Cap Space Update

[viman96]

Current cap space, which includes Dak at $30.1M, is $25.3M. If they find a way to get Dak's contract done before July 15th, then there will be more cap space.

https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/dallas-cowboys/

 

[gjkoeppen]

Here is how that conversation will go with Martin, just like it has with every NFL player who has restructured since the salary cap was put in place:

"Hi Zack, do you want all of your 11 Million dollar salary today or would you like it in 16 weekly game checks of $687,500 each?"

"Is that a real question?"

"Yeah, the lawyers say we have to ask first. Here is the check"

What you just said make less than zero sense. Teams have a choice of either paying the SALARY portion of a player's contract (Martin's 11 mil) spread over the 17 weeks of the season or do you want it spread over 52 weeks. No team can't even offer to pay the salary portion of a contract all up front. Now if you're asking if Martin would like his11 mil switched to bonus money that you could get today is different but even that can't be done because each player has to have at least the league minimum as salary. So if they did that, all that money would still count against the cap I've never heard of or read of any player that got his entire salary portion of his contract all paid up front. If they did that then there would be no need to have bonus money for signing bonus or roster bonus on contracts they could just pay all the salary money up front.
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[ksg811]

Sooooooo....what is our cap space now?

Don’t know for sure right now because we don’t have contract/structure details for Brown, Forbath, Looney, and Canady. As of the McCoy signing, I had them at $23.4 million in space. My guess is those 4 come in around $9 million total at most against the cap and then accounting for the top 51 rule would put them around $17 million.

 

[Kaiser]

What you just said make less than zero sense.
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Thats exactly how they have done it for 25 years.

Its not the full 11 Million, they reset his salary to the 7th year minimum of 930K. Then the other $10,070,000 is converted from salary into a bonus and amortized over the remaining four years of his contract. So rather than Martin having a salary cap charge of 11 Million in salary, the current year becomes a cap charge of 930K in salary and one fourth of that 10.07 Million bonus as the cap charge for his restructure bonus for the current year. The other fourths are added to each of the next three years.

Teams will often add phony voidable years to the contract to spread it out over 5 years if they want even more cap space.

So Martin's cap charge would go from 11,000,000 to 3,447,500. That's a difference of 7.552,500.

Martin gets the money upfront and earns interest or cap gains by investing it now instead of getting it weekly. Dallas gains $7,552,500 in space under the cap.

 

[Kaiser]

Current cap space, which includes Dak at $30.1M, is $25.3M. If they find a way to get Dak's contract done before July 15th, then there will be more cap space.

https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/dallas-cowboys/

Both sides probably have an incentive to wait on the new contracts being signed, so the deal will finalized a few days before the July 15th deadline. Dez Bryant's extension matched the one for Demaryius Thomas and was only finalized a few hours before the deadline.

 

[gjkoeppen]

It's not wrong, it's the top 51 adjusted amount.

Are rookies not signed as part of the 90 man camp roster? Are they not part of the offseason 51 man cap calculation for that reason? You just contradicted yourself.

In order to add a player to the top 51 cap calculation, must he not replace someone else in it? That's exactly how the team salary caps are calculated during the offseason top 51. If a rookie signs at a cap hit of $2.5 million and replaces the 51st player of $615k, the net cap charge is $1.885 million. That's exactly how the rule of 51 works and why total rookie cap pool does not equal the cap charge.

First off you are mistaken on the 51 rule and the rookie pool and how they work. The 51 rule is the top 51 contracts for that coming season. As players are added by either free agency or being drafted those contracts may bump 1 or more player's contract from the top 51 contracts. The draft pool can not be used for any players other than rookies who are drafted or signed as undrafted free agents. The draft pool counts as part of the available cap space and those contract do count towards the 51 rule. The 51 rule was started to allow teams to bring in all of the players they sign to mini camp and training camp without worrying about being under cap. The 51 rule ends the day before the season starts and by 3:00 pm eastern time they have to be under their cap limit.
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[gjkoeppen]

Repeating your same wrong post doesn’t make you any less wrong.

I can't help it if you don't understand how the 51 rule works or why it was started.
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[Verdict]

When you have half the entire cap space going to a small number of players you don't have cap space. I am not saying this is a great team by any stretch but we screwed ourselves with the zeke and cooper contracts.

20 mil a season for a guy that couldn't beat 5th string corners in Philthy with the season on the line? No thanks.

Cough. Tank. Cough.

 

[ksg811]

First off you are mistaken on the 51 rule and the rookie pool and how they work. The 51 rule is the top 51 contracts for that coming season. As players are added by either free agency or being drafted those contracts may bump 1 or more player's contract from the top 51 contracts. The draft pool can not be used for any players other than rookies who are drafted or signed as undrafted free agents. The draft pool counts as part of the available cap space and those contract do count towards the 51 rule. The 51 rule was started to allow teams to bring in all of the players they sign to mini camp and training camp without worrying about being under cap. The 51 rule ends the day before the season starts and by 3:00 pm eastern time they have to be under their cap limit.
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Once drafted and signed, rookies are added to the top 51 offseason cap calculation. Rookies whose cap hits don’t meet the top 51 are excluded, but any bonus proration is still counted against the cap. It’s how it has always worked.

Only signed contracts count against the cap. Therefore, projected draft pools do not count against the cap in any way. Once rookies sign deals and those draft pool projections become actual contracts, the top 51 rule comes into play. For that reason, you can still apply the top 51 rule to projected rookie pools to estimate the amount of space needed to sign the rookie class.

 

[gjkoeppen]

Thats exactly how they have done it for 25 years.

Its not the full 11 Million, they reset his salary to the 7th year minimum of 930K. Then the other $10,070,000 is converted from salary into a bonus and amortized over the remaining four years of his contract. So rather than Martin having a salary cap charge of 11 Million in salary, the current year becomes a cap charge of 930K in salary and one fourth of that 10.07 Million bonus as the cap charge for his restructure bonus for the current year. The other fourths are added to each of the next three years.

Teams will often add phony voidable years to the contract to spread it out over 5 years if they want even more cap space.

So Martin's cap charge would go from 11,000,000 to 3,447,500. That's a difference of 7.552,500.

Martin gets the money upfront and earns interest or cap gains by investing it now instead of getting it weekly. Dallas gains $7,552,500 in space under the cap.

That's how things were done years ago but players and their agents have gotten smarter and don't just add or what used to be called back load bonus money because many players never saw the end of their contracts so they ended up giving money away. Now players want something for restructuring their contract and want more money guaranteed. Now as you said that first year is cheaper on the cap but the 2nd through 4th year his cap amount goes up. Also on Martin's current contract there is no bonus money for year 3 and year 4 only has a 1 mil roster bonus. When this contract is up Martin will be 34 and a lot of linemen have long careers but also some start to have diminished play and the Cowboys may like that their would only have 1 mil count against possible dead money. BTW for 2020 the min. for Martin is 945K, it was 930 for 2019.

Lastly Stephen finally ended the vicious cycle of renegotiating and I don't think he'll start that again any time soon.
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[Kaiser]

That's how things were done years ago but players and their agents have gotten smarter and don't just add or what used to be called back load bonus money because many players never saw the end of their contracts so they ended up giving money away.

That's completely false. The player is getting the money upfront and none of it is backloaded - only the accounting of it under the salary cap.

Show me an example of what you are talking about because I've never heard of an agent turning down a restructure. Also Dallas puts them into the original contract so they can exercise the option automatically, they put in the contract language that the player agrees to it when they sign the original contract.

 

[ksg811]

That's how things were done years ago but players and their agents have gotten smarter and don't just add or what used to be called back load bonus money because many players never saw the end of their contracts so they ended up giving money away. Now players want something for restructuring their contract and want more money guaranteed. Now as you said that first year is cheaper on the cap but the 2nd through 4th year his cap amount goes up. Also on Martin's current contract there is no bonus money for year 3 and year 4 only has a 1 mil roster bonus. When this contract is up Martin will be 34 and a lot of linemen have long careers but also some start to have diminished play and the Cowboys may like that their would only have 1 mil count against possible dead money. BTW for 2020 the min. for Martin is 945K, it was 930 for 2019.

Lastly Stephen finally ended the vicious cycle of renegotiating and I don't think he'll start that again any time soon.
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They literally JUST did this with La’el Collins. They restructured $5 million of his base salary into a signing bonus, prorating it over the remaining 5 years of his deal, freeing up $4 million in space this year. It’s not a “years ago” thing. It’s an accounting tool still utilized by the Cowboys and every other team in the league.

 

[dallasdave]

Common sense says it's included, otherwise there'd be a lot more space bud.

Wait just a minute Corso, before you say "common sense" think where you are posting.

 

[dallasdave]

The Cowboys get an ext for Dak signed, watch that cap hit go from 32-33 to 15-20 this year.

Dak cap has a lot of play in it

 

[dallasdave]

And there are more cap-saving moves to be made, i.e.: Crawford.

Please get rid of Crawford, put this dead horse out of it's misery.

 

[Kaiser]

They literally JUST did this with La’el Collins. They restructured $5 million of his base salary into a signing bonus, prorating it over the remaining 5 years of his deal, freeing up $4 million in space this year. It’s not a “years ago” thing. It’s an accounting tool still utilized by the Cowboys and every other team in the league.

"Nope, I'm not taking the money upfront because I might not see it on the backend"

 

[dallasdave]

Don't be shocked if Dak holds out & gets what he wants because there won't be any FA quarterbacks left.

Say goodbye to that huge chunk of change.

Hey Dak gets a long term contract, Dak is Happy, Jerry is happy, Steve is happy, fans are happy Just like you and Putty

 

[gjkoeppen]

Once drafted and signed, rookies are added to the top 51 offseason cap calculation. Rookies whose cap hits don’t meet the top 51 are excluded, but any bonus proration is still counted against the cap. It’s how it has always worked.

Only signed contracts count against the cap. Therefore, projected draft pools do not count against the cap in any way. Once rookies sign deals and those draft pool projections become actual contracts, the top 51 rule comes into play. For that reason, you can still apply the top 51 rule to projected rookie pools to estimate the amount of space needed to sign the rookie class.

You now repeated a lot of what I said. There are some differences. First the rookie pool IS part of the cap. It's just designated how much is earmarked on rookies. There isn't a salary cap for veterans and a separate one for rookies, it's all part of the same cap. All moneys, salary and any kind of bonus for vets and rookies counts against the salary cap and the top 51 against the 51 rule cap.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/dallas-cowboys/cap/

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[gjkoeppen]

That's completely false. The player is getting the money upfront and none of it is backloaded - only the accounting of it under the salary cap.

Show me an example of what you are talking about because I've never heard of an agent turning down a restructure. Also Dallas puts them into the original contract so they can exercise the option automatically, they put in the contract language that the player agrees to it when they sign the original contract.

They don't put restructures in contracts but they do put clauses for team and/or player to void the contract at a certain year. As far as restructuring a players contract he has to agree to it.. Teams can't just say oh buy the way we're restructuring your contract.

You're right that sometimes the player get all of the converted money up front but not always. Some times some of the converted bonus money gets paid 2 or 3 years down the road.as in a roster bonus and if the player isn't there then that bonus doesn't get added to dead money because it wasn't paid.
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[ksg811]

You now repeated a lot of what I said. There are some differences. First the rookie pool IS part of the cap. It's just designated how much is earmarked on rookies. There isn't a salary cap for veterans and a separate one for rookies, it's all part of the same cap. All moneys, salary and any kind of bonus for vets and rookies counts against the salary cap and the top 51 against the 51 rule cap.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/dallas-cowboys/cap/

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PROJECTED rookie pools ARE NOT counted against the cap. Only ACTUAL contracts count against the cap. Rookies do not count against the cap until they sign their deals, at which point they are subject to the top 51 rule, reducing their cap charge by the amount of the player they are replacing.