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

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.
This x1000.

It makes rooting for this team difficult when you know that they’ll have to luck their way into a championship, because it isn’t the concerted strategy.

Actions speak louder than words, and when this team has been good/great, the FO has been unwilling to make moves to put them over the top because it risks future seasons.

The most impactful moves they make (Cooper, Pickens) are during failing seasons or following them.
 
Well yeah I guess Philly will be paying a big price around the time we are looking for the next QB. Great. The down cycle is inevitable regardless.

Those trophies ought to help the pain. Somehow I’m sure the fans will understand.

Jerry has put this team perpetually where no one wants to be….middle of the road…but at least he can get his camera time and sell his same crap that way. Documentaries, acting roles. I’ve never seen someone sell failure the way he does.
 
About as shady as a tax accountant that knows how to utilize the rules and regulations within code?

It's not "shady" vs compliant......its competent vs Incompetent

The Jones are clearly the latter and that been proven for some time now
IMO that's BS. JJ is a business icon. If he didn't know what he was doing financially, than he wouldn't be so successful in business. To say otherwise is just wrong.
 
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.
/end thread. This is where fat and lazy come into play for the Jones’. The Cowboys’ fan base is large enough that the goal is mediocre-anything exceeding that is gravy.
 
IMO that's BS. JJ is a business icon. If he didn't know what he was doing financially, than he wouldn't be so successful in business. To say otherwise is just wrong.
Being a smart businessman doesn't somehow mean you can run a football team and manage contracts competently. Lurie is also a very successful businessman but he knows his limitations and gave football authority to Roseman. Jerry it too arrogant to understand his limitations/flaws.
 
Expound on this.
The only money you can move down the road is bonus money, or instant payments. It was reported around 2018 that Oakland was trading Amari and Khalil Mack because ownership simply couldn’t afford to pay 2 players that much signing bonus at the same time. Obviously this has changed with their move to Las Vegas, but Owners like Mike Brown, Mark Davis, Michael Bidwell, and Amy Strunk are just going to be less inclined to fork over 200, 300, 400m$ in future cap money more than is necessary. Whereas multi-multi-multi-billionaires like Jerry and Lurie and the Glazers have less issue with that.

It’s not really a small market thing but a small owner thing. Small market teams like Cleveland have a wealthy owner, Denver has the wealthiest owner, while Chicago has one of the poorest(relatively speaking). If you remove team valuations from each owner’s net worth, I’m not even sure Mark Davis is worth a billion dollars. So that 400m$ extra that Lurie is paying beyond just the immediate cap hits is nearly half of MD’s entire net worth
 
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Can any board cap expert make sense of this ...........man, if this is true, Howie is 4-5 steps ahead of the Jerry.
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It’s not really a small market thing but a small owner thing. Small market teams like Cleveland have a wealthy owner, Denver has the wealthiest owner, while Chicago has one of the poorest(relatively speaking). If you remove team valuations from each owner’s net worth, I’m not even sure Mark Davis is worth a billion dollars. So that 400m$ extra that Lurie is paying beyond just the immediate cap hits is nearly half of MD’s entire net worth

Forgot to mention, great point here. Sure, in value, every Owner is a billionaire. However, most are not billionaires in terms of actual money on hand.
I don't feel sorry for them in any way lol, but there definitely is a split of the have and have nots when it comes to ownership in the NFL. Some truly have money to burn and not sweat on it. Others, their worth is purely from the franchise, so it's not like they can dump 100mil on signing bonuses in March, when the millions they make are purely from how well the franchise did that season+NFL kickbacks

It's like inheriting a paid off million dollar property but you have a $15 dollar a hour job. Sure, asset wise, you are a millionaire, but in reality, until you sell the house, you don't have 7 figures in the bank and can't be blowing money like the CEO next door on home improvements.

That article about teams wanting to revisit the cap growth I'm sure has legs with the owners that are "poorer" compared to the top 6-12 owners. Which is why we've seen teams sell off portions of the ownership to private entities or wealthy individual owners recently.
 
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.
I've used this example several times in the past when Jerry or his son say they are maxed out on the cap.

Jerry buys 1 car for 50k.
Howie puts down 10k on five cars worth 50k.

Both spent 50k, one guy got 5 times more. You can do that with the cap. Dallas has around 30 million in cap space. They can sign 3-4 top end, top dollar players with that money. The only thing that matters is this year's cap hit. So if you want to stack a team like they did in the 80s, you could. You just have to account for it later.
 
I wish Jerry would realize that the Cowboys will be popular no matter what so why not focus on winning SBs.
He know this. But he’s also afforded the ability to try and win a ring his way because of past success. I have no doubt he wants to win. He’s just going about it the wrong way.
 
The issue will be if Hurts gets dinged or his mobility is lessened. See RG3, Watson and others. Then much like Dak did with Dallas they have you over a barrel because you need the cap relief of an extension but prefer not to pay the going franchise QB rate. That first extension is pretty easy. After that it gets much, much harder. Players do not like taking pay cuts.
You are living in fantasy land if you believe Howie is not willing to have a 1-3 year blow it up and deal with the fallout of 0-5 win seasons. Jerry/Stephen have nightmares of dealing with that fallout. Howie grins and wins another SB. Hurts is standing on a land mine. The second his mobility starts hindering his performance, Howie grins with his finger on the explosive button. No player is safe from Howie
 
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.
I think Stephen understands perfectly well what the Eagirls are doing salary cap wise. He’s just too much of a narcissist and thinks his way is better.
 
Yeah, it's one thing I really respect about the Eagles front office. Their loyalty is to the team, not the players.

I said multiple times last year prior to Dak getting a new contract that no player is worth keeping that allocates more than 15% of the salary cap and really that limit should be 10%.

The Cowboys also need to stop handing out no-trade clauses like they are nothing especially when they are already giving the player a huge contract.
Most of Dak’s cap hits have been less then 15 percent thanks to how they push his salary down the road.
 
You are living in fantasy land if you believe Howie is not willing to have a 1-3 year blow it up and deal with the fallout of 0-5 win seasons. Jerry/Stephen have nightmares of dealing with that fallout. Howie grins and wins another SB. Hurts is standing on a land mine. The second his mobility starts hindering his performance, Howie grins with his finger on the explosive button. No player is safe from Howie
It worked because they hit on Hurts. Howie is not arrogant enough to think this plan works if Hurts is hobbled or hurt. Let’s remember the reason why they have the team they have now was for in case it Hurts busted they were gonna draft another quarterback. He hits and they are allowed to use it on Carter who fell in the draft because of character issues.
 
The issue will be if Hurts gets dinged or his mobility is lessened. See RG3, Watson and others. Then much like Dak did with Dallas they have you over a barrel because you need the cap relief of an extension but prefer not to pay the going franchise QB rate. That first extension is pretty easy. After that it gets much, much harder. Players do not like taking pay cuts.
Concerning the bold. I can't stress enough how much harder it is after the first extension. I tried to explain it in the Purdy thread.
 
Concerning the bold. I can't stress enough how much harder it is after the first extension. I tried to explain it in the Purdy thread.
What the eagles did with AJ Brown may be the way to go in the future. They signed him to a 4 year extension, then extended him after year 1 of that extension to another 3 year extension. So the bog water at the end of the first extension is now pretty much blended into a full 6 years of team control

They just did it with Saquon as well, extension on top of his previous big contract after only 1 year
 
The other thing no one is talking about is the fact its a plan a GM presents to an owner with an actual promise of production to it...so Howie says "Hey look I'm gonna do some crazy **** but these years are the window to win from them, these years im gonna have to pay the piper." Owner looks at him and says "Ok but you better win or im gonna have to cut you" ...crazy stuff..
 
The only money you can move down the road is bonus money, or instant payments. It was reported around 2018 that Oakland was trading Amari and Khalil Mack because ownership simply couldn’t afford to pay 2 players that much signing bonus at the same time. Obviously this has changed with their move to Las Vegas, but Owners like Mike Brown, Mark Davis, Michael Bidwell, and Amy Strunk are just going to be less inclined to fork over 200, 300, 400m$ in future cap money more than is necessary. Whereas multi-multi-multi-billionaires like Jerry and Lurie and the Glazers have less issue with that.

It’s not really a small market thing but a small owner thing. Small market teams like Cleveland have a wealthy owner, Denver has the wealthiest owner, while Chicago has one of the poorest(relatively speaking). If you remove team valuations from each owner’s net worth, I’m not even sure Mark Davis is worth a billion dollars. So that 400m$ extra that Lurie is paying beyond just the immediate cap hits is nearly half of MD’s entire net worth
I think fans in general overlook the impact of signing bonus money, especially in the case of Dallas. It’s their money and they control it as opposed to being given a budget by a boss.

Signing a guy like Parsons means writing a check for about 80 million dollars. If they hang on to that money for an extra 12-18 months they can make money with that money. Can’t discount that in the eyes of a guy like Stephen who looks to pick quarters off the floor.

Plus dragging it out makes the media ask Jerry about it so he gets extra camera time. Yeah, so…it costs them cap space. It’s a no-brainer trade in their minds.

What else could “I’d rather pay more and get it right” mean on a player there’s no way you’re letting walk?
 

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