Bob Sturm: Still mad that Cowboys didn’t pay DeMarco? A look back at ‘insane’ deals Dallas did hand

[dallasdave]

Free was technically a FA. His old contract dead money hit this year whether we re-signed him or not. That is 4m.

His new contract carries another 3m in cap charges this year, for a total of 7m this year.

Thanks for info, maybe you can take over as cap-specialist. We need a new zone called the cap-zone.

 

[AbeBeta]

The dead money vs pay as you go argument is a legitimate debate. But to say your side is the only correct way of doing things while ignoring several other people that are pointing out your mistakes is something else.

It really isn't a legit debate. Pay as you go makes accounting easier. But the dead money approach actually gives you more space in the long run as you push cap charges into years with higher salary caps meaning you've used proportionally less space.

The foolishness in this thread comes from the idea that you can structure deals to have zero dead money if you cut a player before the end of the deal. That just isn't possible if you do deals with large signing bonuses (which is what any agent will demand for a guy with value).

For example, let's say we get Dez on a 5 year - 15 mill a year average deal with 30 mill of that in guarantees. How are you going to do that so that you don't have dead money? The only possible way would be to go a flat 15 mill salary each year with the first two years guaranteed. That would give 15 mill dead in 2016 if cut (we'd have to pay that 15 regardless) and no dead money years 3-5. That's a nice proposition but any agent or player for that matter is going to insist on more upfront - you'd want to see at least 25 mill on signing. So now you've got dead money across every year.

Pay as you go doesn't work. What teams in the league actually do that with their bigger deals? (Don't answer Baltimore because their deals look strikingly like ours - year 3 is usually the break even point on dead vs. salary).

 

[JIGGYFLY]

The dead money vs pay as you go argument is a legitimate debate. But to say your side is the only correct way of doing things while ignoring several other people that are pointing out your mistakes is something else.

It's not really a legitimate debate because there is no pay as you go in the NFL.

 

[Nightman]

It really isn't a legit debate. Pay as you go makes accounting easier. But the dead money approach actually gives you more space in the long run as you push cap charges into years with higher salary caps meaning you've used proportionally less space.

The foolishness in this thread comes from the idea that you can structure deals to have zero dead money if you cut a player before the end of the deal. That just isn't possible if you do deals with large signing bonuses (which is what any agent will demand for a guy with value).

For example, let's say we get Dez on a 5 year - 15 mill a year average deal with 30 mill of that in guarantees. How are you going to do that so that you don't have dead money? The only possible way would be to go a flat 15 mill salary each year with the first two years guaranteed. That would give 15 mill dead in 2016 if cut (we'd have to pay that 15 regardless) and no dead money years 3-5. That's a nice proposition but any agent or player for that matter is going to insist on more upfront - you'd want to see at least 25 mill on signing. So now you've got dead money across every year.

Pay as you go doesn't work. What teams in the league actually do that with their bigger deals? (Don't answer Baltimore because their deals look strikingly like ours - year 3 is usually the break even point on dead vs. salary).

It's not really a legitimate debate because there is no pay as you go in the NFL.

You don't have to convince me. I was speaking on more of a macro level.

I would push as much forward as I could since excess cap space can be rolled over.

The loudest opponents to 'dead money' want to blame the system and not the players.

Like you said, if you are repeatedly cutting players one and two years into FA deals, you are doing a horrible job of choosing which players to sign. Dallas got burned by a lot of players that completely underperformed or got hurt after signing extensions.

 

[Nightman]

Most fans don't realize that because of collusion and the new CBA the salary cap remained flat at 123m from 2009 to 2013. That is a long time for 0 growth when the NFL was thriving.

Add the 10m Miles Austin penalty and a few bad deals like Barber, RWill, Ratliff and Hamlin and Dallas was tight against the cap a couple times, but they were never in 'cap hell'.

They were able to sign FAs like Carr, Bern, Livings, Orton and Durant.
They were able to extend Romo, Lee, Church, Scandrick, TSmith, Free and Bailey.
They were able to Franchise tag Spencer twice for big bucks, almost 20m.
And they were never forced to cut anyone solely for cap reasons. DWare was about production vs performance.

Dallas was hampered by poor drafts, poor coaching, poor extensions, poor FO work and still managed to stay competitive at 8-8 while they were being completely rebuilt under JGarrett.

 

[skinsscalper]

For those that keep score, here's what Winicki said at the time in at least one of the threads re: a Barber extension:





I think both of those positions are fairly reasonable. Thought even the $5M number was high in retrospect. The actual contract he signed was for ~$6.5M AAV and had $16M guaranteed.

The real problem with the Barber and Austin deals was that we got ourselves into positions where we didn't really know exactly what we had with either player because they started relatively late in their rookie contracts. So we had to take bigger risks on them than we otherwise should have. But I don't believe the Barber deal had all that much bearing on the Murray negotiation. We decided to not pay age and mileage at RB because that's a bad move most of the time when teams do it. Marion was one piece of data in that equation, but there's no reason for him to have been the deciding factor.

Someone looks like a major ******* right now.

 

[Idgit]

Someone looks like a major ******* right now.

I don't think he minds so much. It's all part of the routine.