CFZ Salary cap myths and other misunderstandings of player pay

[kskboys]

So you are saying contracts are meaningless. Okay. We disagree there. Holding the owners hostage for NEXT years contract is...ethical...to you.

What's really sick is so many thinking that way.

 

[Diehardblues]

Very well said.

When people call Jerry cheap, I have to admit I do wonder about...things. Being cheap is simply not part of the equation. However, people started saying it, then repeating it, now it's being said a ton. And it's just not accurate. Jerry is football dumb, contract dumb.

Right. Cheap has never been a part of the equation. As a matter of fact if anything he’s over paid players.

 

[kskboys]

Right. Cheap has never been a part of the equation. As a matter of fact if anything he’s over paid .

Being cheap is irrelevant and is a huge misnomer in describing Jerry and Tweedles.

 

[fivetwos]

Have you tried Google?

https://www.google.com/search?q=Dak...INzA3MWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

That doesn’t appear to be 50 million annually.

Also, it doesn’t default to zero if he isn’t a Dallas Cowboy. Maybe less, but not by anything significant. He will still get his endorsements, especially locally wherever he signs.

 

[Brax]

Agree 100% on this. Having the highest paid WR is not the golden ticket to playoff success. What the Cowboys have failed to grasp is drafting and developing a top shelf DT that can stop the run AND pressure the QB is worth twice as much as a flashy WR. Jerry still thinks we won those 3 SBs solely because of the triplets.

Winner winner chicken dinner, Jerry thinks it’s the offense that wins SBs and he’s been trying to recreate the triplets for 29 years.

 

[KingCorcoran]

So you are saying contracts are meaningless. Okay. We disagree there. Holding the owners hostage for NEXT years contract is...ethical...to you.

As long as he’s willing to pay the penalty stipulated in the CBA he is honoring his contract. He, and his agent, know the process is changing. NIL means college stars, likely 1st round or early round draft picks, will have full bank accounts when drafted. They can afford to sit a year and wait for the next draft if they don’t care for the franchise that drafts them. The teams these players, and their agents, are going to avoid are the teams that treat their bonafide star players the way the Cowboys are treating CeeDee Lamb now. Jerry Jones is old and obviously having difficulty realizing the new environment the NFL finds itself. Minnesota had control over Jefferson for multiple years, but elected to sign him to a massive extension. Same with Philly with Brown and Smith. Hill was locked into his contract with Miami, they increased his pay. SF is now back in talks with Aiyuk as teams are not giving up a 1st for an expensive player. Player agents are much younger than JJ, smarter, and they are competing with one another for clients now and going forward. Even if the Cowboys came up with an intelligent, progressive, accountable GM, Jerry is not prepared to change. He’s too old and too stupid to even understand his top player needs to be paid.

 

[gtb1943]

So what do we do then (I agree with you) just get a high paid QB and the rest of the players on O can be solid?

worked for the Pats for years but then they had Brady

 

[gtb1943]

IF you looked at the Pats over the nearly 20 years they were contending for the SB, you will see they rarely spent a lot on offense except for Brady. Moss was the one big name WR that they signed and he was there only for a few years. RBs; hardly any at all. They did spend some on the O line.
A lot of money was spent on the D but even there BB was pretty good at knowing when to cut someone loose. IT all came apart basically I think because BB got burned out as all coaches do eventually

 

[charron]

Yes, but add in overpriced positions. When you pay huge on a position, other positions will suffer. Unfortunately w/ Jerry that means paying CB's and WR's and DE's and going cheap at DT, where the game is really won.

Who's the last team who won a super bowl w/o great DT play?

And that's where good management comes in. Something our team lacks. We just go for the shiny toys.

 

[Sandyf]

Just not true, Bob. We're not asking for team friendly deals, we're asking for non-maxed out contracts. Big difference. Almost no one is saying a player should play for chump change.

Would disagree. Market value is not maxed out value. If they sign Dak for 60 million a year then that becomes the market value. If they choose not to then that is there option and also the living with the consequences. Several NFL teams did that for years to jettison players when they became stars and therefore drafted almost every year in the top ten. Their choice.

If Dak and Lamb are traded before the season starts then a 5-12 season is very likely. Fans might say good so we can "rebuild" but that can as little as 3 years to as many as 10 years. Dallas can fit Dak, Lamb and Parsons in the cap and be competitive and a Super Bowl contender, sure depending on the contract structure. The cap is going to be a half billion in a few years and possibly sooner with the betting money that will role in with the new tv contracts. Can Dak win a Super Bowl? Better question is can the defense be a Super Bowl type defense because in the playoffs, defense still wins championships.

 

[Coogiguy03]

worked for the Pats for years but then they had Brady

Oh that's the first thing you think of when you think of this!!! How can your top guy ELEVATE your team

 

[gtb1943]

Oh that's the first thing you think of when you think of this!!! How can your top guy ELEVATE your team

Look at Mahomes now; he is doing what Brady did. Set an example and keep at it.

 

[Coogiguy03]

Look at Mahomes now; he is doing what Brady did. Set an example and keep at it.

Look at the guys we have at camp, they're doing solid, hell if dak is good as he thinks he can be, roll with these guys and ball out!

 

[FVSTONE]

With all the big talk about contracts for Dak, Cedee Lamb, and at some point Micah Parsons, there is so much misunderstanding and myth about market value, ”greed”, etc. The biggest myth so often thrown about is that the players are greedy and if they would just take a “team friendly” deal (in and of itself also a myth) we could sign more players. That’s just not a fair assessment of what the cap is and how it works.

In 2023, Sports Illustrated published a good article by Andrew Brandt, a former Green Bay VP of player personnel who has negotiated numerous NFL contracts. The article is designed to separate fact from fiction regarding what the cap actually is and isn’t. The article is free - here’s the link: https://www.si.com/nfl/2023/05/17/nfl-business-football-explaining-salary-cap
It‘s a good read if you want to have a better view of how player salaries really impact the cap.

Just cherry picking a couple of key points from the SI article:

• “Cash is real money; the cap is simply accounting. Cash is what a player will actually receive in a contract. Cap is a mechanism of compliance, a way NFL teams account for a contract over the life of the deal.” What really matters in these player deals is the guaranteed amounts of cash and how long they can take to pay it out.
• “Elite players should take less to help the team. NO!” Brandt says the call for players to take less money is ridiculous. It is the owner’s responsibility to make the cap work, not the players.

One thought I’ve had for years: Whose job is it to manage the cap responsibly? Is it the players? Or the front office?

If our front office expects the players to help them manage the cap efficiently we are doomed. There are multiple NFL teams right now who are paying more stars at market value than the Cowboys and competing for championships.

The bickering over money at this point is silly. NFL stars are paid market value. Not a penny less. If you want them, you have to pay them market value. The Cowboys front office expecting their best players to take less than market value is crazy. If you want those players on your team, you pay them market value. If you don’t want to pay them market value, then you trade them or lose them in Free agency. That simple.

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, I've got to disagree with you one more time. We've been very fortunate to witness TWO generational elite stars taking less to help manage their team's cap space so that the owners could stack their teams with players with one thing in mind and that's winning SBs. Both Brady and Mahomes are great examples of TEAM PLAYERS....................... Whereas a player like Prescot made a statement that made me sick when he said, " I want to set the market for current and future QBs in the NFL". The time has come for the Cowboys and Prescot to part ways...

 

[gtb1943]

Look at the guys we have at camp, they're doing solid, hell if dak is good as he thinks he can be, roll with these guys and ball out!

sad thing is the playoffs prove he is not as good as he thinks he is worth

 

[Roadtrip635]

A player under contract should not hold out. If you want FO accountability...then players need to have it too.

CeeDee is under contract. Get your butt on the field.

It's up to the FO to just say no to extreme contracts. If the NFL is so rich...ditch the cap.

An optional solution is for NFL to contract the players with their pool of money...under a union type structure with performance bonuses.

NFL contracts are not fully guaranteed so that involves more risks for the players, players can be cut before the end of contracts. There is a certain amount of guaranteed money tied into the contract, but once that has been paid out there's no security in that contract for a player. Honoring a contract has to work both ways and it doesn't, as the NFL is currently constructed.

 

[Roadtrip635]

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, I've got to disagree with you one more time. We've been very fortunate to witness TWO generational elite stars taking less to help manage their team's cap space so that the owners could stack their teams with players with one thing in mind and that's winning SBs. Both Brady and Mahomes are great examples of TEAM PLAYERS....................... Whereas a player like Prescot made a statement that made me sick when he said, " I want to set the market for current and future QBs in the NFL". The time has come for the Cowboys and Prescot to part ways...

Mahomes originally signed the highest NFL deal and still is getting money added to that deal with a restructure becoming the largest deal over a four year span. He's not really taking less, the long term deal makes it easier to restructure and spread that cost out.


"Mahomes became the highest-paid player in the NFL when he signed a 10-year extension worth $450 million during the 2020 offseason. His cap hit for 2024 was set at $58.6 million, according to Spotrac. The platform now has his numbers against the cap estimated to be $37 million in 2024, $66.2 million in 2025 and $68.6 million in 2026.

This latest money move comes after the Chiefs restructured his contract in September 2023, setting Mahomes up to make $208.1 million between 2023 and '26. It was the largest deal over a four-season span in NFL history. At the time, the team said they would revisit his deal in 2026, which likely still stands."

https://sports.yahoo.com/patrick-ma...ap-space-for-chiefs-per-report-234347448.html

 

[Bobhaze]

Valid points. Of course it is the front office's responsibility to manage the CAP. The problem is, even if one owner holds firm on the value of a player, there are 31 other owners and one or two of them may be willing give a player more money than he is thought to be worth. It happens every year when we see a contract announced and we shake our heads. This year we saw Trevor Lawrence get a huge deal, but based on what? Potential, whatever that is?

I don't blame any player for taking as much money as the owners are willing to pay him. Players are obligated to ask for what they can get. Where I disagree is that greed is not involved on both sides, the players and the owners. I don't hear the players asking the owners to join them in taking less money so they can lower ticket prices for the fans? What's missing is no one seems to care about what the fans are being asked to pay, and at the root of all this is, without the fans, the owners and players would get nothing.

We are talking about QBs making $60 million per year which is an enormous amount of money, but a fraction of what the league is making overall. Yet the league is still looking to expand markets overseas to make even more money. That is greed. Think of the NFL has a society of sorts. Everyone in that society operates under the same rules and greed is apparently one of the fundamental rules of the league. Over the years we are seeing less football, more commercial breaks which rakes in even more money for the NFL owners and players. I believe at some point the NFL will break their product and suffer a loss of fans and revenue. It may take another 10 years but I don't think the cycle of greed can continue forever unabated.

Simply put when billions of dollars are being made and that is not enough, you have to consider greed is a factor.

Well said!

 

[Bobhaze]

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, I've got to disagree with you one more time. We've been very fortunate to witness TWO generational elite stars taking less to help manage their team's cap space so that the owners could stack their teams with players with one thing in mind and that's winning SBs. Both Brady and Mahomes are great examples of TEAM PLAYERS....................... Whereas a player like Prescot made a statement that made me sick when he said, " I want to set the market for current and future QBs in the NFL". The time has come for the Cowboys and Prescot to part ways...

I appreciate your view my friend. But sorry that’s not really true that Mahomes is “taking less”. It’s pretty easy to look up the way the chiefs have restructured his deal in 2023.

Mahomes took “market value” when he signed that big deal in 2020 and in 2023 that contract was also restructured. The idea that Mahomes is taking less is somewhat misleading.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Well, right now I'd say it's 55M for a QB. And 35M for a WR. Most QBs and WRs getting paid will top off at those prices. When a special one comes along, that's when it resets.

NBA has max contracts. there is no rule for max contracts in NFL. its usually "what did the last guy make and give me more".....