Completely random question about Romo's contract

[Sydla]

Apparently the Cowboys continue to use restructure language in Romo's contract to create cap space, which in turns seems to increase the cap number for Romo in the subsequent years.

Does that bill ever come due? Like one year, are we going to have a $50MM cap hit and there's nothing we can do about it? What's the end game with his contract, say if he plays a few more years.

I ask because I honestly have nary a clue how some of this cap stuff works.

 

[Silver N Blue]

I am probably wrong here but I think they are restructuring into bonuses so that would be a no..

 

[xwalker]

Apparently the Cowboys continue to use restructure language in Romo's contract to create cap space, which in turns seems to increase the cap number for Romo in the subsequent years.

Does that bill ever come due? Like one year, are we going to have a $50MM cap hit and there's nothing we can do about it? What's the end game with his contract, say if he plays a few more years.

I ask because I honestly have nary a clue how some of this cap stuff works.

The bill will "come due" for some individual players; however, the total bill actually never "comes due" because they can push more forward indefinitely. If the bank were to give you a loan every year to pay off all of your previous loans, then you would never actually pay off anything. Because of this concept there is a virtual cap that is higher than the actual salary cap. If you break the cap down into 2 components, Current Spend and Previous Spend the total can exceed the cap every year as long as the Current Spend is not over the cap. If the Cowboys have 50M of money on the cap that was due to money pushed forward from previous years and 150M of money that they were paying out in the current year, then that's 200M total. If the NFL cap is 150M, they can push 50M into future years and repeat the process indefinitely. The only problem would be if the amount they were spending on players in the current year exceeded the NFL cap total. If that happens the amount pushed forward would continue to grow at a rate that was not sustainable.

Unfortunately, you won't see any figures published that show what is current spend and what is previous spend. I can tell you that while the Cowboys did push money into the future in 2014, that their "current spend" was well below the NFL cap limit.

The other issue in regards to Romo specifically is that while there will be the dead-money on the cap after he is gone, the Cowboys will likely have a young, inexpensive QB to replace him. If you want to see what they are really spending on the QB position over time, you need to average the total of what they paid Romo together with the total they paid a young QB on his rookie contract and average it all together. First round picks get a 4 year contract with team option for a 5th year.

If the Cowboys were planning on replacing Romo with another top paid veteran, it would be different, but teams rarely ever find that type of QB in free agency. It is something to keep in mind when you hear people saying that they should draft a QB now. The problem with that is that if that drafted QB sit on the bench for 3 years then just as he established himself as a starter, you have to give him a big contract and you lose the advantage of having a starting QB with a low salary like the Seahawks have had with Wilson.

 

[Temo]

Apparently the Cowboys continue to use restructure language in Romo's contract to create cap space, which in turns seems to increase the cap number for Romo in the subsequent years.

Does that bill ever come due? Like one year, are we going to have a $50MM cap hit and there's nothing we can do about it? What's the end game with his contract, say if he plays a few more years.

I ask because I honestly have nary a clue how some of this cap stuff works.

No, we're never going to have a $50M cap hit.

They've designed the contract anticipating another restructure this year, and once they do here are the cap hits (assuming a full salary restructure) for the remaining years of his contract:

2015-14.949
2016-20.841 (8.5)
2017-24.706 (14)
2018-25.206 (19.5)
2019-23.206 (20)

In parenthesis is the non-guaranteed base salary portion of those cap hits-- that is, the "new money" each year that the cowboys will be on the hook for, and which they could save by cutting/trading Romo.

Currently, there are no years on Romo's contract past 2019, so the restructuring stops after this next year. Considering that the top QBs right now carry cap charges around ~20m, they should be able to carry those Romo cap charges for the remainder of his contract if they want.

OR, they could redo his contract starting in 2016-- they could open up probably around 6m/year and end up with a salary cap "bomb" around ~25m once Romo is finished playing.

 

[jazzcat22]

I never concern myself with the salary cap stuff. They always seem to be able to do what the want.
Outside of bringing in top FA's, which I am perfectly fine with most the time. When they did this before, as well as some bad trades and giving those big contracts. That hurt us in the cap, as well as getting FA's.
But most of those times we did, those players never really panned out. Well, never put us over the top.

But it hurt us in the draft as well. But now all that seems to be sorted out, and we are on the right track....the process is working...but had to get rid of those over aging overpaid players first.
Then we had the Mara / Goodell dictatorship cap penalty to deal with too.

But we all know this, and it's in the past....time to move forward, as it is looking pretty good.
We have a very good team, which will get better with even better players coming in, salary cap is much better, player personnel acquisition is better. Players in the draft, and a few more under the radar FA's. We can be built to be good for a long time.