so you are trying to belittle it. It’s a fact, and I get that you don’t like it, but lame attempts to shoot holes in it to try to cover it up is a waste of time.

 

[Ring 6]

Andy, or should I just start calling you NEM, I don't care. You don't actually read or try to comprehend what people actually write. You just go off on these tangents and make up crap. No one cares anymore. It’s just incoherent babbling.

It is unfortunate that you cannot comprehend and ironic that you keep responding to say you don’t care.
Try bringing some value to a conversation, that might be a start.

 

[Ring 6]

Andy, or should I just start calling you NEM, I don't care. You don't actually read or try to comprehend what people actually write. You just go off on these tangents and make up crap. No one cares anymore. Its just incoherent babbling.

Oh and by the way I literally responded directly to every point you made. You have done nothing but post about your obsession with me. It’s creepy

 

[Ross12]

3 years is a poor sample size because of huge variations. Cash spending depends upon your roster makeup. Cash is salary plus signing bonus. If you have a stacked roster and no cap space your cash spending will be low. If all your players leave and you have to sign new ones your cash spending will be high. 3 years isn’t a good sample size to establish a trend.
Generally if you want to make a point but don’t care if it’s accurate you can use small sample sizes and manipulate, but using as large sample size ensures accuracy.

Yes there is evidence, it’s on this board. If it’s important to you, by all means look it up. I dint have to because I’ve sen it.

Well grok pulled from over the cap and sportrac so feel free to fund something to refute it if you want.

Really there is no point in going back and forth over a fact you don’t like so you are trying to belittle it. It’s a fact, and I get that you don’t like it, but lame attempts to shoot holes in it to try to cover it up is a waste of time.

So the evidence showing he's NOT "cheap" is invalid... and you don't have time to go provide evidence that he is. Got it.

I don't care what Kraft did 7 years ago. Is he spending among the top half of the league the last few years? Seems like yes.

 

[Sciz]

Grok says we are 28th over the last 10 years.

Like the angry Ravens cap guy says in the linked tweet, sites like OverTheCap and Spotrac can’t possibly keep up with

3 years isn’t really a good sample size.
As you can see due to the nature of NFL contracts and the cap, cash varies widely year to year.

When you have fewer players under contract and a lot of cap space, much of that years cap is from amortized signing bonuses. Then if you have a stacked roster and are flush against the cap, you cash will be low. This is because signing bonuses count year 1 as cash but over time as cap.

At least 5 years, and probably 8-10 would be the best gauge.
The patriots ranking in these 3 is skewed higher because of 2021.

The NFLPA’s official numbers show that sites like OverTheCap and Spotrac aren’t good sources for cash spending because they’re sometimes wildly wrong. ESPN claims to have their own system, and it’s even worse. I can find the official NFLPA numbers for 2013-2016 combined, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. If you have some way to fill in those gaps with the correct numbers, feel free to do so.

 

[imahobgoblin]

Oh and by the way I literally responded directly to every point you made. You have done nothing but post about your obsession with me. It’s creepy

Hey NEM, you are still incoherent. Move on little boy.

 

[Ring 6]

So the evidence showing he's NOT "cheap" is invalid... and you don't have time to go provide evidence that he is. Got it

As I said what’s the point? You don’t like the facts so you are not engaging in an effort to learn the truth, you are trying to distract from the facts.

If a team ranks 28th in spending from 2015-2024 but 18th for 3 years within that time frame, which is more indicative of how they operate?

The evidence is there for you to find. You are a mod, I am sure you can find the posts very easily they were just last year.
I gave you what data pulled from over the cap and sportrac. If you think I am lying, prove me wrong.

I have absolutely no interest in taking an assignment from you to go research what I already know.
That will only resulting you trying to distract from the fact that to don’t like.
The patriots under Kraft are near the lowest spending franchise in the league. It is what it is.

 

[Ring 6]

Hey NEM, you are still incoherent. Move on little boy.

You still are responding and still saying nothing about football, just your obsession with me.
I’m sorry that you appear to be both obsessed and illiterate.

 

[Ross12]

As I said what’s the point? You don’t like the facts so you are not engaging in an effort to learn the truth, you are trying to distract from the facts.

If a team ranks 28th in spending from 2015-2024 but 18th for 3 years within that time frame, which is more indicative of how they operate?

The evidence is there for you to find. You are a mod, I am sure you can find the posts very easily they were just last year.
I gave you what data pulled from over the cap and sportrac. If you think I am lying, prove me wrong.

I have absolutely no interest in taking an assignment from you to go research what I already know.
That will only resulting you trying to distract from the fact that to don’t like.
The patriots under Kraft are near the lowest spending franchise in the league. It is what it is.

If they are operating 18th in the most recent few years (not even counting 2025 so far) and the 10th team is less than $10M per year above them then it seems like they're doing just fine lately.

 

[maust]

Great post, agree on everything here

So to me speculating on these ifs is pointless....

Us speculating on the "if's" is always pointless, yet it is what we do here lol
The team however needs to do a lot more than just speculate on them, it needs to plan for them and their alternatives.
Given what's out there right now, low quality LT's and less than healthy higher end WR's, it's probably best to be prudent with the space and preserve the flexibility of being able to accommodate the contracts of post draft cuts and trades. There's nothing there FA wise right now we can feel sure will address those two needs. That situation may quickly change with post draft / pre camp salary dumps.

I know that logic isn't exciting but it's pretty much a reflection of where we are right now, not 2 weeks into the league year.

 

[Ring 6]

Like the angry Ravens cap guy says in the linked tweet, sites like OverTheCap and Spotrac can’t possibly keep up with

The NFLPA’s official numbers show that sites like OverTheCap and Spotrac aren’t good sources for cash spending because they’re sometimes wildly wrong. ESPN claims to have their own system, and it’s even worse. I can find the official NFLPA numbers for 2013-2016 combined, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. If you have some way to fill in those gaps with the correct numbers, feel free to do so.

And I am sure what you did find has the patriots near the bottom, because that is how they operate.


There can be advantages to being low in cash spending. It’s safer, you mitigate dead money risk. But that’s assuming you spend to the cap.

IF you spend to the cap the difference in cash vs cap is the signing bonuses paid but not amortized. A high cash spending team gives out bigger and/or more signing bonuses where a low cash team pays less in signing bonus.
The obvious cause is that you are paying less top level contracts to star players. More cash spent, quality of personnel decision making aside, means higher quality players.

We ran a dynasty by being frugal on signing bonuses and plugging in aging vets on 1 year contracts. I think that was a perfect storm situation that shouldn’t be a business plan.
Now we both haven’t been able to put a team on the field that can overcome that, and have stopped spending to the cap.

 

[Ring 6]

If they are operating 18th in the most recent few years (not even counting 2025 so far) and the 10th team is less than $10M per year above them then it seems like they're doing just fine lately.

Again you don’t like the answer so you manipulate the facts.

The reason that they were 18th in those 3 years is because 2021 was an outlier, because we had the most cap space in the league and had to sign free agents with signing bonuses. We should have been #1 in cash last year, but we sat in $40 mill of cap.

We haven’t changed how we operate (perhaps we have with Vrabel time will tell). Cash spent varies widely from year to year. You are picking a 3year period where the state of the roster caused our biggest spending year ever and skewing the results.


If you think that Kraft has changed from the approach that was 28th in cash from 2015-2024 only the future will tell but relying on a small sample size to “prove” it isn’t being honest. And btw, the best possible way you can frame it is still in the bottom half.

 

[Urgent]

If I were the GM, I'd be handing out roster bonuses, not signing bonuses.
The Pats do have more money available than good players available to spend it on.
Overthecap suggests the Pats still have around $80M (!!) in available cap space.
There are not a lot of players worth $20M to spend that on, so they will definitely roll some into the future.
But given no obvious way, at this point, to sign a valuable $30M receiver or $20M LT, if they reverse normal cap accounting they will set themselves up for when they do improve and have to re-sign Gonzalez and Maye.
A signing bonus is paid up front, but accounted for across the term of the contract. As salaries escalate, this pushes cap cost into the future. A roster bonus is accounted for in the current season. Both are guaranteed.
So I'd be using more roster bonuses, consume the cap space now, create more future cap space for the future when maybe some of those elite players want to come to an improving team rather than a four-win team.

 

[Ross12]

Again you don’t like the answer so you manipulate the facts.

The reason that they were 18th in those 3 years is because 2021 was an outlier, because we had the most cap space in the league and had to sign free agents with signing bonuses. We should have been #1 in cash last year, but we sat in $40 mill of cap.

We haven’t changed how we operate (perhaps we have with Vrabel time will tell). Cash spent varies widely from year to year. You are picking a 3year period where the state of the roster caused our biggest spending year ever and skewing the results.


If you think that Kraft has changed from the approach that was 28th in cash from 2015-2024 only the future will tell but relying on a small sample size to “prove” it isn’t being honest. And btw, the best possible way you can frame it is still in the bottom half.

I'm not manipulating anything. How is looking at the most recent few years manipulation? You are the one saying that we have to look at an entire decade.

 

[PowerRunRevival]

They absolutely can do that, but doing so is essentially borrowing future cap space to make room today.

So essentially the argument is - they should spend just to spend, get any player worth a damn in the door, max out the cap space. When they have no cap space left in 2026 and 2027, they should borrow cap space from future years to make space and kick the can down the road.

Is this a team that we think should be putting themselves in that position right now? I'd rather be a bit more responsible and leave some amount of flexibility, and worry about "kicking the can down the road" once they are actually established contenders.

Our difference of opinion stems from the fact that the cap has been increasing every single year recently. Borrowing cap space from future years is unlikely to give us no cap space left because of the increase in cap space every single year. The cap has been going up since covid at a rate greater than it has in the league's history.

The Saints are an example people often use of teams overspending and have to borrow money from future years. Well the Saints currently have $33 MM in available cap space according to over the cap. Even the most used example of teams recklessly borrowing cap space from future years has available cap space right now.

My main point is that I'm tired of seeing all the posts mentioning a contract being an overpay (or saying they wouldn't want a good player on the Pats because they have too big of a contract). When the Pats get outbid for a player, the fans on here seem to en masse run out to talk about how they are glad we didn't sign the player to that contract. Fans should want the team to spend, even if the deal isn't the best value because it makes the team better. If the fan base is overly focused on contract value then it's easier for the Pats to not spend because the fans support it.

The fan base seems to have a fiscally conservative outlook but with the way the salary cap has been increasing every single year that is not the attitude the fan base should have. I don't think ownership is being cheap, but I want fans to stop giving them an out to be cheap.

 

[Hugepatsfan]

If I were the GM, I'd be handing out roster bonuses, not signing bonuses.
The Pats do have more money available than good players available to spend it on.
Overthecap suggests the Pats still have around $80M (!!) in available cap space.
There are not a lot of players worth $20M to spend that on, so they will definitely roll some into the future.
But given no obvious way, at this point, to sign a valuable $30M receiver or $20M LT, if they reverse normal cap accounting they will set themselves up for when they do improve and have to re-sign Gonzalez and Maye.
A signing bonus is paid up front, but accounted for across the term of the contract. As salaries escalate, this pushes cap cost into the future. A roster bonus is accounted for in the current season. Both are guaranteed.
So I'd be using more roster bonuses, consume the cap space now, create more future cap space for the future when maybe some of those elite players want to come to an improving team rather than a four-win team.

Cap space rolls over which makes what you're saying obsolete. You can accomplish the exact same thing by deferring the cap hits like normal but then just sitting on the cap space it creates this year. You roll it over to next year to cover the cap. Everyone starts with the same salary cap, but each team has a different adjusted cap due in part to the rollover amounts. But there's no reason not to defer the cap space because it gives you the flexibility to do something if it comes up that requires the cap space.

By sitting on as much cap space as they are without guys to spend it on, they seem to be doing exactly what you're describing.

 

[Ross12]

Our difference of opinion stems from the fact that the cap has been increasing every single year recently. Borrowing cap space from future years is unlikely to give us no cap space left because of the increase in cap space every single year. The cap has been going up since covid at a rate greater than it has in the league's history.

The Saints are an example people often use of teams overspending and have to borrow money from future years. Well the Saints currently have $33 MM in available cap space according to over the cap. Even the most used example of teams recklessly borrowing cap space from future years has available cap space right now.

My main point is that I'm tired of seeing all the posts mentioning a contract being an overpay (or saying they wouldn't want a good player on the Pats because they have too big of a contract). When the Pats get outbid for a player, the fans on here seem to en masse run out to talk about how they are glad we didn't sign the player to that contract. Fans should want the team to spend, even if the deal isn't the best value because it makes the team better. If the fan base is overly focused on contract value then it's easier for the Pats to not spend because the fans support it.

The fan base seems to have a fiscally conservative outlook but with the way the salary cap has been increasing every single year that is not the attitude the fan base should have. I don't think ownership is being cheap, but I want fans to stop giving them an out to be cheap.

Definitely understand that thought process, although I have also seen and read that the rate of cap growth is expected to decelerate. So relying on the logic that it's fine because the cap is gonna keep exploding upwards is not responsible.

 

[Ring 6]

I'm not manipulating anything. How is looking at the most recent few years manipulation? You are the one saying that we have to look at an entire decade.

I have explained it in great detail.
There is no reason to favor a small sample size over a large sample size other than manipulation, particularly when individual numbers vary widely by the very nature of the item.

Do you dispute that cash downs varies dramatically based upon the make up of your roster, your cap and the literal fact that how much cash you spent in other years impacts how much you spend in a given year?