I thought the (main) point of the salary cap is that it evens out - and limits - spending on talent, with the aim of producing "parity". To prevent exactly what Jerry Jones did in the 1990's - simply go spend whatever it takes to obtain the best players in the league.
What I'd like to see is more incentive tied to team success. I don't see how the salary cap addresses that, but I'm open to education about it...
No, parity was a result of the cap but not the primary purpose.
Jerry didn't buy the earlier nineties teams. The 92 roster was primarily draft picks with regards to the top players. The main outside player was Charles Haley and he was obtained in a trade.
The big contract to Deion was in 95 which was after the cap was in place.
Jerry was very cheap back then which is why Emmitt held out in 93 which was before the salary cap.
Jerry was barely paying the bills in the early years.
There is inventive pay for getting to the playoffs but it's a small amount relative to top paid players.
Significant incentive bonuses are difficult to manage for teams because they don"t know ahead of time.
What they could do with agreement between the league and players association in the next CBA is as follows:
Example
Instead of 200M cap space per team,
take 10M from each team's cap which would be a pool of money equal 320M.
Now use that 320M to pay out bonuses for each level of playoff success. The NFL would manage that money not the teams.
The problem is that it helps the good teams.
Normally the bad teams get the beat draft picks, etc. but this would make the good teams better because free agent would prefer to come where they are most likely to get playoff bonus money.
