Here's one of my problems with all the smoke and mirrors the team has been doing with the cap.
They are:
1. Setting themselves up to be in a situation where they can't cut a guy for a couple of years because the cap charge is too high to absorb.
2. Setting the player up to be in a situation where his performance doesn't meet the expectations of his cap charge.
3. Setting the fans up to hate the player because of #2.
Here's a small graphic I created for illustration purposes. It's based on Spotracs numbers of Carr's contract. This assumes they can spread the restructured money into the option year. I don't know if they can or they can't, it really doesn't matter because this is simply an illustration and the principle doesn't change one bit if they can't. It likely makes the entire situation worse as that additional 2.7M would have to be redistributed to the years left on the actual contract. But, this is how Spotrac has listed his new cap charges so that's what I am going with.
http://i5.***BLOCKED***/albums/y188/thehoofbite/1-1.png
- The dashed lines/bars are what the contract looked like prior to the restructure.
- The solid bars are the new figures.
- The "Cut Charge" is the amount the team would have to absorb if the player were not on the roster for that particular season, assuming they took it all at once.
Going back to my list above:
Brandon Carr's spot is now secure for at least 3 more seasons regardless of performance. The team cannot take the cap hits for 2014 and 2015 that would come current if they cut him. It's likely secure for 4 more seasons as if they cut him prior to 2016, they'd actually be carrying more dead money than the amount of cap space that they would free up in cutting him.
Dallas is now forced to keep the guy no matter what. If he plays like Terrence Newman it likely doesn't matter at all because they've saddled the salary cap with large charges.
This is a topic I've discussed in the past. I've talked about it in terms of the cap penalties in how Dallas tried to swindle the cap with Austin and I've talked about it in regards to Spencer as well to some extent. IMO, what it comes down to is:
A) The salary cap is practically the only real limit on player acquisition.
B) How a player should be judged should not be based on his average base salary or average yearly amount. It should be based on what you would expect his salary cap charge would get you.
If you are having a player eat 10% of your salary cap, you should expect that guy to perform on that level regardless of what his base salary is. Brandon Carr is not the best CB in the NFL and in all honesty, he probably wouldn't have come in at Top 10 based on last years performance. Maybe even Top 20. He just wasn't all that great. His new cap charges of 12M or more are likely on par with any player in the Top 5 for his position.
Over the span of 2014-2016, I think it's likely he's one of the higher cap charges at the CB position in the league. I don't know but I would suspect there are few players who are going to eat more over that span.
He is now being put in a position to where he absolutely has to play like a Top 5 CB. If not, Dallas is losing out because they could have used some of that cap space elsewhere. Of course the best-case scenario for the flipside would be that Dallas is benefitting from a ridiculously low cap charge for the 1st two seasons of the contract but that's completely erased for this last season because he didn't play anywhere close to Top 5 so the realized benefit in having a low cap number practically didn't exist.
And here's another thing I've mentioned before. Dallas is treating player performance like it's sitting on an appreciation curve. Like there is some guarantee that Carr's performance will increase right along with the cap figures. That's misguided and quite-frankly delusional. Players have a limited lifespan and their performance generally follows a depreciation curve. As players age, their performance tends to trail off. This isn't a new idea or anything groundbreaking. For most players, it's the truth.
Dallas is banking on their guys being the exception to the rule in that these guys will play at high, and ever increasing levels, all throughout the contract.
Let me ask a question:
When is a player more likely to validate a high cap number
A) At the beginning of a contract while the player is in his prime?
or
B) At the end of the contract when he has passed through his prime and is now entering into the twilight years?
The answer is obvious but Dallas treats players in a counterintuitive manner.
This, IMO, is why Ozzie Newsome said that the Ravens don't restructure unless they foresee a guy being on the roster for the entire duration of the contract or unless they are getting great value. When you sign a mid-tier FA and he develops into a stud at his position, you can restructure for cap relief because his cap number is still catching up to the performance he gives you. When you force the player to chase the cap number, then you have to make decisions about cutting a guy too soon or too late and ultimately carry dead money.
This is simple. People don't like seeing big fat cap charges for guys who aren't performing. At 12M, it's likely some will view that as too much. I have zero doubt that in 2-3 years people will hate Brandon Carr because his cap figure is so high relative to what he is actually doing on the field. It's happened with guys in the past, it will happen with Carr if he doesn't live up to expectations. That's just how the cookie crumbles.
This is just a part of why I don't care for all the Cris Angel Mindgames that Dallas plays with the salary cap. They force themselves into a corner and force fans to hate their own players because those guys can't play up to their ridiculous cap numbers in the twilights of their careers. This doesn't even get into the aspect of how these cap heavy contracts affect later decisions.
I don't know with absolute certainty that the numbers Spotrac puts out are 100% correct. It really doesn't matter because they likely aren't off to such an extent that it would change the practical implications of how Dallas works the cap.
