All The Wrong in Dallas

[85Cowboy85]

I had to re-read this a few times. The good GMs absolutely believe in "you win in the trenches". How are the Cardinals doing these days? Winning with Peterson? How are they competing against the likes of the Seahawks and 49ers these days?

The Seahawks had a dominant OL and DL, the Ravens did too, the Giants did too, so did the Packers, etc, etc. You don't build a winner without dominating the LOS. It's pretty clear cut.

But there's clearly a hierarchy of importance among positions right? So how do we tell which positions GMs think are most important?

Easiest way to see is to check how GMs vote with their wallets.

All the big name cuts were restructured, with Ware doing the deed 3 times. Your not doing your research.

Lets look at who was cut:

Ware - http://espn.go.com/dallas/nfl/story/_/id/8996867/demarcus-ware-dallas-cowboy-restructures-contract

Ratliff - http://sportsblogs.star-telegram.co...restructuring-jay-ratliff-and-two-others.html

Austin - http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap10...austin-deal-leads-cowboys-restructuring-spree

Just those three guys accounts for a little more than $18M in dead money now.

But Austin added $4M extra, Ratliff ate an extra $3M, and then Ware was restructured 3 different time which accounts for his $8.8M dead money hit.

I'm pretty good at math and that comes out to $15.8M in those three guys alone.

Subtract that from the approximate $24M in dead money and you would have had $8.2M in dead money instead of $24M.

An extra $15.8M to spend on FA or to roll into next year...but were not in cap hell. ROFLMAO.

You got me. I will man up and admit I wrote that off the cuff and did not research the exact numbers. However you are still forgetting something important.

We would not have 15.8 million extra dollars if we did not restructure those contracts. In fact the same amount of cap dollars would be paid to those players. The only difference is we are paying it now instead of before.

If my player has a 10 million dollar base salary and I decide to prorate 9 million of it I pay 9 million to the player accelerating into the cap if i happen to cut him.

On the other hand if I decide to pay him 10 million now I have counted all of that base salary into the cap. But I'm still paying him the same nine million plus one million base salary.

This is why your argument against restructuring makes no sense.

The supposed nightmare situation you propose is actually advantageous. Let's say we keep pushing 15 million dollars into next years cap year after year after year. If you did this perpetually you would in fact be able to operate get more out of the salary cap then you would otherwise. That's because that 15 million is a smaller percentage of the 201(x+1) cap then it is of the 201(x) cap.

 

[Bluestang]

But there's clearly a hierarchy of importance among positions right? So how do we tell which positions GMs think are most important?

Easiest way to see is to check how GMs vote with their wallets.

Skill position players will always command more money, it's the way the NFL operated since it's beginning. But that doesn't mean that it should be the basis of what positions are important on a football team.

You win in the trenches, and there is no other way around it.

You got me. I will man up and admit I wrote that off the cuff and did not research the exact numbers. However you are still forgetting something important.

We would not have 15.8 million extra dollars if we did not restructure those contracts. In fact the same amount of cap dollars would be paid to those players. The only difference is we are paying it now instead of before.

If my player has a 10 million dollar base salary and I decide to prorate 9 million of it I pay 9 million to the player accelerating into the cap if i happen to cut him.

On the other hand if I decide to pay him 10 million now I have counted all of that base salary into the cap. But I'm still paying him the same nine million plus one million base salary.

This is why your argument against restructuring makes no sense.

The supposed nightmare situation you propose is actually advantageous. Let's say we keep pushing 15 million dollars into next years cap year after year after year. If you did this perpetually you would in fact be able to operate get more out of the salary cap then you would otherwise. That's because that 15 million is a smaller percentage of the 201(x+1) cap then it is of the 201(x) cap.

However, the cap hit keeps increasing which adds to the amount of dead money you pay when you decide to cut the player. That gives you less money available relative to the overall cap for that league year to spend.

The current $24M of dead money is all directly related to the $20ish million the Cowboys were over the cap back before the league year started in early 2013. They Cowboys were forced to restructure several contracts to get under the cap, which at the same time severely limited their available cap dollars to spend on FAs.

Don't sit there and try to say it's advantageous when in reality you are hindering your ability to get FAs because you don't have any cap space to allocate for them because it's already been tied into current players. How are you getting better if you can't bring a quality veteran to compete for roster spots?

With the new CBA the cap started out at $120M in 2011, then went to $120.6M in 2012, and $123M in 2013. This year it jumped to $133M.

The biggest jump in the salary cap was this year and it only went up 8%.

8% of $15.8M is only $1.264M, congrats you only negated $1.264M and turned it into $14.536M overall of dead money because of the 8% increase in the salary cap. Because of this $24M dead money, the team really has $111M of cap dollars to operate with and they also have the most amount of dead money in the league this year. Comically, they are in 2nd next year for the amount of dead money they are projected to have too. As of today they have the 2nd to last least amount of cap spending this year which is right around $99.5M, the Jets and the Raiders surround us as the 1st and 3rd respectively. There is no efficiency in the restructuring process, when the guys you restructure are cap casualties. It makes no sense at all because you obviously put the team spending at a disadvantage compared to the other franchises. Compare the $99.5M cap dollars spent to the Seahawks who are at $120M spent with another almost $7M free space. You want to tell me that in the salary cap era of the NFL that we can compete with a team like them when we are already operating about $20M less than they are? This is the exact reason why we have Hayden, Mincey, McClain, Wilbur, Durant, Bernadeau, and Selvie on this team and wonder why they can't compete against the better teams in the NFL.

If Dallas didn't need to restructure anyone, they wouldn't go this route at all but this year they were already $16M over the newly increased salary cap of $133M. Hence they restructured Sean Lee, Orlando Scandrick, and Tony Romo.

But as I said before, their hands are forced because they are continually over the cap and either have to cut ties with an aging veteran or restructure their contract to get themselves out of cap hell.

 

[BringBackThatOleTimeBoys]

The best thing that ever happened to Sean Peyton is he left Dallas for New Orleans for the reasons cited in the OP's initial post. He would have not won a SB in Dallas under this environment.

 

[85Cowboy85]

However, the cap hit keeps increasing which adds to the amount of dead money you pay when you decide to cut the player. That gives you less money available relative to the overall cap for that league year to spend.

Don't sit there and try to say it's advantageous when in reality you are hindering your ability to get FAs because you don't have any cap space to allocate for them because it's already been tied into current players. How are you getting better if you can't bring a quality veteran to compete for roster spots?

With the new CBA the cap started out at $120M in 2011, then went to $120.6M in 2012, and $123M in 2013. This year it jumped to $133M.

The biggest jump in the salary cap was this year and it only went up 8%.

8% of $15.8M is only $1.264M, congrats you only negated $1.264M and turned it into $14.536M overall of dead money because of the 8% increase in the salary cap. Because of this $24M dead money, the team really has $111M of cap dollars to operate with and they also have the most amount of dead money in the league this year. Comically, they are in 2nd next year for the amount of dead money they are projected to have too. As of today they have the 2nd to last least amount of cap spending this year which is right around $99.5M, the Jets and the Raiders surround us as the 1st and 3rd respectively. There is no efficiency in the restructuring process, when the guys you restructure are cap casualties. It makes no sense at all because you obviously put the team spending at a disadvantage compared to the other franchises. Compare the $99.5M cap dollars spent to the Seahawks who are at $120M spent with another almost $7M free space. You want to tell me that in the salary cap era of the NFL that we can compete with a team like them when we are already operating about $20M less than they are? This is the exact reason why we have Hayden, Mincey, McClain, Wilbur, Durant, Bernadeau, and Selvie on this team and wonder why they can't compete against the better teams in the NFL.

How does the cap hit increase? The cap hit is the same as I explained earlier it is just paid in different years.

Lets say we are going to cut Carr two years from now. Even if we convert all of next years salary to signing bonus when we cut him in 2016 we will have paid the same in cap. It's just the charge will be mostly in 16 and we will have more cap money in 15. There's really not much difference and for the reasons outlined earlier it's arguably superior to pay most of it in 2016.

It is historically unusual for the cap to remain constant. That 8% is more like what you would typically expect. In fact it's expected to start jumping even more in the immediate future. For instance Greg Ellis's contract was pretty good for him when he signed it but the cap inflated so much he eventually became disgruntled with the amount he made compared to his teammates. This is also why the NFLPA considered going after the Cowboy's and Smith for Collusion. While 100 million looks like a lot by year 10 with how much the cap is projected to increase LTs could be making 20 mil per season.

They could always restructure more money to free up some space if they wanted to. They do not have 111 million to spend. They have 111 million plus whatever they can and are willing to pass into future years. They have chosen to take their licks now. In part I think this is because they just have too many holes to fill on defense to be competitive for this year. There could also be other reasons for it. For instance if internally there are doubts about Romo's health it would not make sense for them to go all out in FA this year.

If you look how many raw cap dollars we have spent over the past 5 years we have probably spent more then any other team. We actually had more money to make moves with. The problem is we didn't spend it efficiently not that we restructured too much.

 

[Bluestang]

How does the cap hit increase? The cap hit is the same as I explained earlier it is just paid in different years.

Lets say we are going to cut Carr two years from now. Even if we convert all of next years salary to signing bonus when we cut him in 2016 we will have paid the same in cap. It's just the charge will be mostly in 16 and we will have more cap money in 15. There's really not much difference and for the reasons outlined earlier it's arguably superior to pay most of it in 2016.

It is historically unusual for the cap to remain constant. That 8% is more like what you would typically expect. In fact it's expected to start jumping even more in the immediate future. For instance Greg Ellis's contract was pretty good for him when he signed it but the cap inflated so much he eventually became disgruntled with the amount he made compared to his teammates. This is also why the NFLPA considered going after the Cowboy's and Smith for Collusion. While 100 million looks like a lot by year 10 with how much the cap is projected to increase LTs could be making 20 mil per season.

They could always restructure more money to free up some space if they wanted to. They do not have 111 million to spend. They have 111 million plus whatever they can and are willing to pass into future years. They have chosen to take their licks now. In part I think this is because they just have too many holes to fill on defense to be competitive for this year. There could also be other reasons for it. For instance if internally there are doubts about Romo's health it would not make sense for them to go all out in FA this year.

You are simply not getting it at all. Dallas has players the type of players on this roster that have made this defense historically bad because they can't afford anything else.

You call it efficient, I call it terrible decision making.

Your obviously going to sit there and convince yourself that the Cowboys are doing things efficiently, and when this defense fails at every turn your going to look at players like Hayden, McClain, Mincey, and Selvie and wonder what happened...

If you look how many raw cap dollars we have spent over the past 5 years we have probably spent more then any other team. We actually had more money to make moves with. The problem is we didn't spend it efficiently not that we restructured too much.

This year and in 2013, we have been in top 10 of the least amount of cap spending.

In 2012 we were 11th in most amount cap spending.

The 49ers have been in 4th, 11th, and 7th in most amount of cap spending in the same 3 yr span from 2012-2014.

I couldn't find the information for 2011 and 2010 - but 2010 was an "uncapped year anyways".[/quote]