Breer: How the Eagles have circumvented the salary cap the last couple of years

[Hawkeye0202]

Can any board cap expert make sense of this ...........man, if this is true, Howie is 4-5 steps ahead of the Jerry.

https://www.si.com/nfl/nfl/nfl-mailbag-rams-nfc-west-favorite

From Birds By A Billion (@SeeUSoonBoyy): Is the league talking about changing the salary cap rules because the Eagles have broken the system? They have been successfully pushing payments into void years. The Eagles are paying Jason [Kelce] $14 million in 2025 and he retired before last season. Make it make sense.


From Steelers Depot (@Steelersdepot): Recently, Roger Goodell talked about the need to look into the integrity of the salary cap, which is probably related to cash spending, void years and rolling option bonuses. Off the cuff, what, in your opinion, would be a good solution to restore that integrity?

Steelers and Birds, I do think some of this relates to cash spending.

So, for those who don’t know, the Eagles have effectively, legally circumvented the salary cap over the past couple of years by pushing cap charges way off into the future. That, to be clear, doesn’t eliminate those charges. It just leaves them to be accounted for some other day. And it’s through no nefarious method. You or I could scribble out a similar strategy on a page of notebook paper. It is simply buying something now that you’re paying for in cash that will be accounted for on the salary cap later.

 

[big dog cowboy]

I doubt this is surprising news to anyone. We have all seen the Eagles sign players right and left every year and wonder how they can fit them all in their salary cap.

Will the league do something about it? Since it's not the Cowboys, I doubt it. Watch for other teams to start adopting this philosophy until they do.

My bet is all this is several feet above the Cowboys (Stephen) heads and they don't understand how this works.

 

[Reality]

The Cowboys have been doing this for years, which is why they constantly have cap issues.

Dak's contract for example has 4 (yes, four) void contract years (2029-2032) to help them spread out the yearly salary cap hits from his huge contract.

What the Cowboys have not done is to take a year or two to reset their salary cap every so often.

It also doesn't help they have been paying huge cap-impacting contracts to too many players.

The Cowboys had the perfect chance last season to reset their cap by not offering Dak a new contract. Howie would have prepared to move on. Jerry gave in to protect the business.

This isn't about being 4-5 steps ahead of Jerry but rather one team owner (Howie) accepting that every so often, you're going to have a down season or two.

Jerry does not care about winning Super Bowls. He would love them as a bonus of course, but that is not his priority.

Jerry's priority is consistent revenue year over year, maintaining the Cowboys market popularity and, most importantly, increasing the team valuation every year.

It's not about intelligence or "smart" but simply priorities.

Howie's goal is for the Eagles to win Super Bowls. Jerry's goal is for the Cowboys to be popular every year.

 

[thunderpimp91]

I dont know if its being ahead of the Jones clan, as much as it is simply having an owner willing to spend massive amounts of cash to pull this off. Every team knows the tricks to kick cap down the road, but you typically have to pay significant signing bonuses on the front end. The Eagles outspend the Cowboys by about $50M last season, despite the massive cash bonuses the Cowboys paid in extending Lamb and Dak last year.

Now this hasnt always been the case, the Cowboys have had years where they've exceeded Phillys spending, however Philly seems to understand spending more during your windows to win and spending less during your rebuilding phases. The Cowboys like the hang around the rim philosophy that keeps them interesting but rarely true contenders for a super bowl.

 

[TwentyOne]

The Cowboys have been doing this for years, which is why they constantly have cap issues.

Dak's contract for example has 4 (yes, four) void contract years (2029-2032) to help them spread out the yearly salary cap hits from his huge contract.

What the Cowboys have not done is to take a year or two to reset their salary cap every so often.

It also doesn't help they have been paying huge cap-impacting contracts to too many players.

The Cowboys had the perfect chance last season to reset their cap by not offering Dak a new contract. Howie would have prepared to move. Jerry gave in to protect the business.

This isn't about being 4-5 steps ahead of Jerry but rather one team owner (Howie) accepting that every so often, you're going to have a down season or two.

Jerry does not care about winning Super Bowls. He would love them as a bonus of course, but that is not his priority.

Jerry's priority is consistent revenue year over year, maintaining the Cowboys market popularity and, most importantly, increasing the team valuation every year.

It's not about intelligence or "smart" but simply priorities.

Howie's goal is for the Eagles to win Super Bowls. Jerry's goal is for the Cowboys to be popular every year.

Its not about pushing debts into the future. Every idiot can do this (see Stepehn Jones).

Its how they do it to avoid salary cap hell and being able to compete regardless year after year.

And yes because they know how to handle the cap in that area they are far ahead of J+S Jones. Just because they seem to be very competent in what they are doing.

 

[Reality]

Its not about pushing debts into the future. Every idiot can do this (see Stepehn Jones).

Its how they do it to avoid salary cap hell and being able to compete regardless year after year.

And yes because they know how to handle the cap in that area they are far ahead of J+S Jones. Just because they seem to be very competent in what they are doing.

I'm not saying they are not smarter than Jerry, because the results speak for themselves.

What I'm saying is the void years is not some sort of magic Howie/Eagles-only strategy because the Cowboys and other teams have been doing that for years.

As I said, the main difference is that Howie is willing to reset the cap every so often to avoid getting hamstrung by it where Jerry is more concerned with trying to maintain popularity every single year.

From Jerry's business perspective, fielding a team that loses in the playoffs every year is a better financial strategy than winning a Super Bowl and ultimately having 2+ bad seasons in a row.

Howie would have moved on from Dak when his last contract ended and accepted 2025 may be a down season.

Jerry had no real future QBs on the team last season so he kicked the can down the road to maintain the status quo.

 

[CowboyoWales]

Can any board cap expert make sense of this ...........man, if this is true, Howie is 4-5 steps ahead of the Jerry.

So, for those who don’t know, the Eagles have effectively, legally circumvented the salary cap over the past couple of years by pushing cap charges way off into the future.

They havent circumvented anything, though admittedly it appears alien to us Cowboys fans as it's the polar opposite from how we operate.

Roseman is prepared:

• to have 'retool years'
• trades (even prepared to trade away 'star' names)
• he drafts well - the starting SB Defense consisted of 'home' drafted (Davis, Carter, Dean, DeJean, Mitchell, Smith and Sweat)

Im sure we'll get to the Hurts question, well they've kicked the can and yes he'll eventually have to produce with less weapons/protection.....but Roseman realizes he can/ AND IS PREPARED to either:

a) cuts Hurts, and suffer a one year re-tool year
b) trade him, take the draft picks and pays off the signing bonus in a limited re-tool
c) extends him (when he's only 31), spreading that signing bonus him into the future

Jerry can only add to the elite and gets in a mess as he just cant trade.

 

[charron]

The eagles do a better job drafting and hitting on the higher cost positions then using free agency to bring us the best available at other positions. The cowboys are the opposite, and when they miss in the draft they are slow to fix it. The boys also mostly bring in cheap free agents, not the best or guys in their prime.

 

[DogFace]

*The Eagles suck.

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

For those who don’t quite know what we’re talking about, void years are fake years put at the back of a player’s contract where the team can “hide” cap hits, making the player cost less today than what you paid him.

Philadelphia isn’t unique in using this strategy, but they are by far the league’s biggest culprit:

 

[Aikmaniac]

Howie's goal is for the Eagles to win Super Bowls. Jerry's goal is for the Cowboys to be popular every year.

I wish Jerry would realize that the Cowboys will be popular no matter what so why not focus on winning SBs.

 

[Aikmaniac]

For those who don’t quite know what we’re talking about, void years are fake years put at the back of a player’s contract where the team can “hide” cap hits, making the player cost less today than what you paid him.

Philadelphia isn’t unique in using this strategy, but they are by far the league’s biggest culprit:

Thanks for this as I'm always trying to keep up.

So, when will the "bill" come due for the Eagles to do something with the cap allocated in the voided years?

 

[TNCowboy]

Can any board cap expert make sense of this ...........man, if this is true, Howie is 4-5 steps ahead of the Jerry.

https://www.si.com/nfl/nfl/nfl-mailbag-rams-nfc-west-favorite

From Birds By A Billion (@SeeUSoonBoyy): Is the league talking about changing the salary cap rules because the Eagles have broken the system? They have been successfully pushing payments into void years. The Eagles are paying Jason [Kelce] $14 million in 2025 and he retired before last season. Make it make sense.


From Steelers Depot (@Steelersdepot): Recently, Roger Goodell talked about the need to look into the integrity of the salary cap, which is probably related to cash spending, void years and rolling option bonuses. Off the cuff, what, in your opinion, would be a good solution to restore that integrity?

Steelers and Birds, I do think some of this relates to cash spending.

So, for those who don’t know, the Eagles have effectively, legally circumvented the salary cap over the past couple of years by pushing cap charges way off into the future. That, to be clear, doesn’t eliminate those charges. It just leaves them to be accounted for some other day. And it’s through no nefarious method. You or I could scribble out a similar strategy on a page of notebook paper. It is simply buying something now that you’re paying for in cash that will be accounted for on the salary cap later.

It's not rocket science. For example, Dak's contract ends in 2028, his cap charges are spread only to 2028. OTOH, Hurts massive contract ends in 2028, but the Eagles spread cap charges all the way to 2032, the void years referred to by Goodell (assuming they keep him to the end of the deal). As a result, Hurts, cap hits are in the $40-$50M million range, while Dak's hits are $60-$80M. Dak has $9M in void years, Hurts has $100 million. The only Cowboy players with significant void years are Dak & Lamb, but with the Eagles, half their starters have big void years. Unless the league changes the rules, there is no reckoning day. You can always throw more $$ forward.

So when Stephen Jones tells you they can't do something financially, he's lying to you. Right or wrong, they chose not to throw $$ forward ala the Eagles.

 

[TNCowboy]

Thanks for this as I'm always trying to keep up.

So, when will the "bill" come due for the Eagles to do something with the cap allocated in the voided years?

It won't, unless the NFL changes the rules. Which they should, because small market teams can't afford to have hundreds of million$ in void years like the Eagles. Can't blame the Eagles, they're just taking full advantage of the rules.

 

[75boyz]

They havent circumvented anything, though admittedly it appears alien to us Cowboys fans as it's the polar opposite from how we operate.

Roseman is prepared:

• to have 'retool years'
• trades (even prepared to trade away 'star' names)
• he drafts well - the starting SB Defense consisted of 'home' drafted (Davis, Carter, Dean, DeJean, Mitchell, Smith and Sweat)

Im sure we'll get to the Hurts question, well they've kicked the can and yes he'll eventually have to produce with less weapons/protection.....but Roseman realizes he can/ AND IS PREPARED to either:

a) cuts Hurts, and suffer a one year re-tool year
b) trade him, take the draft picks and pays off the signing bonus in a limited re-tool
c) extends him (when he's only 31), spreading that signing bonus him into the future

Jerry can only add to the elite and gets in a mess as he just cant trade.

Great post.

 

[Risen Star]

Pushing cap charges into the future.

It's an amazing discovery.

 

[Coogiguy03]

Can any board cap expert make sense of this ...........man, if this is true, Howie is 4-5 steps ahead of the Jerry.

https://www.si.com/nfl/nfl/nfl-mailbag-rams-nfc-west-favorite

From Birds By A Billion (@SeeUSoonBoyy): Is the league talking about changing the salary cap rules because the Eagles have broken the system? They have been successfully pushing payments into void years. The Eagles are paying Jason [Kelce] $14 million in 2025 and he retired before last season. Make it make sense.


From Steelers Depot (@Steelersdepot): Recently, Roger Goodell talked about the need to look into the integrity of the salary cap, which is probably related to cash spending, void years and rolling option bonuses. Off the cuff, what, in your opinion, would be a good solution to restore that integrity?

Steelers and Birds, I do think some of this relates to cash spending.

So, for those who don’t know, the Eagles have effectively, legally circumvented the salary cap over the past couple of years by pushing cap charges way off into the future. That, to be clear, doesn’t eliminate those charges. It just leaves them to be accounted for some other day. And it’s through no nefarious method. You or I could scribble out a similar strategy on a page of notebook paper. It is simply buying something now that you’re paying for in cash that will be accounted for on the salary cap later.

PUT A STOP TO IT!!! Dak is set to make 60 million this year, make it the full 60, and not 1 million this year and making the other into a signing bonus and pushing the hit into year 2029!! If they deal with the full amount, you'll see the market value for these players come down considerably!! Lol

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

Thanks for this as I'm always trying to keep up.

So, when will the "bill" come due for the Eagles to do something with the cap allocated in the voided years?

The goal is to do this a little bit every year, so you’re paying that bill off moderately over time. The reason this is preferable to normal contracts is because the cap keeps going up every year so you’re effectively buying money. I’ll give you an example:

Don’t think of it as cap dollars, think of it as cap percentage. The cap today is 280m$. The cap last year was 255m$. If I owed a player 10m$ in 2024 I moved to 2025, that 10m$ would have been 4% of the 255m$ 2024 cap, but now it’ll be 3.5% of the 280m$ 2025 cap. So if you average out those years, I effectively freed up 0.5% of the cap for nothing. Does that make sense? Now let’s do a bigger one.

Jalen Hurts signed for 255m$ over 5 years in 2023. If they played it out normally, that’d be 51m$ every year, or 22.7% of the 2023 cap, 20% of the 2024 cap, 18.2% of the 2025 cap, and so on. But if they move the bulk of that money way way way down the road to when the cap will be 350m$+, the cap goes up but his total contract amount doesn’t. Philadelphia will likely open up at least 5% of a single season’s total cap over the course of that contract when you average it out. 5% of one season’s cap may not be a ton if it takes 7 seasons to come to fruition, but now do that with your 5, 10, 15 highest paid guys. It is a credit card with negative interest. It is buying cap space other teams won’t get for no extra cost.

The big downside is if that player doesn’t work out and you have to move on from him, all that money you moved down the road accelerates to the moment you cut them, which cap be a massive cap hit. This is what happened when Philadelphia traded Carson Wentz, Dallas cut Tony Romo, etc. If you remember, Romo had a huge cap hit the year after when he wasn’t even on the team; that’s what was happening. So if all of Philadelphia’s stars played model citizen and don’t get hurt, it’s a cheat code other teams are unwilling to use. But if they don’t, it’ll be a dark year or two before they fix it. SF is dealing with that right now. Deebo Samuel costs them 34m$ this year. Erik Armstead costs 15m$. Chardavius Ward costs 12m$, Leonard Floyd 8.5m$. All are on other teams’ rosters.

 

[Creeper]

I posted the number some time ago but the Eagles have a huge problem coming in I think 2029. They have over an enormous amount of money stashed in voidable years then. However, using option bonuses allows them to reduce that problem by cutting or trading players before those options are due. For example, Jalen Hurts has a $97 million CAP number in 2029 even though his contract expires the prior year. Hurts will get an option bonus of $41.3 million by the first week of the 2025 season which is prorated over 5 years even though he has only 3 years left on his contract after this year. He gets paid another option bonus again in 2026 of $50 million, and again the next two years after that. Over the next 4 years he will make $191 million in bonuses each annual bonus pro-rated over 5 years. The last is pro-rated 4 years after his contract expires. That's $10 million per year against the CAP for each of those $50 million option bonuses.

But option bonuses are just that. They are optional. If the Eagles cut or trade Hurts they don't pay those bonuses. He may have guaranteed salary, but the bonuses are not guaranteed. Hurt's highest salary is only $1.4 million. In a way the Eagles have basically built in annual restructures while allowing themselves the option of escaping some of that CAP commitment.

There are two way to look at this. The Eagles are not getting away with anything. At some point they either lose the player or they pay the CAP price. The other way is the Eagles are taking advantage of the system to build a short term champion followed by what I suspect will be downs years.

If it were up to me, I would stop this voidable year nonsense. It's not a good look even if it means the teams still pay the CAP price. I would do away with voidable years. It makes a joke of the CAP system.

One other point. Remember the Cowboys and Commanders were penalized for supposedly circumventing the CAP during the uncapped year. Voidable years is a way of circumventing the intention of the CAP.

 

[StarOfGlory]

The Eagles are able to do what they do with the salary cap for a number of reasons.

1. Eagles usually draft well at key positions, usually ensuring a cheap source of labor due to utilizing young draft talent.
2. Eagles have elite position coaching in key areas and have been able to take cast-offs from other teams and turn them into solid or star players for an initially low cost. The team then picks and chooses which players to keep and pay.
3. Eagles are not afraid to cut loose players that don't fit a timeline, don't perform no matter draft position (Reagor, Dillard), or fit the progression of the team, no matter how good the player is. Roseman isn't afraid to make tough decisions and reset if necessary.
4. Eagles ownership, while meddling at times, gives Roseman near-full authority over financial matters. Lurie trusts Roseman.
5. Eagles ownership admits mistakes and takes action to correct said mistakes, i.e. giving Chip Kelly too much power.
6. Roseman puts his J.D. from Fordham Law to good use, exploiting every legal rule in the book.

Basically, Roseman has the power and the balls and knowhow to use it.