First of all, I'm not a "self-proclaimed" anything. One of the mods created that title, not me.
Admittedly, name-dropping you was a bit out of line because you really don't post that much any more. That said, you are the authority on the matter so it's really only fair that I ask for the local expert to chime in when a bunch of self-proclaimed "experts" (myself included, to a certain extent) are arguing. I would rely on your cap numbers to a greater extent than any source that wasn't officially associated with an NFL team.
It is your cap theory that I disagree with. I meant no offense, and I have a great deal of respect for the information that you share. It's your
opinion that I don't agree with.
Secondly, just because a hypothetical situation has never happened in practice doesn't mean prove or disprove anything. Every person in my neighborhood would save money by paying off their mortgage today. But none of them have done that, so it must not be true, right? Of course not.
That's not really a great comparison. In fact, it's damn near awful. Find a return rate better than their loan rate and they'd lose by paying off their mortgage right now. Beating 3 to 4% isn't tough. Market average investment returns over the life of a mortgage are something like 8%
Every person in your neighborhood would save even more money if they didn't pay their mortgage at all. If we ignore consequence, choices become very simple.
As Nightman already mentioned, that argument is nothing but a strawman. The fact remains that cap-wise, there is absolutely no downside to restructuring a contract that is going to be paid either way. How many times it happens or doesn't happen in practice is completely irrelevant.
It's not a strawman. Maximizing restructuring assumes best-case scenarios that: A) don't exist, and B) preclude the need to restructure. The average career length is 3 years, and yet we're going to buy into the idea that prorating money over 5 years is good returns? In order to make it work you would have to be significantly better than average at assessing talent, and - in particular - significantly better than average at projecting performance drop off with age. What team has this ability?
No team. Not a single one. If such a team existed, they wouldn't need to restructure at all. They would just draft the most productive talent available with every pick in every round that they have a selection. Who couldn't build a great team with that kind of foresight? You'd basically have rookie deals for the majority of your roster. Your cap number would be extremely low because you wouldn't really have to pay anyone....because you'd draft everyone. At this point the question becomes, why would you have to restructure.....ever?
It also assumes that there's enough talent available, which is hard to argue when the majority of the league's teams struggle to use their available cap space without restructuring.
In a perfect world, it might work. It reality...nobody tries it.
