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We're in salary cap hell!!!
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:41 pm
by hkHog
Just kidding! On ESPN they are showing how far each team is below the cap. You can see all the numbers here.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/s ... id=2004973
As of today we are $9.6 million below the cap! There are only seven teams with more cap space! I guess Lenny is right, Dan Snyder has no idea what he's doing!
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:02 pm
by Irn-Bru
Journalists main doom prophecies always have us in salary cap hell two seasons from any given point in time--we never seem to run into that wall. As I understand it, however, we actually are headed for a bit of trouble in 2006, with Coles et. al. being some of the deciding factors.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:03 pm
by Justice Hog
Looks like the Vikings are at $31 million and the Eagles are $14.4 million under? Whew! The Eagles can once again go out and pick up some stud free agents should they so choose. That's pretty scary.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:09 pm
by RobSkins1
31 mill is just well, eye poping wow!!! GO SKINS!!!!!!

Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:15 pm
by REDEEMEDSKIN
The Eagles can once again go out and pick up some stud free agents should they so choose. That's pretty scary.
Only if you're an Eagles fan. They're doing a fine job at choking with a modest payroll, why increase the payroll? Doing so, will only make their January troubles even more pronounced. I like the "frugal" route we're taking this year.RobSkins1 wrote:31 mill is just well, eye poping wow!!! GO SKINS!!!!!!
Uh.... I think you might have misread the post (or I'm misreading yours). We're DEFINITELY NOT $31 million under the cap, despite not paying for Pierce or conceding to Smoot's demands.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:18 pm
by RobSkins1
Ummm...I know the Vikings are. I just think a team with 31 mill is eye popping. GO SKINS!!!!

Re: We're in salary cap hell!!!
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:19 pm
by genuswine hoglover
hkHog wrote:As of today we are $9.6 million below the cap! There are only seven teams with more cap space! I guess Lenny is right, Dan Snyder has no idea what he's doing!
Unfortunately, it is not only about where you are vis-a-vis the salary cap, it also is about what you have spent it on that counts. Witness Philly and Minnesota, both well under the cap, but playoff teams.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:22 pm
by Irn-Bru
RobSkins1 wrote:Ummm...I know the Vikings are. I just think a team with 31 mill is eye popping. GO SKINS!!!!


Classic case of signature / post content confusion on the part of Red. Happens to me all the time. . .
Is the "31 mil. under the cap" status of Minnesota caused by the financial vacuum that Moss left behind?
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:45 pm
by Jake
FFA, it's all due to McCombs' timidity when it comes to signing big name free agents. If I remember correctly, the Moss trade counted several million AGAINST the Vikes' cap.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:57 pm
by Irn-Bru
Jake wrote:FFA, it's all due to McCombs' timidity when it comes to signing big name free agents. If I remember correctly, the Moss trade counted several million AGAINST the Vikes' cap.
And THEN they're 31 million under?
Sounds like the Cardinals of yester-year. We used to start franchises with them on some earlier Madden's for that very reason.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:18 pm
by FatPat
How can the chiefs, at 2.7 mil under, be in a position to sign players in the Smoot, Rolle bonus money range. I guess they would be backloaded contracts or some salary cap purging but it really doesnt make any sense why they can think about siginig those guys...
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:26 pm
by BossHog
As you all know, I folow the cap very well... and unfortunately, i know the answer to the Vikings cap bonanza... i'm just not sure I can quickly and effectively explain it.
Heard of 'unlikely to be reached incentives'. All money in a player's contract counts against the cap unless it is in the form of 'unlikely to be reached incentives'. Teams can add clauses into contracts to players and these particular incentives don't actually count against the cap.
Yes it's true.
But you can't just put up any old incentive and expect the league to okay it and not count against their cap number (everything has to be approved by the league). As a n example... I remember that Stephen Davis had a large unlikely to be reached incentive for a small number of touchdowns. How did they get away with it? They were for receiving touchdowns... and SD had only caught ONE TD pass the year before... I can't remember the number of TDs he had to get to reach the incentive, I think it was 5, and he didn't reach it anyway. I ioffer it only as an example of an unlikely to be reached incentive.
Anyway... back to the Vikings.
These incentive cluses don't affect the cap, but not only that, in a little known CBA technicality.. IF THESE INCENTIVES ARE NOT REACHED, THEY ARE CREDITTED TO THE TEAM ON THEIR CAP NUMBER THE FOLLOWING YEAR.
Ok, ok so you're saying well why doesnt everyone do this... well because the only way you get away with gaining any reasonable credit is if you're team sucks. Think about it... these are all performance based incentives, if your team didn't meet any of them it's because you didn't do very well. yes they are all 'unlikely' but they are all based on performance of some type.
Now here's how minnesota comes in... in 2004 they received a whopping $14m credit to their cap. yes $14M. that meant instead of having to fit under a cap number of $80M like everyone else did... they had a cap number of almost $95m.
When you couple that with Red McCombs stingy pocket, you have multiple reasons for why the Vikinga have so much cap room in 2005. They used the money wisely last year to make use of the 'bonus' money.
That's a very lay, very brief explanation, but I hope it at least helps explain a little.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:36 pm
by Xmangma
Does the figure for the skins include the deal for Patten

Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:49 pm
by frankcal20
I would think that we should have had something like that b/c our offense didnt perform at all last year. I just hope some contracts were like that.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:52 pm
by curveball
Dallas used LTBE incentive's in 3rd string QB Tony Romo's contract to roll a million over to this season. He had to throw for 8 TD passes in the final game to earn it, so the incentive doesn't even have to be close to achievable.
The biggest reason that Minnesota's $31 million under is the extraordinarily long vetting process for the sale of a team.
The sale price is finalized and every dollar that McCombs doesn't spend on the team ultimately goes directly into his pocket. I doubt many people would behave any differently. If I sold someone my car, I wouldn't put new tires on it while they went to the bank to get the cash.
They'll sign a few players with relatively small bonuses like Pat Williams, but expect them to be at the mandated minimum until the team's ownership is resolved.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:11 pm
by redskincity
The teams with huge cap space and make it to the playoffs are very scary.
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 7:00 pm
by Irn-Bru
Thanks for posting that, Boss. . .not something that I could have figured out just sitting in a room.
The fact that the Eagles manage themselves this well financially really does scare me. I know that Gibbs will bring us back to glory, but if I wasn't so sure that Philly would choke time after time I'd be quite scared right now.

Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:10 am
by fredp45
Boss -- good stuff... I know a little, it's clear, you know a lot more cap details than me.
I was looking at a site on the Skins cap numbers. I've been one of those guys "worrying" about our 2006 cap...However, I just looked at it again.
If we trade Coles and give Moss a reasonable salary we have the following guys signed for 2006 that may not be giving us much by then:
Barrow 3.4
Bowen 2.4
Brunnell 5.4
Daniels 2.6
Friedman 1.
Raymer 1.1
Hall 1.4
McCants 2.1
Noble 2.1
Morton 2.3
Between 22 and 25 mil...Now...I don't know how much each guy would cost us to cut, that is -- how much SB do they have left to allocate but if we get one more year from these guys, maybe they're "cuttable" for savings in 2006. Bowen is the one guy who may be worth keeping beyond 2005. The rest seem like guys that may be either over the hill, or overpaid for what they give us.
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:49 pm
by wonker
How are the Eagles under the cap by 10 million! I don't get it.
wonker
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:18 pm
by SkinsJock
wonker wrote: How are the Eagles under the cap by 10 million! I don't get it.
It's all there! Just got to "read" it!
makes no difference really - they just don't seem to be able to win
it, do they? "always next year" with that group, then, "oh well, at least we were in the playoffs" OR "we played in
the game" - yea!
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:28 pm
by tcwest10
Well, if being nearly 7 million under the cap is everybody else's idea of our being in a "cap hell"...I'm thinking they got air conditioning down there.
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:57 pm
by Scottskins
excellent insight BH. I'm pretty knowledgeable about the cap, and I knew how likely to be reached worked, but not the unlikely to be reached part.
Learn something new everday eh?
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:55 pm
by BossHog
Scottskins wrote:Learn something new everday eh?
Hopefully.
... and thanks.
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 8:06 pm
by 1niksder

How are we in cap hell
If we were in cap hell a WR with a $9M cap number could walk into Gibbs office and say "I want to be released, I can't play here anymore. I know I have a big cap number but I'll give back $5M if you will release me" This would have made Coles cap hit in 2005 around $4.2M this year and he'd have his freedom. If Coles hadn't wanted to leave his cap number would have been $3.3M
The Skins (not being in cap hell) not wanting any player here that doesn't want to be here say's. You want to go? you got to go, but we want more than a bonus that we've already accounted for. A team in or headed for Cap Hell can't/won't take a $9,000,000 cap hit without cost(maybe Pierce was the price). But we did get something for him and Moss/Patten actually gives us more speed outside.
There will be no cap hell.... heres why
When Marty was here he cut as much fat as he could but it left a lot of dead money on the cap for years that is slowly evening out ($10.25 in '04 and $7.02 in 05) that future dead cap space is what you get when you hire 1 hit wonders. Look at the guys that came in when Marty was here verses the one that came in when SOS was the coach. (This isn't really fair ...Marty was "the defacto GM" and Steve was the "the ole ball coach")
Gibbs has started cutting fat also but he isn't going to leave a lot of dead money laying around. He has a set scale that he is willing to pay for a given player and he won't go beyond that. Thats Cap management.
People wondered how Gibbs would handle the Salary Cap era and now he's right in the thick of it.
I knew a little about the cap and understand it a lot better now thanks to this site. From what I can figure using numbers that did not include recent deals (Patten, Rabach, Marshall,Albright and others).... The Salary cap for 06 is projected around $100M (I don't think it will be that high) and on Feb 27th the Skin's projected cap # for 06 was $108M
(that wouldn't be cap hell a team could restucture $9-$10 million easy) But the move this past week will effect next years Cap....The contracts that were restructured this year total about $25M in cap money next year(Jon Janson $5.2M... Randy Thomas $4.5M...Reynaldo Wynn $4.5 ....C Sam $11.3)shaving a thrid off(to be conservative) and that's over $8M and would have us going into this season under the cap. Add another $2M for the players that were cut this week but figured into the cap. That would put us at around $98M. and we will eat the whole $9M for Coles this year but can scracth another $6.85 off the original cap number for 06
If there is a Cap Hell "the Danny" is immune
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 8:17 pm
by SkinsJock
1niksder wrote::hmm: How are we in cap hell
....If there is a Cap Hell "the Danny" is immune
So! I guess that's like a "get out of jail free" card? And we aint done yet!
thanks, 1niksder! point well made!