Cap Room

[ND72]

On Madden I traded Favre, Driver, Harris, KGB, Morency, Grant, Woodson, Franks, Clifton, and Tauscher I had 75 Million Dollars to play with. and we still went 10-6 With 7 1st round picks of course.

[CaliforniaCheez]

The cap space changes frequently. The numbers at the end of the season are not the numbers at the begining of the next season on March 1st.

The Packers are doing well so people are not monitoring the cap #'s that closely.

Here is a cap page to bookmark. It is updated approximately quarterly.

http://cappage.timesfour.com/

It hasn't been updated since November but when it is it is a nice reference.

[Cheesehead Craig]

http://www.packersnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071222/PKR01/712220372/1989/PackersPromo

This one has the pack at about 25M under for next year. This is as of 12/22/07

[Tony Oday]

I dont think we need another top tier DE. I think that we need the following...

OG X 2
TE X 1
OLB X 1
CB X 1
S X 1

Ya that is a lot to get in the FA market and hope that it works with chemistry but it would be something to talk about

[pbmax]

Re: Cap Room

Any signing bonus or other guaranteed bonus is pro-rated over the length of the deal. So there will be some acceleration if he retires before the deal is up, but you are right, the amount by now is very small compared to the salary that most of it will be immediate cap room.

Was listening to McCarthy being interviewed on NFL channel. I didn't realize the Packers are between 25-30 million below the cap? What is the league average?

A lot of teams are well below the cap.

The cap went up a lot when the signed their new TV deals prior to the 2006 season. The season to season jumps are pretty big too...the difference in the cap from 2007 to 2008 will be $7M.

Even with all the cap space we have, there are still at least 5 teams with more space...maybe a couple more.

Also, remember that Favre has no more remaining bonus money to count against the cap. When Favre retires, his entire base salary at that time will instantly become cap space...so that is another $10M in space that will become available in the near future.

Thompson has plenty of room to make some moves and improve this team in free agency. He will have no excuses this year for not making strides to shore up clear weaknesses like the interior OL and secondary depth with something other than rookies.

[Patler]

Re: Cap Room

Any signing bonus or other guaranteed bonus is pro-rated over the length of the deal. So there will be some acceleration if he retires before the deal is up, but you are right, the amount by now is very small compared to the salary that most of it will be immediate cap room.

Not exactly. There is a maximum time over which a signing bonus can be prorated. Presently the maximum period is six years. If the contract is for longer than six years, the signing bonus is counted equally over the first six years only. Thereafter only salaries, roster bonuses and the like are counted against the cap.

What happened sometimes was that a large roster bonus in a subsequent year was "guaranteed" by the team before it was due. That allowed them to prorate that bonus amount over the remaining years of the contract (or the maximum allowable, whichever was less). Teams used that to gain cap space in the year the bonus was paid, but it got them into trouble if the player retired, accelerating the entire amount in a later year. That is part of what happened with the Broncos and Elway.

If a player had large roster bonuses each year on a very long contract, and the team guaranteed several before he retired, they got hit real hard the season after he retired. There have been some changes in how that is handled under the new CBA, but to be honest I have not studied it in great detail yet.

The Packers have intentionally avoided that with Favre, so his roster bonuses have mostly counted completely in the season in which it was paid. I think they may have quaranteed one or two early in his contract, but they said several times that they wanted to avoid a big cap hit when he retired, so have remained mostly on a "cash and carry'" basis with his bonuses. Favre's original signing bonus was completely used against the cap a couple seasons ago already.

[pbmax]

Re: Cap Room

Good one Patler, but wasn't the acceleration length different when Favre signed this deal? I remember this as one of the changes in the new CBA.

Any signing bonus or other guaranteed bonus is pro-rated over the length of the deal. So there will be some acceleration if he retires before the deal is up, but you are right, the amount by now is very small compared to the salary that most of it will be immediate cap room.

Not exactly. There is a maximum time over which a signing bonus can be prorated. Presently the maximum period is six years. If the contract is for longer than six years, the signing bonus is counted equally over the first six years only. Thereafter only salaries, roster bonuses and the like are counted against the cap.

What happened sometimes was that a large roster bonus in a subsequent year was "guaranteed" by the team before it was due. That allowed them to prorate that bonus amount over the remaining years of the contract (or the maximum allowable, whichever was less). Teams used that to gain cap space in the year the bonus was paid, but it got them into trouble if the player retired, accelerating the entire amount in a later year. That is part of what happened with the Broncos and Elway.

If a player had large roster bonuses each year on a very long contract, and the team guaranteed several before he retired, they got hit real hard the season after he retired. There have been some changes in how that is handled under the new CBA, but to be honest I have not studied it in great detail yet.

The Packers have intentionally avoided that with Favre, so his roster bonuses have mostly counted completely in the season in which it was paid. I think they may have quaranteed one or two early in his contract, but they said several times that they wanted to avoid a big cap hit when he retired, so have remained mostly on a "cash and carry'" basis with his bonuses. Favre's original signing bonus was completely used against the cap a couple seasons ago already.

[pbmax]

Peter King had that number as well. But it doesn't account for two things. One, is the money they get back from Likely to Be Earned Incentives that weren't earned. That's a cap rebate for next year that the 18 mil figure doesn't have yet.

The other is number of signed players. The Packers face one big name FA and have over 40 players signed if memory serves. Many teams above us on that list have far fewer players signed OR have big money FAs coming due.

http://www.askthecommish.com/salarycap/numbers.asp

This site has the Packers 18.37 mil under the cap which ranks them 21st. It is not official.

Ya gotta be careful with that "Commish" site. It's updated, like once or twice a year. There was a good league-wide one, but it's now defunct. If i find one, I'll post it on the "Rats".

[Patler]

Re: Cap Room

Good one Patler, but wasn't the acceleration length different when Favre signed this deal? I remember this as one of the changes in the new CBA.

I hope we are talking the same thing, its not length of acceleration, it's length of pro-ration for signing bonuses. I think, but am not certain that it was six years under the old CBA, too, for veterans. I believe the new CBA decreased the length of time for pro-rating rookie signing bonuses.

[Patler]

The other is number of signed players. The Packers face one big name FA and have over 40 players signed if memory serves. Many teams above us on that list have far fewer players signed OR have big money FAs coming due.

That is something I have harped on for years. A couple seasons ago fans were excited about the Packers seemingly having considerable cap space in April, but they only had something like 32 players under contract. In reality their cap space was at least about $5 million less than it appeared, because they would spend that much just to complete their roster with minimum wage players.

When generating the list for fans, it would make more sense to take existing contracts, then add to that total the number of minimum first year contracts necessary to complete the roster. That would give you the amount available to spend on players costing more than the absolute minimum to fill your roster.