The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

Texas Hog wrote:Wasn't AG a fairly high pick a few years back? What's he costing y'all?

curveball wrote:You guys can slam this signing all you want.

Great addition to the team at the biggest need area'a swell, but a $9 million SB for a 33 year-old guard?

This is their first bad signing/contract.

Five-year, $20 million contract that includes a $9 million signing bonus. The deal is worth $13.5 million over its first three seasons.

redskincity wrote:This was a good pickup. We will have to deal with it though.

Im telling you, you cant give Bledsoe time in the pocket.

This sucks.

LetsRollBurgundyNGold wrote:I would agree that it is a pretty high price tag for Rivera, but he is a solid lineman, and I don't recall him having many issues with durability, if any. (would double check, but I don't care that much.)

I think the Cows' moves (as far as salary) have been more a product of Jones than Parcells. With the potential of Bill retiring should the team struggle again, Jerry is doin what he has to do to give the team the players Bill wants. Since they had room on the cap, seemingly the deals are front loaded just in case the Tuna dips anyway and they can make cuts as needed...

General Failure wrote:Count that as $4.8 million towards your 2007 cap thanks to the unpaid bonus loophole.

Eagles: Banner makes most of CBA loophole
By REUBEN FRANK
phillyBurbs.com


It's a rule so obscure it doesn't even have a name.

It's right there on page 96 of the NFL's Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Under Article XXIV, which covers "guaranteed league-wide salary, salary cap and minimum team salary."

In section 7, which covers "Valuation of Player Contracts."

Just go down to section ii, under "Acceleration."

And look down a little bit to subsection ©, paragraph (iii).

You can't miss it.

There, in tiny type in the middle of the 258-page CBA the NFL hammered out 10 years ago with the NFL Players Association, is a loophole.

A loophole that has given the Eagles more salary cap space the past two years than every other NFL team.

Team president Joe Banner, perhaps the NFL's shrewdest salary cap mind, won't discuss how the Eagles take advantage of the rule and, in fact, won't even acknowledge that it exists.

Why is this 70-word rule hidden in the middle of a vast legal document so powerful?

To understand that, we must understand the salary cap.

Each year, every NFL team is assigned a limit to how much money it can spend on payroll. Last year, the unadjusted cap figure for each team was $71.101 million. In 2003, it will be $75.007 million.

A player's annual cap figure is generally determined by dividing his signing bonus by the length of his contract and adding his base salary, although the final figure can be affected by various bonuses.

Add up the cap figures of the 53 highest-paid players on a team's roster and you can determine that team's cap figure. If a team surpasses the cap at one point during the season, it can be heavily fined by the NFL and even lose draft picks.

When teams dole out long-term contracts with giant signing bonuses, they risk getting into future cap trouble if the player performs poorly. If a team is forced to release a player who's received a big signing bonus, a portion of that bonus money can clog up the team's cap for years.

So the more room a team has to maneuver under its cap, the more competitive it can be.

Which brings us to page 96 of the CBA.

Although the annual salary cap is often referred to as a single figure, each team actually has its own unique salary cap figure. This is called an adjusted cap figure and the higher it is, the more money a team can spend to pay its players.

Last year, the Eagles' adjusted cap was $73,068,875. The average NFL adjusted cap figure was $70,394,674.

That means the Eagles had $2.752 million more to spend than the average team.

Why? Page 96. Read along at home:

At the end of a season, if performance bonuses previously included in a Team's Team Salary but not actually earned exceed performance bonuses actually earned but not previously included in Team Salary, an amount shall be added to the Team's Salary Cap for the next League Year equaling the amount, if any, by which such overage exceeds the Team's Room under the Salary Cap at the end of a season.

In essence, if certain incentive bonuses are not reached, the amount of the bonus is added to a team's adjusted salary cap the following year.

Nowhere does it state that the bonuses have to be realistic.

There's the million-dollar loophole.

In each of the last two years, the Eagles have re-written at least one massive - and utterly impossible to reach - incentive into the contract of a reserve player. When the player has - inevitably - failed to meet the incentive, the Eagles' adjusted cap figure for the following season has increased by the amount of the bonus.

Why would the players go along with this creative accounting? Simply, there's no reason not to. They're helping their team.

Why doesn't every team do this? Most can't. You need cap space to create more cap space.

The Eagles, thanks to smart cap management over the years, have the luxury of keeping a few million cap dollars free each year in case they need to replace injured players. By the end of the season, if it becomes clear they won't need the extra funds, they start throwing in those crazy bonuses, thereby passing the benefit over into the following year.

Think of this as a salary cap savings account. If the Eagles need the money, it's there. If they don't, they can just re-invest the cap space for the following year. Every year since owner Jeff Lurie bought the team in 1994 and put Banner in charge of all team finances, the Eagles have spent every available dollar under their adjusted cap.

The Eagles learned last week that their 2003 adjusted cap figure is an NFL-high $79,925,453, a staggering $4,688,488 above the NFL average of $75,236,964.

What they do with the money is another story.

That's nearly $5 million more to spend than the average NFL team. Four million more than the Cowboys. Six million more than the Giants. Seven million more than the Redskins.

Their creative accounting in 2002 earned the Eagles about $4.92 million in cap adjustments. The NFL average was $229,964. (Teams also have negative adjustments from bonuses that are met).

All because of one paragraph buried in the middle of the CBA.

As long as the CBA doesn't change and the Eagles don't mis-manage the cap, they'll continue to have far more money to spend than almost every other team.