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

[sharpe1027]

Player contract #1
Signing bonus $5M
SALARY
Y1 $10M
Y2 $15M
Y3 $20M
Y4 $20M
Total= $70M

Contract #2
$40M signing bonus
Y1 $1m
Y2 $4M
Y3 $10M
Y4 $15M

$70M total compensation.

Player can't stay on the field due to constant hamstring problems and sleeps with the star QBs wife.

Contract #1 you cut him year 2 and he's only counting $4M against your cap. Contract #2 he counts $30M. It doesn't happen every time thst you want to cut or trade a plaher before the contract runs out. But it does happen and you'll pay more on average with the second approach.

[ThunderDan]

Player contract #1
Signing bonus $5M
SALARY
Y1 $10M
Y2 $15M
Y3 $20M
Y4 $20M
Total= $70M

Contract #2
$40M signing bonus
Y1 $1m
Y2 $4M
Y3 $10M
Y4 $15M

$70M total compensation.

Player can't stay on the field due to constant hamstring problems and sleeps with the star QBs wife.

Contract #1 you cut him year 2 and he's only counting $4M against your cap. Contract #2 he counts $30M. It doesn't happen every time thst you want to cut or trade a plaher before the contract runs out. But it does happen and you'll pay more on average with the second approach.

This is exactly what the cook the cap group doesn't understand. As soon as you have to cut a player who you kicked a contract down the road you are screwed.

Just look at the 2024 Packers. If we hadn't dealt ARod to NY and took the cap hit last year, we would be $40,000,000 over the cap. You could cut Bacht, Jones, Smith, Clark and Campbell to get cap relief of $34 M. We would still be $6,000,000 over the cap.

Love walks because we have no cap room to sign him to a contract.

You can't extend players on their first contracts until the final year, so there are no games to be played there with our promising up-and-comers.

[RashanGary]

Player contract #1
Signing bonus $5M
SALARY
Y1 $10M
Y2 $15M
Y3 $20M
Y4 $20M
Total= $70M

Contract #2
$40M signing bonus
Y1 $1m
Y2 $4M
Y3 $10M
Y4 $15M

$70M total compensation.

Player can't stay on the field due to constant hamstring problems and sleeps with the star QBs wife.

Contract #1 you cut him year 2 and he's only counting $4M against your cap. Contract #2 he counts $30M. It doesn't happen every time thst you want to cut or trade a plaher before the contract runs out. But it does happen and you'll pay more on average with the second approach.

There isn’t an example in the last 20 years of the contract you listed first. Nothing even in the ballpark. So that’s not really something we should be considering in this discussion. The second contract had 41M guaranteed and the first had 15 million guaranteed. Those aren’t the same thing.

If you wanted to compare equal contracts that way, you’d have to knock team 2s signing bonus down to 14M

[sharpe1027]

There isn’t an example in the last 20 years of the contract you listed first. Nothing even in the ballpark. So that’s not really something we should be considering in this discussion. The second contract had 41M guaranteed and the first had 15 million guaranteed. Those aren’t the same thing.

If you wanted to compare equal contracts that way, you’d have to knock team 2s signing bonus down to 14M

Seriously? Your example is not real either. The purpose of my example just to show the difference between pushing money into later years using the signing bonus.

[RashanGary]

Seriously? Your example is not real either. The purpose of my example just to show the difference between pushing money into later years using the signing bonus.

There is a huge difference between what I did and what you did.

Taking cap hits earlier as one method happens. Likewise, structuring so the hits are taken later with void years to pay even later is another method. Teams really do use both methods.

Using simple contracts help illustrate a point. That’s not the issue I have. You used your example to surmise that paying later means you can’t get out of a contract as easy. I think we can both easily agree that what you actually showed was that guaranteeing less money makes it easier to get out of a contract sooner. So the actual difference is when you get a player to sign a horrible contract for himself, the team wins. And yes, I do agree to that. But it really has nothing to do with what we’re talking about here. This is about the cap hits, not about suckering players into horrible deals. We need a new thread for that.

[RashanGary]

Come back with similar guarantees and show the same money distributed the two different ways and then we can see if it’s easier to get out of in the second year. Hint, hint, it’s not. So you don’t need to waste your time.

[sharpe1027]

Come back with similar guarantees and show the same money distributed the two different ways and then we can see if it’s easier to get out of in the second year. Hint, hint, it’s not. So you don’t need to waste your time.

That's factually wrong. If the guaranteed money hits the cap earlier in the contract, you can cut them more easily than if you backload the same guaranteed money, e.g., through a signing bonus

Don't be a dick.

[RashanGary]

That's factually wrong. If the guaranteed money hits the cap earlier in the contract, you can cut them more easily than if you backload the same guaranteed money, e.g., through a signing bonus

Don't be a dick.

If you guarantee the same amount of money, you still pay the same amount of money, so what are you saving again?

[RashanGary]

If you pay 50 million in the first year and cut them, but you already took the full 50M hit… yes, you’re not paying for it anymore. But if you already paid the 50million for one year and took the hit, are you really gaining anything? No. It’s a ridiculous argument.

[sharpe1027]

If you pay 50 million in the first year and cut them, but you already took the full 50M hit… yes, you’re not paying for it anymore. But if you already paid the 50million for one year and took the hit, are you really gaining anything? No. It’s a ridiculous argument.

It's facts not an argument.

[RashanGary]

You don’t want a hit in your cap.

When you make a guaranteed portion of a contract, you’re guaranteed to do something you don’t want to do.

Whether you do it now or later it’s still the exact same thing. You took a hit on your cap. And it was guaranteed.


If you substitute taking a cap hit (something you don’t want) with cutting your arm off (also something you don’t want)

I think we can clearly see that if we cut our arm off now or later, it’s still the same result.