Salary Cap fact versus fiction

[Broges74]

I think it's clear we will be going after guys in trades rather than FA going forward. If Jerry hits one time, he suddenly forgets that hes failed doing the same thing 3x before.

 

[BotchedLobotomy]

2 hours til brackets and I have time soooo... let's try to make the board a little smarter.

Idiom: The cap keeps rising so pushing money off means it is worth less and is a good strategy.
FICTION: This is a very common and accepted bunch of nonsense. Why?? Because you know what else goes up? Player contracts. You need more money to sign the next guy because the next guy is on a higher salary scale. You are competing in any given window and you've shorted yourself for that window to benefit one that will quickly be in the past. Any GM who hands out 50M+ in restructures then wins 7 or less games should be fired week 17.

Idiom: The salary cap isn't real and cap hell doesn't exist.
HARD MEH: This is one of those things people like to say and sound smart but they will eventually capitulate and admit teams have to make tough decisions versus the cap. Those tough decisions are very real for the teams making them. The cap has a ton of built in flexibility but all money does come due.

Idiom: There are 3 ways to improve a roster: Drafting, FA and trades.
HARD MEH: This is one of those meaninglessly true statements always taken out of context. Drafting is numero uno by a mile. Trading is very limited and free agency is more about finding value and especially among un-drafted guys than it is adding super stars. Superstars in FA are a terrible "hit rate". In truth, the 2nd best way to improve a roster is to exercise good cap mgmt. That way you maintain good players and continue to develop depth going forward without coming in 1 man short because you cut a guy and paid him anyway. Trades are very tough because the team you are buying from knows the player/s you are acquiring better than you. Hard to outsmart someone on a guy they saw daily during the NFL season for years.

Idiom: But we can free up 70M THIS easy.
MOSTLY FACT: It is very easy to flip deals because most players want that guaranteed money that handing them a check today delivers. They can claim the interest on that large sum of money. BUT, not if the agent wants a longer term deal you can't. The agent can play hardball knowing you have a large cap hit you don't want to eat.
This is a lot like knowing you can take out a pay day loan or remortgage your house for money. These things are factually possible but also still really desperate acts that will almost certainly cost you more money in the end.

Idiom: So we should just never sign anyone ever then.
MOSTLY FICTION: Teams have to "pay" for draft mistakes. See Cam Fleming. Chaz Green was trash thus that expenditure was VERY necessary. WR misses amongst later picks made signing Hurns a reality. But you merely want to fill absolute holes so you can draft true to your board. You don't go get shiny player X because you think he makes you better. A lot of the FA safeties would have been superior to Jeff Heath. Very, very few of them that have already signed would have been a better value.

Idiom: The only cap that matters is this year.
FICTION x 10: This is where fan GMs get in the most trouble. They could care less about future seasons but the NFL is a business and businesses very much do care. They have 3 and 5 year plans. Transformation projects and overall directions that go well beyond 1 season or year. DAL has a great cap situation but they also know they have to pay DLaw, Zeke, Dak and Amari. These are elite players at expensive positions. You have to plan for that. 120M cap space in a future season? You can basically assume 75M of that is gone for these 4 guys. DAL planned ahead smartly. Compare to Philly who have ~30M free but a cap projection of 30m per season for Wentz. Franchising Wentz if needed to bide time for deal would essentially be impossible without drastic moves elsewhere.

This stuff would frustrate me far less if Dallas fans hadn't witnessed the failure of credit card cap management and Free Agency as a primary roster building pillar for a decade plus. Restructuring guys with injuries: Lee, Romo, Dez. Restructuring guys who were crazy: Ratliff. Restructuring guys who were simply poor cap values: Brandon Carr/late in career Witten.

It is quite OK to NOT be off-season champs. That title means exactly zero come week 1 much less by the Super Bowl.

Appreciate the effort, but this more of a lecture by a guy on his couch trying be an NFL GM than anything factual.

 

[John813]

Basic google searches don't add much to the conversation

You didn't understand anything I wrote the rollover of cap space and what the 32.7m really represents

Context means everything

Romo had a 8.9m dead cap and that looks bad but he originally had a 28.4m cap hit for 2018....cutting him SAVED 19.5m on the cap

Dez had an 8m dead cap hit but he was scheduled to have a 16.5m cap hit.... that saved 8.5m on the cap

So even with those big 17.9m dead money hits DAL actually netted 28m in cap space..... they spent 16.3m of that space on roster moves and trades and still had 11.7m left over after the season

They rolled that 11.7m over to this year creating even more space

And these contracts were in house re-signings, so it's not like people can be like, "see this is why you don't sign FAs to big deals!".

To add to your point, Romo was a June 1st cut, splitting his dead cap between two years. Dallas rolled over the savings from making him a J1 cut into 18, basically covering that dead cap with the money "saved" in 17.
Otherwords, he really didn't hurt the cap in 18, even though he hadn't been on the roster in 2017.
And with that move, Dallas had some free cap in 2017 as a JIC for any injury signing/trade if they had to make a move.

It was a smart move, even though they had "dead cap" in 2018.

 

[Sydla]

Carroll had 1 (one) half of a game where he was bad.

He played OK in game 1.

He was good enough that someone at CZ posted an "I told you so" about it directed at me because I had been skeptical about him before the season started.

He was terrible in game 2. He exited the game with an injury, then came back in and was finally out injured at about halftime.

He played 25 of 77 total snaps on defense in that game.

There is no way to know exactly when he was first injured or how many of the 25 snaps were affected by the injury.

They had drafted multiple CBs and they liked a low cost veteran that they had acquired.

Carroll was signed as a stopgap which means they needed him early in the season as the young players got up to speed.

We don't know what would have happened if he had not been injured. There is no point keeping a stopgap player that is injured.

In 2018 they cut stopgap Deonte Thompson despite him contributing more than expected. They cut him because they no longer needed him after acquiring Cooper. They would lose a comp pick if he stayed on the roster all season. The cut was NOT due to the player under-performing expectations.

It was a terrible signing. As noted, you don’t give a “stop gap” a multi year deal.

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

That's where I'm at. We are close now could and could literally "buy" a broncos championship, yet they missed the playoffs after that and again and again. Is it worth to buy a championship only to be relegated to nothing after the high priced free agents leave or retire.

What is the alternative?

 

[dallasdave]

then delete your account

Yes

 

[Doomsday101]

Ok but good teams sprinkle in good free agents. They just don’t Ignore the process.

Cowboys have. You may not think guys like Joe Looney did not have a positive impact, I do. I think Fleming was a good move. I don't think you need to find star players in FA because more times than not they will not play to the level of the pay they get. I think Over the last few seasons Dallas has looked to the draft, getting their own key players signed and added mid level FA to help fill out the roster and it has resulted in one of the youngest teams in the league who have won the East 2 out of 3 years and still have a lot of talent on this team and it is talent who are still growing and gaining experience. People act as if this team has no talent and I think they are dead wrong.

 

[Sydla]

A 67% winning percentage the last 3 years says "you guys" are entitled children who think someone owes you championships and being a top 5 team over a 5 year stretch isn't "good enough".
Fans pretending they are some long suffering bunch are hilarious. DAL was one of the final 8 teams out of 32. They finished top 25% of the league with the 2nd youngest team in the NFL.
That is the very definition of a well run orginization.

Cry to me when they aren't beating the defending Super Bowl champions twice and winning divisions.

In a thread of crazy posts by you, this is probably the craziest. Let's start with the bolded part.

This franchise has WON FOUR PLAYOFF GAMES IN TWENTY THREE YEARS.

In what world is that not long suffering for what is supposed to be one of the model franchises of the NFL?

In the last 23 years, 13 of the 16 NFC teams have made a NFCCG game. 10 have made multiple NFCCGs over that period. Guess who the three are that have never made the NFCCG over that period? Skins, Lions and our Dallas Cowboys.

It takes a true Cowboys fan boy, one who struggles to admit reality and criticize this franchise to argue that this organization hasn't been one of the 3-5 worst in the NFC over that period and that it's fan, are in fact, not long suffering because hey, they made the playoffs 3 of the last five years and won just a single playoff game.

It's ironic that you call people children when in fact the true child here is you. A child is often naïve and ignorant to the world, they believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and think it's possible that Superman is real. And then over time, they gain knowledge and insights and realize their view of the world has been wrong. You are still stuck in the childhood phases where the Cowboys are still the greatest thing ever and no one compares.

 

[QuincyCarterEra]

Ok but good teams sprinkle in good free agents. They just don’t Ignore the process.

What are Joe Thomas, Looney, XSF, and Antwaun Woods?

 

[QuincyCarterEra]

2 hours til brackets and I have time soooo... let's try to make the board a little smarter.

Idiom: The cap keeps rising so pushing money off means it is worth less and is a good strategy.
FICTION: This is a very common and accepted bunch of nonsense. Why?? Because you know what else goes up? Player contracts. You need more money to sign the next guy because the next guy is on a higher salary scale. You are competing in any given window and you've shorted yourself for that window to benefit one that will quickly be in the past. Any GM who hands out 50M+ in restructures then wins 7 or less games should be fired week 17.

Idiom: The salary cap isn't real and cap hell doesn't exist.
HARD MEH: This is one of those things people like to say and sound smart but they will eventually capitulate and admit teams have to make tough decisions versus the cap. Those tough decisions are very real for the teams making them. The cap has a ton of built in flexibility but all money does come due.

Idiom: There are 3 ways to improve a roster: Drafting, FA and trades.
HARD MEH: This is one of those meaninglessly true statements always taken out of context. Drafting is numero uno by a mile. Trading is very limited and free agency is more about finding value and especially among un-drafted guys than it is adding super stars. Superstars in FA are a terrible "hit rate". In truth, the 2nd best way to improve a roster is to exercise good cap mgmt. That way you maintain good players and continue to develop depth going forward without coming in 1 man short because you cut a guy and paid him anyway. Trades are very tough because the team you are buying from knows the player/s you are acquiring better than you. Hard to outsmart someone on a guy they saw daily during the NFL season for years.

Idiom: But we can free up 70M THIS easy.
MOSTLY FACT: It is very easy to flip deals because most players want that guaranteed money that handing them a check today delivers. They can claim the interest on that large sum of money. BUT, not if the agent wants a longer term deal you can't. The agent can play hardball knowing you have a large cap hit you don't want to eat.
This is a lot like knowing you can take out a pay day loan or remortgage your house for money. These things are factually possible but also still really desperate acts that will almost certainly cost you more money in the end.

Idiom: So we should just never sign anyone ever then.
MOSTLY FICTION: Teams have to "pay" for draft mistakes. See Cam Fleming. Chaz Green was trash thus that expenditure was VERY necessary. WR misses amongst later picks made signing Hurns a reality. But you merely want to fill absolute holes so you can draft true to your board. You don't go get shiny player X because you think he makes you better. A lot of the FA safeties would have been superior to Jeff Heath. Very, very few of them that have already signed would have been a better value.

Idiom: The only cap that matters is this year.
FICTION x 10: This is where fan GMs get in the most trouble. They could care less about future seasons but the NFL is a business and businesses very much do care. They have 3 and 5 year plans. Transformation projects and overall directions that go well beyond 1 season or year. DAL has a great cap situation but they also know they have to pay DLaw, Zeke, Dak and Amari. These are elite players at expensive positions. You have to plan for that. 120M cap space in a future season? You can basically assume 75M of that is gone for these 4 guys. DAL planned ahead smartly. Compare to Philly who have ~30M free but a cap projection of 30m per season for Wentz. Franchising Wentz if needed to bide time for deal would essentially be impossible without drastic moves elsewhere.

This stuff would frustrate me far less if Dallas fans hadn't witnessed the failure of credit card cap management and Free Agency as a primary roster building pillar for a decade plus. Restructuring guys with injuries: Lee, Romo, Dez. Restructuring guys who were crazy: Ratliff. Restructuring guys who were simply poor cap values: Brandon Carr/late in career Witten.

It is quite OK to NOT be off-season champs. That title means exactly zero come week 1 much less by the Super Bowl.

Good work as always JT

 

[Sydla]

What are Joe Thomas, Looney, XSF, and Antwaun Woods?

Decent FAs at best. They plugged holes to keep the franchise afloat but did they make the Cowboys actually a better team? Not really.

That's not to say they didn't have value but their value was largely in keeping the franchise afloat when injuries and other situations arised, but none of the four were brought into fill a huge hole and make the team better.

That's what people are arguing. The Cowboys seemingly refuse to use FA to improve their starting roster, to make the team better. They seem content on signing backup types and depth types (which again isn't necessarily wrong).

 

[QuincyCarterEra]

 

[QuincyCarterEra]

Decent FAs at best. They plugged holes to keep the franchise afloat but did they make the Cowboys actually a better team? Not really.

That's not to say they didn't have value but their value was largely in keeping the franchise afloat when injuries and other situations arised, but none of the four were brought into fill a huge hole and make the team better.

That's what people are arguing. The Cowboys seemingly refuse to use FA to improve their starting roster, to make the team better. They seem content on signing backup types and depth types (which again isn't necessarily wrong).

Woods and Looney absolutely made this a better team.

 

[Sydla]

Woods and Looney absolutely made this a better team.

Woods was an average DT and Looney wasn't as good as the guy he had to replace. So no, they didn't make the team "better".

They kept the team afloat when we had issues at DT and C.

 

[Doomsday101]

In a thread of crazy posts by you, this is probably the craziest. Let's start with the bolded part.

This franchise has WON FOUR PLAYOFF GAMES IN TWENTY THREE YEARS.

In what world is that not long suffering for what is supposed to be one of the model franchises of the NFL?

In the last 23 years, 13 of the 16 NFC teams have made a NFCCG game. 10 have made multiple NFCCGs over that period. Guess who the three are that have never made the NFCCG over that period? Skins, Lions and our Dallas Cowboys.

It takes a true Cowboys fan boy, one who struggles to admit reality and criticize this franchise to argue that this organization hasn't been one of the 3-5 worst in the NFC over that period and that it's fan, are in fact, not long suffering because hey, they made the playoffs 3 of the last five years and won just a single playoff game.

It's ironic that you call people children when in fact the true child here is you. A child is often naïve and ignorant to the world, they believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and think it's possible that Superman is real. And then over time, they gain knowledge and insights and realize their view of the world has been wrong. You are still stuck in the childhood phases where the Cowboys are still the greatest thing ever and no one compares.

You point to past 20 years but this group of players has not played for those 20 years. This is a very young team and should not be held accountable for things they had no part in. They have shown they can win and have won the East 2 or the last 3 season. I agree that for fans it is 20 plus years of frustration but for this current team it is only the start and personally I back and support them 100%

 

[Nightman]

That's where I'm at. We are close now could and could literally "buy" a broncos championship, yet they missed the playoffs after that and again and again. Is it worth to buy a championship only to be relegated to nothing after the high priced free agents leave or retire.

DEN also had a very old and beat up QB that retired

That is quickest way to get into trouble in the NFL, not the cap

Not having a QB is 10x worse...... it only takes one season to turn the cap around ... it can take a decade to get a QB

 

[Nightman]

Super Bowl champions can be built largely through free agency and trades. To say it can’t happen is to neglect those who’ve done it. Going on free agency spending sprees and trading your draft picks for star players can bring you jewelry.

You can make a successful team 100 different ways. Just to say the way you’re doing it doesn’t seem to be working doesn’t mean it’s not a proper way, you may just have to go about it differently.

even the might Pats went 10 years without winning a SBm and they were 3 plays away from losing the other 3

Winning a SB is very hard and no one should try to copy the Pats without Brady and Bill and a bunch of luck

 

[Sydla]

You point to past 20 years but this group of players has not played for those 20 years. This is a very young team and should not be held accountable for things they had no part in. They have shown they can win and have won the East 2 or the last 3 season. I agree that for fans it is 20 plus years of frustration but for this current team it is only the start and personally I back and support them 100%

I pointed to 20 years because the poster tried to argue we are not a long suffering fan base.

We are the perfect example of the long suffering fan base.

 

[Flamma]

And no one has ever suggested the Cowboys win the offseason.

The Cowboys focus on signing their own and then bargain barrel fishing for slop players.

Spending a bit of cash to grab a good mid-level FA or two to fix a hole is precisely what this team should do.

They simply have a flawed outlook on how to use FA.

I agree to a point. They did this after 2016 and I didn't understand it, and I don't understand it now. I don't think their outlook on FA is necessarily flawed, but there's a time and place for everything. If you're rebuilding or already reaching Super Bowls, I can understand their approach. I just don't understand it when in striking distance. After 2016 Dallas did very little to try and put themselves over the top. They watched the Eagles do it. Dallas had a pretty good team last season. What are they doing to improve the team? The team has improved over the last few years but it's because they pretty much completely replaced the players on D. Now that they're here, what puts them over the top?

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

even the might Pats went 10 years without winning a SBm and they were 3 plays away from losing the other 3

Winning a SB is very hard and no one should try to copy the Pats without Brady and Bill and a bunch of luck

I’m talking about the other teams who did it, not even considering the pats