NFL 2021 Off-Season

[BeastieRunner]

Salary cap contracting by 8% is making a lot of teams re-evaluate players who get big slices of the pie.

Indeed.

Some teams (Cowboys) have even less with BIG MONEY DEALZZZ (TM) now.

[MRP]

Cooks, Brady, Cowboy's Martin, Smith, & Collins and Panther's McCaffrey & Thompson are all restructuring.

Based on today's volume of restructures, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of that this offseason.

Cowboys could still restructure Amari Cooper, Zeke and DeMarcus Lawrence before all is said and done if they need to.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs have cut two of the starting offensive lineman, both former 1st round pick Eric Fischer and Mitchell Shwartz have been released, so Mahomes will have two new tackles next season.

-M

[BeastieRunner]

Cowboys could still restructure Amari Cooper, Zeke and DeMarcus Lawrence before all is said and done if they need to.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs have cut two of the starting offensive lineman, both former 1st round pick Eric Fischer and Mitchell Shwartz have been released, so Mahomes will have two new tackles next season.

-M

That has to make Mahomes happy ...

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Cowboys could still restructure Amari Cooper, Zeke and DeMarcus Lawrence before all is said and done if they need to.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs have cut two of the starting offensive lineman, both former 1st round pick Eric Fischer and Mitchell Shwartz have been released, so Mahomes will have two new tackles next season.

-M

And this is only the start of what figures to be a league wide bloodletting.

[worstblogever]

Indeed.

Some teams (Cowboys) have even less with BIG MONEY DEALZZZ (TM) now.

Speaking of, I read that somehow, don't ask me how, Arizona's deal with JJ Watt is for $15 million a year for 2 years... but somehow with signing bonuses, he only counts $4.5 million against the cap in 2021.

I don't know who their cap guy is, but he's f***ing good at what he's doing.

[CSTowle]

Feel like they need to do something to reform the salary cap. I have almost no knowledge about how it works, but as a layman seeing someone getting paid 40 mil a year and somehow counting for 12-18 seems like it undermines the system. Granted, some are better at it than others but my feeling is the intention was to force your team to have to make hard decisions and promote parity. But if none of the owners are complaining I suppose it will just continue as is.

[MRP]

Feel like they need to do something to reform the salary cap. I have almost no knowledge about how it works, but as a layman seeing someone getting paid 40 mil a year and somehow counting for 12-18 seems like it undermines the system. Granted, some are better at it than others but my feeling is the intention was to force your team to have to make hard decisions and promote parity. But if none of the owners are complaining I suppose it will just continue as is.

Usually what they do to make space is convert base salary into a signing bonus. A signing bonus is spread over the life of the whole contract for cap purposes. So if it's a 5 year $100 million contract, with each year being a $20 million contract, the cap number is $20 mill per year. But if you restructure it so that year one, the base salary is $1 million in the first year and the other $19 million is a signing bonus, the cap number is $1 million plus 1/5 of the $19 million signing bonus. It adds to the cap number for years 2-5, but gives you cap relief in year one. The money is the same, but the cap math changes.

For example on Dak's contract, years 5 and 6 re voidable years, but a large chunk of the contract was done as a signing bonus (which means more of the contract might be guaranteed), with lower base salaries for this year and next to grant cap relief in years where the cap will be lower, but the bigger hits will be in years 3-6, but 5 and 6 won't happen, so the cap hit for those will just be the signing bonus portion as dead money, but the cap should grow again, in particular with more TV money coming, so it won't be as hard to manage in those years. Whenever you see a team restructure to gain cap room, it's basically that. The money the player gets doesn't change, but usually they get a larger lump sum up front as a signing bonus in exchange for providing cap relief for their team.

So the system allows them to shift cap hits around under the life of the contract to gain advantages in the short term, but doesn't allow them to spend more than another team or for a player to get less money in the long term.

-M

[Scott Taylor]

Nice explanation, MRP!

Its a numbers game that still achieves parity, in that teams only have a certain amount they can spend each year on team salaries (and...?). But the shenanigans that teams can pull to stretch out a salary and beat the cap in a given year always involve risk for other years. In essence, if teams get creative with the cap they usually have to later get creative with the draft.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Kansas City had tough choices ahead. Fisher isn't a bad offensive tackle but he's not an elite guy and his cap number and injury by Super Bowl had him be easy to cut. The real loss is Schwartz. Who when healthy was an elite RT. If he had been healthy and possibly heading into retirement due to a back injury (he just had surgery) he would have been asked to rework his deal. He missed 10 games last year so that player who filled in there likely will be starter next year.

KC has a 3rd rd draft choice who is coming off the Covid exempt list who will get a shot at replacing Fisher . But this draft likely will see them draft Center/RT/LT to start. To build up the offensive line.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

And next year there should be no excuse for the Raiders , Chargers and Broncos. KC just had their offensive line gutted. Its gonna be hell to replace 3 offensive linemen within a season. Reid will have to do the best coaching he's ever done to manage for KC to handle this. KC is entering 2021 a big long shot to make it to playoffs right now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Just got an alert from Bleacher Report that the Pats are going to bring back Cam Newton on a one year deal.

[Surf]

Just got an alert from Bleacher Report that the Pats are going to bring back Cam Newton on a one year deal.

I knew that was coming. Bill ain't got options at the position. A full offseason and hopefully Cam can't get Covid again. That's what threw him his mark I believe. Yes, he was bad at the end but so was the team, works for me.

[Kirby101]

Guess he couldn't get Garafalo back from SF?

[Surf]

but the cap should grow again, in particular with more TV money coming,

-M

Maybe I'm getting my leagues crossed as to when the TV deals have shook out. I feel the NFL JUST got this reworked... maybe that was the Union deal. Anyway, yea I heard it's going to be down and then back up sharply so conceivably if you have a guy that you'd like on a more than 1 year deal, this hiccup could work to a teams advantage even more spreading a contract out.

I also didn't think the fluctuations in the stream effected the deals so quickly. For an entity that don't pay no taxes, they ought to have massive cash reserves. Maybe it's a timing thing with the TV money. Also Amazon and I think I heard Paramount (maybe not with NFL) is gonna start getting heavier into the live stream content game.

[MRP]

Speaking of restructuring, look like the Chiefs are going to restructure Mahomes contract, converting a $21.7 million roster bonus into a signing bonus instead, which will save then $17 million in cap space.

And in other salary cap manipulations, the Bucs signed Brady to a 4 year extension that voids after 1 year, tying Brady to the Bucs through 2022, but saving them $19 million in cap space this year (the voidable years are to spread out the money to create cap space). The Bucs also used voidable years on the contract in their signing of linebacker Lavonte David recently.

-M