NFL's 2021 salary cap could take major hit if games are played without fans

Flamma said:

Unfortunately not much justification is needed other than what is written into the contract.

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Sydla said:

Yeah I am not buying it.

How do you cut the cap by tens of millions and still have a functioning league? How do you expect a team to trim, say 70MM, from their cap?

And the NFLPA will lose their minds. Because if they try to cram the cap back down that means a to of veteran players are going to get cut and they’ll have to sign for way less.

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jterrell said:

Everyone knows the next NFL deal will be with a streaming service.
It's not even a hidden secret.
It's common knowledge.

And it will be massive and world-wide.

If Amazon wants to separate out Prime video from it's default Prime offering getting the NFL does that.
If Netflix or Hulu wants to claim the top streaming spot and become able to charge a cable like rate for the service, this does that.

And Amazon and Netflix are not hurting right now. Netflix stock rreache dit;s all-time high of an insane ~434 dollars April ~15th/16th.
Amazon's all-time high was april ~30th and is large enough I'd get carpal just typing it.

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Kwyn said:

Dak doesn’t want to sign anyway. He has been approaching this with an eye to play on the tag and then enter the pool as a 2nd year tag (40m+) then straight up free agency in 2022 or, sign a deal next year after Mahomes and Watson reset the market.

My position, and I could have been more specific, is that the team would be better off avoiding any long term commitments because the cap will likely go down. Committing to gigantic cap hit in 2021 when you don’t know what the cap for that year will be doesn’t make sense for the team

teams who are at or at the cap for this year and who are projected to be at or over the cap next year are going to be in a world of hurt.

This is one off season where saving for a rainy day makes sense because the salary cap rain is coming in 10 months.

Timing is actually helping the Cowboys for a change

Now, all that said, the Cowboys and Dak may just decide to go crazy and sign a ridiculous deal now and roll the dice ok the revenue and cap for next year but that would surprise me

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daboyzruleperiod said:

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big dog cowboy said:

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Kwyn said:

But they do plan on it. All of the major sports have force majeur (act of god) provisions in their deals that anticipate things like war, and plague. They now typically even specify plague/pandemic, provisions

baseball right now, with the loss of their entire season in the offing. Is having to explore those aspects of their own agreement with players to find out how much of player salaries are unpaid.

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Sydla said:

The problem is it's not that easy to just "shed" those contracts. Many of those terrible contracts carry significant dead money hits which would do the opposite of helping a team get under the cap by cutting them........... they'd make it even tougher to get under the cap.

Take Philly again. $50MM over the cap in 2021. So they have to get that $50MM back, then trim another $70MM or so. Natural inclination is to look at their biggest contracts and see what can be cut there to start really trimming the fat.

Problem is many of their big contracts are new. So for example, Lane Johnson would be a nearly $17MM cap hit in 2021. Cut him? Can't. You cut him, you have to take a $33MM cap hit in 2021. That's not helping Philly, it's hurting them. Same with Fletcher Cox or Carson Wentz or Zach Ertz, etc. So then you are left just cutting middle and lower guys but to find $120MM in cap space, you've basically cut your roster to 20 guys and there is little cap space to fill out a roster.

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DakPresgoat said:

I know how the cap works.

all I’m saying is. The owners and NFL could easily decide to eat the loss from one season of no fans in the stands during a global pandemic considering how they have a license to print money every other season.

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Flamma said:

I've heard the NFL doesn't have one covering this situation.



Although you're right about Philly, but why should teams that don't have this problem care? The league would first have to agree on something with the NFLPA. That part shouldn't be a problem. But then I'm pretty sure the owners vote. That might be. When owners vote they usually need 75%. But I'm not sure if that's the case in regards to the CBA.

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“If one or more weeks of any NFL season are cancelled or [All Revenue] for any League Year substantially decreases, in either case due to a terrorist or military action, natural disaster, or similar event, the parties shall engage in good faith negotiations to adjust the provisions of this Agreement with respect to the projection of [All Revenue] and the Salary Cap for the following League Year so that [All Revenue] for the following League Year is projected in a fair manner consistent with the changed revenue projection caused by such action.”

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charron said:

I would think if they use it as a tool to reset the market they probably wouldn't raise then CAP back the next year. Would make sense to keep it low untill the new TV deal comes through and then raise it but use the lower starting point as leverage. anyway I doubt this happens but you never know.

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Kwyn said:

That’s the root of the issue here. They can’t control the cap and neither can the players

the revenues determine the cap. It’s just math

I’d the cap goes down drastically for one year due to lost revenues, The teams and players could, in theory, be forced to renegotiate deals. Those who wouldn’t negotiate a new contract could be cut.

free agents in the market would be in an incredibly weak position as the dolkars just wouldn’t be there for big FA deals.

The. Owners could shed bad deals, knowing that the other teams are in the same boat and can’t just go crazy signing players either

then. The following year when the revenues go up and the caps goes up, the average contract for new free agents might be much lower.

Mira all just speculation at this point except for the past about revenues dictating cap because that’s written into the CBA

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eastsideboy said:

That will never happen both players and owners will have to take the hit.

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Kwyn said:

Good callout! You’re right.

I’m not sure if this helps or hurts the players positions though. Without clear language that specified exactly what happens in the event of a pandemic it could leave the owners responsible for paying full salaries but that could be a double edged sword because of the players were to play hardball and demand full pay after cancelled games, the owners may then feel compelled to play hardball themselves.

The CBA does contain some language around cancelled games and revenue, but your right in that it’s not a force majeure clause like the NBA has

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