Cap affect of paying as you go vs pushing out and having dead space

[Patler]

Seriously? a big hell no to that! Maybe it was that way with Ted Thompson, but with Gutekunst, the Packers have done about as good a job of pushing the cap to the limit as anybody, hence the success we've seen.

So we can discuss intelligently, what do you mean by "pushing the cap to the limit"?

[sharpe1027]

So we can discuss intelligently, what do you mean by "pushing the cap to the limit"?

Good luck!

[run pMc]

Good posts patler.

So we can discuss intelligently, what do you mean by "pushing the cap to the limit"?

This is actually a good question. You have to allow a certain amount of cap space to
- sign your draft class,
- call players up from the practice squad to the 53 (they get a pay bump)
- allow for those player performance bonuses (when a late round rookie plays more snaps than you'd expect, a la Royce Newman's rookie year),
- give yourself room to sign in-season extensions,
- potentially trade for a player with a higher salary,
- make in season signings when someone goes down with an injury and ends up on IR

All of these things tend to fall into a few more generalized buckets, but the point is you would never exit a draft with just enough to sign your draft class. Teams always allow extra cap space on top of that. Each team is going to have varying amounts set aside for these and so there will be variances in ideal cap space. I'm pretty sure Gute and Ball have been at the 'limit', and that's after cooking cap and kicking money down the road at the expense of future cap space and flexibility.

I can recall BOTH Ted and Gute only keeping 51 or 52 players on the active roster for a week or two to save a little cap space. You wouldn't do that if you weren't close to your limit.

I'm not against reworking a players contract to push money out. I am against doing it repeatedly for multiple players and ending up with a giant mess like they've had recently. Patler's point about the team (the offense, really) exceeding expectations is a good one: if the offense stunk we'd all be screaming about how the cap hell forced them to field a garage sale level payroll on offense that played poorly. They drafted well and have a promising future in spite of the ongoing cap issues. Getting the cap corrected for 2025 has always been part of their goal.

[texaspackerbacker]

So we can discuss intelligently, what do you mean by "pushing the cap to the limit"?

It seems like we've been doing that. Your post above, assuming it's accurate, describes an early way. The more likely way, of course, is backloading contracts and paying large prorated bonuses - virtually always smart things to do and stupid things not to do if a player is worth signing to a big contract at all. And when you reach those big money late years of the contract, you do it again/restructure if the guy is still good, and cut him if he isn't.

Like Sharpe said, Ted Thompson mostly didn't do that, which hurt the team during his years. Under Gutekunst, most of the contracts for the teams better players are like that, though, which is why I say the Packers are doing an excellent job of pushing the cap to the limit - and causing panic among ya'all that fail to comprehend and expect consequences. About the only way you have bad consequences is if somebody has a catastrophic injury in the early years of the contract.

[bobblehead]

It seems like we've been doing that. Your post above, assuming it's accurate, describes an early way. The more likely way, of course, is backloading contracts and paying large prorated bonuses - virtually always smart things to do and stupid things not to do if a player is worth signing to a big contract at all. And when you reach those big money late years of the contract, you do it again/restructure if the guy is still good, and cut him if he isn't.

Like Sharpe said, Ted Thompson mostly didn't do that, which hurt the team during his years. Under Gutekunst, most of the contracts for the teams better players are like that, though, which is why I say the Packers are doing an excellent job of pushing the cap to the limit - and causing panic among ya'all that fail to comprehend and expect consequences. About the only way you have bad consequences is if somebody has a catastrophic injury in the early years of the contract.

Is carrying a dead cap hit of $50 million a good example of "pushing it to the limit"?