It's a Let's trade Dez Thread

[ABQCOWBOY]

Well, that is thinking outside the box I'll give you credit for that.

Outside the box, outside the circle even. And by circle, I'm referring to Earth. LOL........


It may eventually come to that but not now.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

It was a dumb idea at that time and time has not changed it from being a dumb idea.

Catching up can be a *****. LOL.......

 

[iceberg]

I love when people catch up to things I said a year ago.

I'd love to have Dez with us this year. I think this team could win a super bowl, that being said, you don't let him hold your team hostage. Trade him and save the money and get picks in his place. See if a team will give us two first, or a first and a 2nd.

You move Street up to 3rd receiver and start Beasley and Williams, maybe use Escobar more, I don't know, you just don't let one player hold you hostage or hold your cap hostage.

i love it when you look back at all the crap you got wrong a year ago.

oh wait, you never do that.

 

[Galian Beast]

i love it when you look back at all the crap you got wrong a year ago.

oh wait, you never do that.

If I was wrong about something, please enlighten me.

 

[iceberg]

If I was wrong about something, please enlighten me.

pfft - like you'd understand.

 

[Galian Beast]

pfft - like you'd understand.

We call that a cop out.

 

[iceberg]

We call that a cop out.

you mean you're schizophrenic as well as wrong?

 

[Galian Beast]

you mean you're schizophrenic as well as wrong?

Show us reality then...

 

[AbeBeta]

You pay for value, you don't overpay for value.

There are a lot of ways to win, not just one. We'd be awful? Who was Seattle's top receiver last year? Please remind me.

And Seattle plays a completely different sort of game. They have an elite RB and elite D. Oh yeah, even Seattle admitted they needed help receiving and acquired a top TE (who actually plays WR on most plays).

You don't need an elite WR. But if you have one as an essential part of your offense, taking him away is going to hurt. Going to hurt bad. We clearly don't have the sort of D or other pieces to lose such an explosive and game changing threat.

 

[Galian Beast]

And Seattle plays a completely different sort of game. They have an elite RB and elite D. Oh yeah, even Seattle admitted they needed help receiving and acquired a top TE (who actually plays WR on most plays).

You don't need an elite WR. But if you have one as an essential part of your offense, taking him away is going to hurt. Going to hurt bad. We clearly don't have the sort of D or other pieces to lose such an explosive and game changing threat.

And we're in the process of building a great defense. We also already have too many offensive weapons to properly utilize them all.

With the money saved and additional draft picks you get from trading Dez, you can improve both the offense and defense.

This is a common problem when people look at potential situations instead of seeing

Current team - Dez + Draft pick + 13 million in cap space

They simply see

Current team - Dez

 

[iceberg]

Show us reality then...

show you'd recognize it if i did.

i'm out.

 

[Galian Beast]

show you'd recognize it if i did.

i'm out.

LOL, quote something I was wrong about, and I'll be more than happy to say I was wrong about it...

See how that works...

 

[Hoofbite]

Personally, I am hoping for Green to be the first to sign. The Bengals are notoriously frugal and it might end up being the best deal to set the market.

Bryant and Condon are making more noise than they are, mainly because they want Dallas to blink and give him the type of contract in line with what the market set by Fitzgerald and Johnson did and it is way out of line. Stephen Jones said it well and appears to be taking the right approach.

All in all, trading him is not an option on many levels, one of which being no team is going to pay that. Teams do collude to keep salaries down when there is historical evidence of bad contracts, the WR market will end up coming down or flat-lining. About the only place you will see the contracts continue to inflate is at QB where teams know they have no options.

I don't really think it's collusion. There's not really a concerted and unified effort to make WR contracts come down, there's just absolutely zero interest from anyone in paying such a high rate. The WR market has already come down, IMO. Calvin and Fitzgerald are the only two players who have ever received such a crazy amount. I think Calvin is going to be let go next year if he doesn't take a pay cut, and Fitzgerald just took a pay cut. Fitz was averaging $16M/year, and under his old contract it looks like he would have made $19M this year and $15M next year. After re-working his deal he will make $22M over the next 2 years, and then his contract voids.

Over 2015 and 2016 he lost $12M, and the 7th and final year of his original contract will not be paid. That's another $15M. Out of that 7-year deal that was worth $113M, Larry will actually get about $86M. He does get out a year sooner but he'll be 34-years-old when the season starts in 2017. Larry will actually earn $14M/year, and then he'll either retire or play for some other team for a much lesser amount than that average.

If Calvin is cut he'd lose $49M, which would make his average earnings $14M/year as well.

None of these WRs are ever going to get a "true" $16M/year contract. When I say "true", I mean a contract that they have a high probability of playing out. The problem with such contracts is that the salary cap charges in the later years are far higher than an aged player can justify.

The answer to the Dez issue seems pretty obvious, IMO. Dez wants guarantees, and Dallas wants an out just in case. So put a large option bonus in year 3.

7 years, $94M. ($13.4M/year) $5M SB, and a $15M option bonus in year 3.

2015: $12M Base (100% Guaranteed) + $1M SB = $13M Cap Charge
2016: $12M Base (100% Guaranteed) + $1M SB = $13M Cap Charge​

($15M Option Bonus Prorated Over 5 Years)​

2017: $8M Base + $1M SB + $3M OB = $12M Cap Charge
2018: $9M Base + $1M SB + $3M OB = $13M Cap Charge [DEAD: $14M]
2019: $10M Base (50% Guaranteed if on Roster on Day 1 of 2018 League Year) + $1M SB + $3M OB = $14M Cap Charge [DEAD: $15M]
2020: $11M Base (50% Guaranteed if on Roster on Day 1 of 2019 League Year) + $3M OB = $14M Cap Charge [DEAD: $11.5M]
2021: $12M Base + $3M OB = $15M Cap Charge [DEAD: $3M]​

Seems like a win for both sides.

• Cap charges for 2015 & 2016 are lower than franchise tagging him for 2 years ($26M vs $28M)
• Dez earns more for 2015 & 2016 than he would by playing under the franchise tag ($29M vs $28M)
• Dallas has an out after year 2 if they need it.
• If Dallas doesn't need that out, Dez earns $52M in the first 3 seasons. I'm pretty sure this is very close to what Calvin earned in his 1st three seasons.
• If Dez makes it to year 4, he guarantees another $5M in the form of his 5th year base salary.
• If Dez makes it to year 5, he guarantees another $5.5M in the form of his 6th year base salary.
• His amount of dead money if cut prior to each season yields little-to-no cap relief until the final year, which increases the likelihood of retaining his roster spot.
• His cap charge is never significantly higher than what it currently is. Fitzgerald's cap charge for this year would have been $23M had he not restructured. Calvin's cap charge for next year will be $24M and I doubt the Lions are going sit back and go with it. If that team wasn't so stupid to begin with I would say it's guaranteed he restructures like Larry did and loses money in the process, or he's flat out cut and has to try to get a new contract at the age of 30.

He's not going to get $17M/year and actually earn all that money, and that's assuming he could even get that sort of contract in the first place. Calvin and Larry got the $16M/year deals but they're not going to play out that initial deal. Larry's is already gone. Calvin's is almost assuredly next.

 

[big dog cowboy]

Yup, when you over pay vets it gets your team in trouble quick.

Look at the Carr mess we are in. Lucky for us we don't do business that way anymore.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

I don't really think it's collusion. There's not really a concerted and unified effort to make WR contracts come down, there's just absolutely zero interest from anyone in paying such a high rate. The WR market has already come down, IMO. Calvin and Fitzgerald are the only two players who have ever received such a crazy amount. I think Calvin is going to be let go next year if he doesn't take a pay cut, and Fitzgerald just took a pay cut. Fitz was averaging $16M/year, and under his old contract it looks like he would have made $19M this year and $15M next year. After re-working his deal he will make $22M over the next 2 years, and then his contract voids.

Over 2015 and 2016 he lost $12M, and the 7th and final year of his original contract will not be paid. That's another $15M. Out of that 7-year deal that was worth $113M, Larry will actually get about $86M. He does get out a year sooner but he'll be 34-years-old when the season starts in 2017. Larry will actually earn $14M/year, and then he'll either retire or play for some other team for a much lesser amount than that average.

If Calvin is cut he'd lose $49M, which would make his average earnings $14M/year as well.

None of these WRs are ever going to get a "true" $16M/year contract. When I say "true", I mean a contract that they have a high probability of playing out. The problem with such contracts is that the salary cap charges in the later years are far higher than an aged player can justify.

The answer to the Dez issue seems pretty obvious, IMO. Dez wants guarantees, and Dallas wants an out just in case. So put a large option bonus in year 3.

7 years, $94M. ($13.4M/year) $5M SB, and a $15M option bonus in year 3.

2015: $12M Base (100% Guaranteed) + $1M SB = $13M Cap Charge
2016: $12M Base (100% Guaranteed) + $1M SB = $13M Cap Charge​

($15M Option Bonus Prorated Over 5 Years)​

2017: $8M Base + $1M SB + $3M OB = $12M Cap Charge
2018: $9M Base + $1M SB + $3M OB = $13M Cap Charge [DEAD: $14M]
2019: $10M Base (50% Guaranteed if on Roster on Day 1 of 2018 League Year) + $1M SB + $3M OB = $14M Cap Charge [DEAD: $15M]
2020: $11M Base (50% Guaranteed if on Roster on Day 1 of 2019 League Year) + $3M OB = $14M Cap Charge [DEAD: $11.5M]
2021: $12M Base + $3M OB = $15M Cap Charge [DEAD: $3M]​

Seems like a win for both sides.

• Cap charges for 2015 & 2016 are lower than franchise tagging him for 2 years ($26M vs $28M)
• Dez earns more for 2015 & 2016 than he would by playing under the franchise tag ($29M vs $28M)
• Dallas has an out after year 2 if they need it.
• If Dallas doesn't need that out, Dez earns $52M in the first 3 seasons. I'm pretty sure this is very close to what Calvin earned in his 1st three seasons.
• If Dez makes it to year 4, he guarantees another $5M in the form of his 5th year base salary.
• If Dez makes it to year 5, he guarantees another $5.5M in the form of his 6th year base salary.
• His amount of dead money if cut prior to each season yields little-to-no cap relief until the final year, which increases the likelihood of retaining his roster spot.
• His cap charge is never significantly higher than what it currently is. Fitzgerald's cap charge for this year would have been $23M had he not restructured. Calvin's cap charge for next year will be $24M and I doubt the Lions are going sit back and go with it. If that team wasn't so stupid to begin with I would say it's guaranteed he restructures like Larry did and loses money in the process, or he's flat out cut and has to try to get a new contract at the age of 30.

He's not going to get $17M/year and actually earn all that money, and that's assuming he could even get that sort of contract in the first place. Calvin and Larry got the $16M/year deals but they're not going to play out that initial deal. Larry's is already gone. Calvin's is almost assuredly next.

I get where you are going Hoof but from the teams perspective, why would they structure a contract like this when they could just franchise?

I don't understand how the Franchise cost would be more. I'm a little slow so please forgive me.

 

[DeaconBlues]

They (Valley Ranch) were close to a deal last year with Dez, looks like in hindsight we really dropped the ball as a front office. Same metric would of applied to DeMarco Murray last year at a more reasonable rate. This is a big screw up on Stephen Jones plate considering how it should've been done before Thanksgiving 2014. He loses one star for this negotiation. I hope Stephen has learned his lesson on this one like Jerry did on the Roy Williams WR trade and sign.

And a mighty swing and a miss.

Dallas thought they had an agreement w/ Dez's agent. He wasn't happy and fired the agent. Explain again how this is Jones' fault????

 

[Nightman]

I get where you are going Hoof but from the teams perspective, why would they structure a contract like this when they could just franchise?

I don't understand how the Franchise cost would be more. I'm a little slow so please forgive me.

I like Hoof's idea of a third year option bonus, but the main benefit a team gets from a long term deal is salary cap relief early in the deal. If they are going to take cap hits of 13m they should just go the Franchise Tag route.

They can control his rights for 3 more years and not have to guarantee a dollar. His cap hits would be 12.8m, 15.4m and 22.1m

 

[slomoxn]

You mean its a "lets piss Romo off by getting rid of two of his most trusted weapons" thread.

 

[AbeBeta]

I like Hoof's idea of a third year option bonus, but the main benefit a team gets from a long term deal is salary cap relief early in the deal. If they are going to take cap hits of 13m they should just go the Franchise Tag route.

They can control his rights for 3 more years and not have to guarantee a dollar. His cap hits would be 12.8m, 15.4m and 22.1m

So basically 17 mill a year when those 2nd and 3rd year numbers rise. 17 mill a year in the least cap friendly manner possible. Also, I'm pretty sure those deals are guaranteed on signing.

 

[Hoofbite]

I get where you are going Hoof but from the teams perspective, why would they structure a contract like this when they could just franchise?

I don't understand how the Franchise cost would be more. I'm a little slow so please forgive me.

I was talking about from a cap perspective over just the next 2 years. Dez's cap charge is $12.8M this year and would increase to like $15.3M (120% of this years number, IIRC) next year. That's a total of $28M in cap charges. Two years at $13M in charges would save you about $2M in cap space over those 2 years, which isn't a lot but it's something. The money Dez will actually earn would include his base salaries and signing bonus. So he earns a little more than he currently would if he were to refuse to sign a contract and just take the Franchise Tag for 2 years. Only $1M, but that's real money, not just imaginary cap dollars.

The simple answer to your first question is that Franchise Tagging him for 2 years means you only get 2 years of Dez Bryant. I was under the impression he was good enough to keep around for many more than that.

Why a team would want to structure a contract like this? I dunno. I haven't really thought about it from whether or not teams may or may not like it. Nor have I thought about it in terms of whether or not players may or may not like it. I was just looking for a middle ground in terms of guarantees and outs.

I think there are pro and cons for each side, but that's the definition of a compromise.