Salary Cap fact versus fiction

[Nightman]

Dead money is a measure of contract mistakes. That's real money that could have been used to bring in solid free-agents (or retain good players otherwise lost to free agency).

In 2018, the Cowboys were #4 in the league in dead money, with $32,685,658.
In 2017, the Cowboys were #5 with $26,658,546.

In a league where so many games are decided by a handful of points, imagine how much help that money could have brought in. Bad management has cost this team many games.

The good news is were improving, coming in at #21 for 2019, with $4,258,471 in dead money.

that isn't what Dead Money is at all

Dead Money is simply the receipt for cap savings already used in the past when the cap was lower

DAL rolled over 12m in cap space from 2018 so the 32m in Dead Money had no impact on player acquisitions..... they didn't even use the all cap space they had readily available

 

[Nightman]

Spanning the last decade, the team has taken 2 positions that are so diametrically opposed that it's almost unbelievable that the same people are in charge. In 2012, Stephen laughed at the idea of cap hell and pretty much restructured simply out of spite of the Austin fine. Now, the team isn't restructuring nor are they spending available money.

No matter where you stand when it comes to cap management, it shouldn't be hard to agree that Dallas' front office is still trying to figure it out...unfortunately.

There was period of time from 2009 to 2013 that included the CBA talks that the owners artificially kept the salary cap flat to hurt the players.....in 2009 the cap was 123m and in 2013 the cap was still 123m

The owners really took it to the players in the CBA and got the rookie wage scale and many other concessions by crying poor even though they never opened their books

On top of these shenanigans the Cowboys took a 10m cap penalty because they messed with Miles Austin's contract too much during the uncapped year in 2010.... through all this DAL never came close to experiencing cap hell

They still signed TRomo to a 108m deal, paid DWare, JRatliff, DFree, BCarr, MBIII, MAustin, Witten, SLee, TO, RW11, Hamlin, Kosier, Columbo, ASpencer, MSpears. Church etc

Yes they restructured contracts to make space but they never passed on anyone or had to cut key players to make space.......never.......DWare was cut because he had 6 sacks and a hurt neck and we were going to a 43.... we would have created more cap space restructuring him than cutting him but they didn't think he was worth the 12m in salary any more.... period

There was no big sea change.....the cap simply went up 70m the next 6 years...... cap is no longer relevant but SJones is still crying poor..... it is really sad

The one FA signing of BCarr for 5/50m really wasn't that bad...... he played 80 straight games, had 6 INTs in his first 2 years and even gave back 5m in his last year.... that contract should not have been the reason to forgo FA forever

 

[visionary]

This.

And how many Cowboy fans applauded the Giants for the money they spent the last couple years?


The answer is many.

2 SB victories since we have even won back to back playoff games

The answer is that cowboy fans who pretend to be smart and like the current penny punching ways of our FO are stupid

Fact is that, sometimes you will miss but you have to swing the bat to get a hit

Our FO is incompetent and fans who defend it are stupid

 

[jterrell]

yes some, but when the season ends ad Dallas cant win a parity league, kinda proves the other some of us correct.

I like your post, i dont have a problem with the post, i do have a problem with Dallas offseason

Which off-season since 1995 has been good?

Was it good when they traded for Joey Galloway or Roy Williams?
Was it good when they paid money to sign players to big money then not win a playoff game all those years?

"You guys" want to point to lack of free agent signings as if that prove a point when in reality it is just the friggin opposite.
They have won MORE since they stopped making those name signings.
A 67% winning percentage the last 3 years says "you guys" are entitled children who think someone owes you championships and being a top 5 team over a 5 year stretch isn't "good enough".
Fans pretending they are some long suffering bunch are hilarious. DAL was one of the final 8 teams out of 32. They finished top 25% of the league with the 2nd youngest team in the NFL.
That is the very definition of a well run orginization.

Cry to me when they aren't beating the defending Super Bowl champions twice and winning divisions.

 

[jterrell]

*not pay guys like Nolan Carrol. Pathetic post, needed to be proof read.

Nope!!
Nolan Carroll was what he was. A stop gap signed to ensure your 3 2017 drafted DBs could play.
Narrator: They could all 3 play.

 

[Sydla]

Nope!!
Nolan Carroll was what he was. A stop gap signed to ensure your 3 2017 drafted DBs could play.
Narrator: They could all 3 play.

LOL.

A stop gap that they cut one month in and had to eat a year of dead money.

They signed him to start, he stunk, got hurt and they had no choice to cut him. Remember , Marinelli was obsessed with Carroll as he tried to sign him once before.

It was a clear free agent blunder.

 

[KingintheNorth]

The Fan Boys are having a tough time excusing the last 23 years without sniffing a Super Bowl are now trying to lower the bar.

YOU GUYS ARE SPOILED AND JUST WANNA WIN SUPER BOWLS!!!!

Yep, guilty as charged. I want to appear in and contend for Super Bowl championships.

All those pretending NFC East "crowns" are sufficient are embarrassing the entire fan base.

 

[KingintheNorth]

Nope!!
Nolan Carroll was what he was. A stop gap signed to ensure your 3 2017 drafted DBs could play.
Narrator: They could all 3 play.

They cut a guy 6 games into a 3-year deal. He only suited up for 2 games. It was a miserable fail. If you want to give the team props for improved drafting and what you want to pretend is a wise stance on cap management, then you have to own up to the more misses-than-hits free agent signings.

You don't give a guy a 3-year deal in the hopes the other guys can play. That's next-level apologizing. Oh by the way, they tried to sign Carroll the off-season before and he said no thanks. They wanted him and were wrong about him.

 

[CWR]

Nope!!
Nolan Carroll was what he was. A stop gap signed to ensure your 3 2017 drafted DBs could play.
Narrator: They could all 3 play.

Stop gaps are supposed to play in that "gap." He was a total waste.

 

[DanA]

2 hours til brackets and I have time soooo... let's try to make the board a little smarter.

Idiom: The cap keeps rising so pushing money off means it is worth less and is a good strategy.
FICTION: This is a very common and accepted bunch of nonsense. Why?? Because you know what else goes up? Player contracts.

This one I disagree with but looking at it from a different perspective.

Money has a time value, that’s simply a fact in business. If Tyrone Smith gets 50m upfront today, it is worth more than 50m recieved as a perpetuity over 5 years at a discount rate of 4% is worth 44.5m

The salary cap does not recognise a difference between future value and present value. Hence restructures and signing bonuses should get you a discount.

Objectively speaking this is FACT.

 

[xwalker]

LOL.

A stop gap that they cut one month in and had to eat a year of dead money.

They signed him to start, he stunk, got hurt and they had no choice to cut him. Remember , Marinelli was obsessed with Carroll as he tried to sign him once before.

It was a clear free agent blunder.

Carroll had 1 (one) half of a game where he was bad.

He played OK in game 1.

He was good enough that someone at CZ posted an "I told you so" about it directed at me because I had been skeptical about him before the season started.

He was terrible in game 2. He exited the game with an injury, then came back in and was finally out injured at about halftime.

He played 25 of 77 total snaps on defense in that game.

There is no way to know exactly when he was first injured or how many of the 25 snaps were affected by the injury.

They had drafted multiple CBs and they liked a low cost veteran that they had acquired.

Carroll was signed as a stopgap which means they needed him early in the season as the young players got up to speed.

We don't know what would have happened if he had not been injured. There is no point keeping a stopgap player that is injured.

In 2018 they cut stopgap Deonte Thompson despite him contributing more than expected. They cut him because they no longer needed him after acquiring Cooper. They would lose a comp pick if he stayed on the roster all season. The cut was NOT due to the player under-performing expectations.

 

[TwoDeep3]

This.

And how many Cowboy fans applauded the Giants for the money they spent the last couple years?


The answer is many.

However, that trophy in the case in Philly would sure look good in Dallas if they made the correct moves in FA and brought in real playmakers.

Then ask the most important questions.

Which would you rather have?

A trophy and dead money after?

Or a balanced budget and another decade of being an also rans?

Sure, there are no guarantees, but this team has tried the balanced act for a long time and it stinks on ice. The fan base is racing toward apathy, not trusting the braintrust, and knee jerking at the slightest provocation.

While I hated the idea, this board used to protect those you had an undying belief in this team no matter how immensely stupid they were. It was a galvanized cadre of fans who just knew the sun would come out in the morning.

Now? You can't convince me there isn't a secret cabal planning to kidnap Jerry and Stephen and the ransom would be hire a real GM.

However Charlotte Jones would take over and likely start a tradition of winning Super Bowls every few years. So this group would be stuck with the Jones boys in a cosmically screwed up version of The Ransom of Red Chief. .

As I think about this I may want to join this criminal organization.

 

[Idgit]

Not having been to the NFCCG in 23 years is not an excuse for losing your sense of proportion entirely.

And missing on one mid-tier FA is not a good argument for spending more money on riskier top-tier players instead.

 

[TwistedL0g1k]

that isn't what Dead Money is at all

Dead Money is simply the receipt for cap savings already used in the past when the cap was lower

DAL rolled over 12m in cap space from 2018 so the 32m in Dead Money had no impact on player acquisitions..... they didn't even use the all cap space they had readily available

From CBS sports:

"Dead money is a salary cap charge for a player that is no longer on a team's roster. It exists because of how salary cap accounting rules operate.

Signing bonuses, option bonuses and certain roster bonuses are prorated or spread out evenly over the life of a contract for a maximum of five years. When a player is released, traded, or retires, the remaining proration of these salary components immediately accelerate onto his team's current salary cap."

Whether or not the cap was lower in the past is irrelevant, and it has nothing to do with "cap savings". It is quite simply what is bolded above.

For example, if a team signs a player to a 4 year contract, with a large signing bonus, and that team cuts the player after 2 years- the remaining part of the prorated signing bonus counts against the current year cap. It absolutely affects the amount of cap space left available for the current year to be potentially used for player acquisition or retention.

Perhaps the team understands and accepts this fact when it makes the original signing. Perhaps the team overestimated the years of performance it would receive from the signing. Regardless, dead money does reduce available, usable cap space. Had the Cowboys not had $32.7M in dead money in 2018, they could have used that salary cap space for other purposes.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

2 hours til brackets and I have time soooo... let's try to make the board a little smarter.

Idiom: The cap keeps rising so pushing money off means it is worth less and is a good strategy.
FICTION: This is a very common and accepted bunch of nonsense. Why?? Because you know what else goes up? Player contracts. You need more money to sign the next guy because the next guy is on a higher salary scale. You are competing in any given window and you've shorted yourself for that window to benefit one that will quickly be in the past. Any GM who hands out 50M+ in restructures then wins 7 or less games should be fired week 17.

Stopped reading here.

Prices go up whether you push money into the future or not. The question you have to ask yourselves is do you want to spend $50MM today when you have 200MM to spend or would you rahter spend $50MM and pay for that money when you have $250MM to spend.

It's really a binary choice.

 

[DanA]

Which off-season since 1995 has been good?

Was it good when they traded for Joey Galloway or Roy Williams?
Was it good when they paid money to sign players to big money then not win a playoff game all those years?

"You guys" want to point to lack of free agent signings as if that prove a point when in reality it is just the friggin opposite.
They have won MORE since they stopped making those name signings.
A 67% winning percentage the last 3 years says "you guys" are entitled children who think someone owes you championships and being a top 5 team over a 5 year stretch isn't "good enough".
Fans pretending they are some long suffering bunch are hilarious. DAL was one of the final 8 teams out of 32. They finished top 25% of the league with the 2nd youngest team in the NFL.
That is the very definition of a well run orginization.

Cry to me when they aren't beating the defending Super Bowl champions twice and winning divisions.

There’s been plenty of mistakes in free agency since ‘95 which have led to terrible off-seasons. The new policy which seems to be to opt out of the top end of free agency ensures we avoid most huge mistakes but it also limits the upside on how good an off-season can be.

If we want to compete to be not just be top 25% but Super Bowl champs, we have to utilize every tool to the full extent. Sometimes a Charles Haley can push you over the top. Denver won super bowls that way, you can afford to not make the most of opportunity in football when your window is open.

 

[Nightman]

From CBS sports:

"Dead money is a salary cap charge for a player that is no longer on a team's roster. It exists because of how salary cap accounting rules operate.

Signing bonuses, option bonuses and certain roster bonuses are prorated or spread out evenly over the life of a contract for a maximum of five years. When a player is released, traded, or retires, the remaining proration of these salary components immediately accelerate onto his team's current salary cap."

Whether or not the cap was lower in the past is irrelevant, and it has nothing to do with "cap savings". It is quite simply what is bolded above.

For example, if a team signs a player to a 4 year contract, with a large signing bonus, and that team cuts the player after 2 years- the remaining part of the prorated signing bonus counts against the current year cap. It absolutely affects the amount of cap space left available for the current year to be potentially used for player acquisition or retention.

Perhaps the team understands and accepts this fact when it makes the original signing. Perhaps the team overestimated the years of performance it would receive from the signing. Regardless, dead money does reduce available, usable cap space. Had the Cowboys not had $32.7M in dead money in 2018, they could have used that salary cap space for other purposes.

Basic google searches don't add much to the conversation

You didn't understand anything I wrote the rollover of cap space and what the 32.7m really represents

Context means everything

Romo had a 8.9m dead cap and that looks bad but he originally had a 28.4m cap hit for 2018....cutting him SAVED 19.5m on the cap

Dez had an 8m dead cap hit but he was scheduled to have a 16.5m cap hit.... that saved 8.5m on the cap

So even with those big 17.9m dead money hits DAL actually netted 28m in cap space..... they spent 16.3m of that space on roster moves and trades and still had 11.7m left over after the season

They rolled that 11.7m over to this year creating even more space

 

[Bohuntr97]

There’s been plenty of mistakes in free agency since ‘95 which have led to terrible off-seasons. The new policy which seems to be to opt out of the top end of free agency ensures we avoid most huge mistakes but it also limits the upside on how good an off-season can be.

If we want to compete to be not just be top 25% but Super Bowl champs, we have to utilize every tool to the full extent. Sometimes a Charles Haley can push you over the top. Denver won super bowls that way, you can afford to not make the most of opportunity in football when your window is open.

IMHO It's a hard deal. Go "all in" like the Broncos did and won a SB. They have not made the playoffs since as players retired or moved on for better deals. We are trying to duplicate the Pat's system, just might not be as good as they are.

Doesn't hurt when the pat's have a late round pick as a future HOF QB.

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

Super Bowl champions can be built largely through free agency and trades. To say it can’t happen is to neglect those who’ve done it. Going on free agency spending sprees and trading your draft picks for star players can bring you jewelry.

You can make a successful team 100 different ways. Just to say the way you’re doing it doesn’t seem to be working doesn’t mean it’s not a proper way, you may just have to go about it differently.

 

[Bohuntr97]

Super Bowl champions can be built largely through free agency and trades. To say it can’t happen is to neglect those who’ve done it. Going on free agency spending sprees and trading your draft picks for star players can bring you jewelry.

You can make a successful team 100 different ways. Just to say the way you’re doing it doesn’t seem to be working doesn’t mean it’s not a proper way, you may just have to go about it differently.

That's where I'm at. We are close now could and could literally "buy" a broncos championship, yet they missed the playoffs after that and again and again. Is it worth to buy a championship only to be relegated to nothing after the high priced free agents leave or retire.