Dallas is NOT in Salary Cap trouble in 2014

[Eskimo]

No.

You're trying to tell me if there were no salary cap Dallas wouldn't have put in a competitive offer to bring him back? I don't think so.

There is a salary cap and because they only have so much space they decided they could not afford to match Jax's offer.

Many around here seem to have some fiction in their heads that if we let a good player go it is because we didn't want them or at least not at that price. Yet they can't seem to understand the main constraint on the salary for the Dallas Cowboys isn't what we can afford to pay as an organization. No, it is based on the existence of a hard salary cap that we must abide by.

I'm virtually certain in a salary cap free world that we wouldn't have given Robinson a contract with only $5M guaranteed salary, which is what he ended up getting in Jax. He stood to make $32M over 5 years if he completed the full deal but didn't due to injury. But for $5M guaranteed we wouldn't bring back a guy who had crazy chemistry with Romo and put up 11 TDs in a year where he played in on 14 games, many of them as the #3 WR. He did it despite sharing the ball with Dez, Miles and Witten.

Robinson would definitely have been a Dallas Cowboy in 2012 if there were no salary cap restrictions. But there were and we scraped through the year only to face another tight year partly due to the $5M penalty we had to face again.

The salary cap fundamentally affects nearly every personnel decision every team in the league makes. We have to be careful how contracts are structured. We have to be careful about not extending a player only to cut him and get caught with piles of dead money that we have to deal with in one offseason (see 2012). We have to be careful about not getting caught too short at any one position and have to fill it in FA at an inopportune time when said position is in high demand and/or player availability is very low. We have to be careful about how we use draft resources to fill in roster spot weaknesses where it may be hard to find a FA alternative that is affordable.

Salary cap management is perhaps one of the most important duties of the GM position. Those who do it well will put their teams way ahead of the curve.

 

[jobberone]

I'm with you. Used in moderation shifting money around is a good idea. If the salary cap were to raise 5% every year then pushing 5% out every year would give you a slight advantage over opponents who didn't because you'd be one step ahead of the game.

The problem comes when you have to restructure 7 of your starters just to sign Justin freaking Durrant.

I can't argue with that one. I'm not sure if this is true but I still have the impression we are battling back from a decade plus of mismanaging salaries.

 

[durrrr]

You're trying to tell me if there were no salary cap Dallas wouldn't have put in a competitive offer to bring him back? I don't think so.

There is a salary cap and because they only have so much space they decided they could not afford to match Jax's offer.

Many around here seem to have some fiction in their heads that if we let a good player go it is because we didn't want them or at least not at that price. Yet they can't seem to understand the main constraint on the salary for the Dallas Cowboys isn't what we can afford to pay as an organization. No, it is based on the existence of a hard salary cap that we must abide by.

I'm virtually certain in a salary cap free world that we wouldn't have given Robinson a contract with only $5M guaranteed salary, which is what he ended up getting in Jax. He stood to make $32M over 5 years if he completed the full deal but didn't due to injury. But for $5M guaranteed we wouldn't bring back a guy who had crazy chemistry with Romo and put up 11 TDs in a year where he played in on 14 games, many of them as the #3 WR. He did it despite sharing the ball with Dez, Miles and Witten.

Robinson would definitely have been a Dallas Cowboy in 2012 if there were no salary cap restrictions. But there were and we scraped through the year only to face another tight year partly due to the $5M penalty we had to face again.

The salary cap fundamentally affects nearly every personnel decision every team in the league makes. We have to be careful how contracts are structured. We have to be careful about not extending a player only to cut him and get caught with piles of dead money that we have to deal with in one offseason (see 2012). We have to be careful about not getting caught too short at any one position and have to fill it in FA at an inopportune time when said position is in high demand and/or player availability is very low. We have to be careful about how we use draft resources to fill in roster spot weaknesses where it may be hard to find a FA alternative that is affordable.

Salary cap management is perhaps one of the most important duties of the GM position. Those who do it well will put their teams way ahead of the curve.

What Dallas would do if there was no salary cap and what Dallas would do if they "weren't in salary cap trouble" are two different conversations.

 

[Hoofbite]

Not that it matters but I don't think cutting Livings, Bern, Orton and Scandrick would come anywhere close to $10M in cap space.

Nevermind the idea that you'd be cutting half the projected OL for this year and the backup QB who's likely one of the better backups in the NFL.

 

[Idgit]

What Dallas would do if there was no salary cap and what Dallas would do if they "weren't in salary cap trouble" are two different conversations.

I think this is exactly right. The cap puts a set of competitive restrictions in place that limit how much any team is going to play for any one player at any one position. It lets a team in greater need at a position overspend--pay a huge premium--in order to fill that need. If that competitive restriction is not in place, Dallas might act very differently. But that would be because there is literally no ceiling on spending, rather than because of where we were last season relative to the ceiling that existed at the time.

 

[Nightman]

I'm beginning to think that 99% of fans think that "restructure" means "magically make salary cap money go away" instead of "push guaranteed money into another year"

The reason we couldn't even sign a single guard to our pathetic offensive line is because we "weren't in salary cap trouble" so much in previous years that we pushed tens of millions of dollars into this year, including paying for guys like Terrence Newman.

Dallas is like 9m under the cap. Your argument doesn't make much sense. Restructuring doesn't push any guaranteed money into the future, only salary cap hits, which lessen every year. 99% of the fans must think that other teams castoffs are magically stars if we sign them. The front office obviously didn't like any of the FA guards enough to replace the FA guards we signed last year and the young players already here . Tagging Spencer, the 5m penalty and taking longer than expected to extend Romo were the primary reasons for the salary crunch early in FA, not past restructures.

 

[Nightman]

Not that it matters but I don't think cutting Livings, Bern, Orton and Scandrick would come anywhere close to $10M in cap space.

Nevermind the idea that you'd be cutting half the projected OL for this year and the backup QB who's likely one of the better backups in the NFL.

Their combined cap hit is around 18m. If two are labeled June 1st cuts the 10m is very do-able. If Leary, Webb and other young guys don't step up and they need to keep them, then they can restructure instead of cut. Dallas' drafting has been pretty good lately and they don't need to get to 30m under the cap to sign a couple upgrades. I was merely pointing out that it is very easy to create enough cap room to sign Lee and any FAs they may want.

 

[Ren]

Every time you restructure you are stuck with those players another year, i don't really see that as a great strategy to be honest a lot of the players like Scandrick are overpayed so you're just pushing the problem off into the future while their play declines even more. Sooner or later we're going to have to eat those contracts

 

[Zordon]

@Risen Star what is Stephen Jones good for again?

 

[TheCount]

Both Mickey and Broaddus have said next year will be even worse than this year. Not that they are cap experts or anything, but it's not just a few peple on the forum that are talking about the cap next year. Then again Stephen laughed at the idea of the cap being an issue, so clearly he knows something we may not.

 

[dez_for_prez]

Alot of it is just the way you have to do business when you have a good QB.

As long as you've got that guy, you have to try and compete every year. So you pay your stars and try to fill in around them, while you've got a QB eating 15-20% of your cap. It's the reason the Patriots and Steelers do business the same way.

Yup. Teams like the Seahawks, 49ers and Colts are able to surround their QBs with more weapons now because the QBs are on their rookie deals. Once they have to pay them though you will see them fall. I call it the Flacco effect.

 

[burmafrd]

If we had more cap space I would like to think that we would have been smart enough to get at least one more good player on the O line

 

[JPM]

See also: the risk inherent in any contract ever. Might as well worry about getting hit by a magic truck that turns you into an eggplant on the way to work.

What if I like eggplants?

 

[conner01]

i guess that depends on how you define cap trouble. can we get under the cap? sure, thats never a real issue. can we add peices if we need to? maybe, but not as many as you may need because you will be somewhat limited like this year
to me cap trouble is when you have to keep reworking half your starters contracts each year. it can be done but ideally it needs to be within the confines of the growth of the cap.
we are not in cap hell where we have to start cutting people but we sure are'nt where we need to be to go out and add a couple of pieces if we need to.but if most of this draft can develope and guys like dez,carter and lee can all stay healthy we may not need to add alot in free agency which helps tremendously.
to me it's like your credit card debt. you can pay the minimum and you are fine, but over the long haul it costs you to do that. same with the cap. we can continue to restructure guys in the numbers we have or we can develope young guys and be ready to replace a guy like spencer so you don't have to franchise him. thats the real answer to the cap is always have another guy ready for that good but not great player when he comes up for a new deal. pay your super stars and replace other guys with younger and cheaper players then you never have these issues

 

[boscokt]

Laurent Robinson was a decent not great player that made a bunch of money when teams chose Dez and Witten over Laurent in game planning. Worked out well for him but there is no way at all with his history we should have given him that contract. It would have been a Ken Hamlin part 2 contract.

Jerry is damned if he does, and damned if he don't.

 

[superpunk]

It's such a non issue that we haven't been able to acquire a stable offensive line or safety for years. If we could do X,Y,and Z to fix it, then why the heck do they even publish the numbers...Have you ever heard of you get what you pay for? It's true even in the NFL...And before you bust out the Dan Snyder innuendo, or tell me how much the Fecals spent on their dream team, I'm not talking about THE AMOUNT of money you spend...You have to spend very wisely. Make good choices, and good investments. Don't buy the most expensive free agents...Be smart and find the best for the right price...

Our terrible offensive line has less to do with our cap situation and more to do with us not being able to draft them.

 

[jterrell]

That's probably because you mis-read it. It's ok we all make mistakes reading. Better luck next time. Any time you re-sign or extend a player off their rookie deal (and they're a player worth keeping) there's going to be bigger guaranteed money and more risk. I'm sure the Pats thought they were sitting pretty with 25 yo Hernandez locked up. Oops.

No, I read just fine.

Guessing the Pats realized they were taking a risk with Hernandez which is why they passed on a r1 talent until r4.
Also you might note the Pats just rescinded all the bonus money still owed Hernandez.
He actually played on the base of his rookie deal and thus never saw big base money.
His bonus money was 12m. Thus his dead money is FAR less than these Cowboys who've been getting restructured yearly.

I am not challenging your writing skills but most definitely am your math and logic.

AH is just another example of why you don't lock yourself into yearly restructures.
The beauty of NFL contracts for teams is the ability to shed them so easily.
Dallas is removing that option for themselves which makes sense really only for the franchise QB.

 

[jterrell]

Again just to focus the thread.

a. Dallas is using a technique quite different from any other team currently. guaranteeing each season in turn for many players and adding their base to future caps.
b. results haven't equaled more spending money yet in free agency classes; merely getting back under the cap.
c. Dallas has yet to lose any really coveted free agents though Laurent is arguable(based on contract he received and stats here plus the fact we replaced him with kevin ogletree).
d. Cap mgmt is just one small part of overall roster mgmt and not likely to be a game breaker.
e. this is a technique the Commanders used for years while losing horridly.
f. restructuring is a viable team tool; "scheduled" restructure takes away the option of using it and makes it necessary.
g. less flexibility is a bad thing.

now to demonstrate in real world fashion....

What if Miles comes to camp and injures his hammy. He is really out most of camp and possibly 2-3 weeks of regular season.
Would you have liked the option to cut him? Would you like to replace his roster spot with another veteran WR for 2-3m?
The restructure makes that virtually impossible.

 

[burmafrd]

Our terrible offensive line has less to do with our cap situation and more to do with us not being able to draft them.

as usual you miss the obvious. If we had more cap space we could afford to get quality O linemen.


actually considering our horrid record of drafting O linemen

(1 HIT in the last 10 years as of this moment- that ONE being a first rd pick)

it would make sense to spend money on the O line in FA and use the draft picks elsewhere

 

[superpunk]

No, I read just fine.

Guessing the Pats realized they were taking a risk with Hernandez which is why they passed on a r1 talent until r4.
Also you might note the Pats just rescinded all the bonus money still owed Hernandez.
He actually played on the base of his rookie deal and thus never saw big base money.
His bonus money was 12m. Thus his dead money is FAR less than these Cowboys who've been getting restructured yearly.

I am not challenging your writing skills but most definitely am your math and logic.

AH is just another example of why you don't lock yourself into yearly restructures.
The beauty of NFL contracts for teams is the ability to shed them so easily.
Dallas is removing that option for themselves which makes sense really only for the franchise QB.

Then again if anyone wants to make an argument that we shouldn't have handed out these contracts they're an idiot.

Ware, Romo, Witten people like that...have been worth every penny.

Miles? Maybe not but he's been good and there wasn't a soul alive wishing we let the mid-twenties WR who just came up walk on.

Free? Again. Not a single soul was saying let him walk. Almost everyone was terrified our 20 something tackle was going to walk to Philly.

There's always risk. You win some you lose some. Our way isn't really worse or better than anyone else's. When you've got a QB taking that much of your cap, and other HOFers who are playing at a HOF level and getting paid accordingly, you have to get creative.