jterrell;4882263 said:
he won't see a raise on a PER YEAR average salary in REAL Money but he is in his prime right now. he is very unlikely to get better. He may have a couple more years at this level but he has also missed time each season.
he will collect around twice as much as he ever has the day he signs the contract. he made ~8.5m this year. He's probably get 14-20m on the day he signs.
Sure, he makes double that day than any other year but it's only that day and then he only gets another 10M for 3 years.
right now he has earned about half that 42m real money in his entire career.
If you're trying to argue that his cumulative career pay should be an indicator of what he should make instead of his current pay/play when moving into the future I think you're missing the boat.
What he makes right now and how he is playing right now is all that matters when you consider he was paid and then his play went up. Doubtful he looks back to the times when he was making less and playing less effectively as a point of reference for contract negotiations.
and yes we will have dead money when we release him. thats the way the salary cap works. you end up doing that with all your top end guys. you just shuffle off the money into the future and hope the cap rises because well it always has.
That's not the way "it" works. That's the way some teams work it. Others do not. Given the option of having zero dead money or significant dead money, what would anyone choose?
The fact that it works out where dead money is generally the norm is not by design but rather by players who don't live up to expectations.
If Newman would have played well last year he wouldn't be dead money, he'd be playing for Dallas. Unless Dallas was cutting Newman no matter what, they didn't anticipate to have dead money from him on this years books.
Teams cannot deliberately write contracts to have significant dead money because there will always be players who don't live up to their paycheck and when that happens, then you're talking about burdening the cap.
[/quote]and when the final cap hit is spread over two years it isn't so crushing. especially when the overall cap rises 30% over 5 years. 6m all of a sudden feels like 4m and then you soften the blow even more by splitting that over 2 years. So basically is 2m in 2018 and 2019 worth 8m now? Of course it is.[/quote]
This argument works both ways. You can't suggest that it's acceptable to write a cap burden into the contract because it has less value, and therefore less impact, in the future without acknowledging that a contract that pays a player 7M 4 years from right now is worth less than 7M today.
actual money versus reported total contracts are what seems to be confusing you here.
guys like romo and ware will see 100m total contracts but those guys will juggle dollars too.
whatever a guys contract is look for the shelf in it. the year the base salary blows up like a balloon they will either restructure or release the guy 99%of the time.
players just dont see those salaries very often. they instead get restructured, sometimes yearly.
we held onto tnew one year too long and ate a large base salary for it.
and yes, dallas can of course offer more complicated incentives in the deal.
1m for making a pro bowl. done.
1m for winning a SB. done.
1m for being a super bowl mvp. done.
but that makes the discussion more complicated.
No, I'm not confused. I've said for a long time that players are idiots for signing contracts that have unreachable totals. Like DeAngelo Hall in Oakland.
Or Nate Clements? Idiot.
Sign a contract that is unrealistic and you don't see anything close to what you could have had you signed a less overall, but more likely reachable, deal.
How is it that Nate Clements got 80M 5 years ago or Hall got 70M 4 years ago and Nnamdi, Car, Finnegan, Flowers and Joseph all got around 50M in the last 2 years? Well, Nnamdi got 60M but the point remains.
Players are smartening up and are less enticed by having the "biggest contract" because the likelihood that they get anywhere close to that amount is almost non-existent. They know if the contract pays 60% in the last couple years but they are only on the roster for half the time that they lose in the end. That puts them on the market as an aged vet who was cut because he wasn't producing what his paycheck said he should, which isn't exactly a recipe for another big contract. More like a recipe to end up on a small deal like Clements did after he was cut when get got 2 years, 10M from Cincy. Even worse they could go the route of Newman and get a 1 year, vet minimum deal out of it.
If you look at DeAngelo Hall's newest contract I think it's apparent there's a shift in approach by the players. After getting cut by the Raiders in the 1st season of that contract............out of 70M he got 8M by the way......likely because he sacrificed more guarantees on a smaller contract so he could take the higher overall dollar amount even though it had less guaranteed money. Anyway, he gets cut and then plays well showing the Commanders that he can still play and he was still young. Basically he's where he was when he entered the market the offseason prior because he was never all that great to begin with but made enough flashy plays to get a reputation. What does he do?
6 Years, 55M, 22.5M guaranteed.
I've literally been saying for years that players who sign those large inflated contracts are idiots.
I said it back when Ware was looking for a new contract.
http://my.cowboyszone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2704390&postcount=11
Hoofbite;2704390 said:
Wow, Haynesworth deal? Whoever his agent it, he should be fired. Not that Ware isn't worth it but because those contracts are stupid.
The Nate Clements, Deangelo Hall, Haynesworth contracts are nothing but ego strokers.
They look all big and sound great but those guys will NEVER sniff anything near that total amount. Just a showoff move really.
Honestly, I expected and still expect Ware to get the Newman treatment. Less total money but a higher total that is realistically obtainable.
No way in hell will the Jones' dole out a contract that gives them no option but to release the guy 4 years down the road because the number would be unreal to even consider paying.
I honestly hope that Ware doesn't feel like he needs to shoot for the record books. From what I have seen about him character wise, I doubt he does but dollar signs do funny things to people.
Here's another from a month or so later.
Hoofbite;2758603 said:
Hes NOT gonna get more than Hayneswoth. Albert, Like Nate Clements took the "look at me route".
High dollar contracts with a LARGE amount of it unobtainable. Clements will never see year 7 of his contract making his deal something like 6 year, 44 million dollars.
He just will not see year 7 unless the 9ers are out of their mind.
Newman got a contract that is actually possible to play out and as a result he can earn about 6 million more than Clements on his 6 year extension.
I expect Ware to see a similar contract. Not as eye-popping as Haynesworth's but more money in the end. I don't see Ware as a guy who needs the world to know his contract is worth more than everyone else.
I actually had forgotten the word "NOT" in the original post so I put it in just for the sake of clearing up confusion as it looks like I'm saying the exact opposite of what I go on to talk about following it.
What happened with Ware? 7 years, 79M. Smart players don't go for the headlines, they go for what gives them the best chance to stay working on that contract.
I was wrong about Clements in that I thought year 6 was the cut point. Turns out it was 4. And to be honest when you look at the 5th year cap hit of 17M, I dunno why I thought he would survive that.
Which brings us back to contracts like Carr's, Joseph, Flowers and even Nnamdi's. Compare the likelihood of playing on that contract while having a cap hit of 11M (as all of those guys do) in the 5th year to the likelihood of playing with a cap hit of 17M in the 5th year. There's almost zero chance any of those players would play with a cap hit of 17M. Whichever, if any, of those guys is playing at a high level during the 4th year of the contract, you can almost guarantee they see that 5th year because by the time the 5th year rolls around 11M for a top CB won't be ridiculous.
And there is the key, a number of years of very good earnings beats the hell out of a couple years of great earnings and a couple of years of poor earnings, if you can even get those couple of years of poor earnings after getting cut.
We are 6 seasons out from Nate Clements monster contract. He was paid 30.5M by the 49ers and he has made 10.5M from the Bengals. Effectively, 41M over the last 6 season. Anyone of those players who plays for 4 years on their contract will match what Nate Clements made in those 6 seasons. Some will beat it. Flowers actually comes up a couple M short but the point remains the same. They get far more by accepting less. You decrease your overall amount of money, much of which you likely cannot ever earn, and you increase your amount of money likely to be earned. If those guys play out their contract, they'll come out 10M ahead of Nate and most will have spent 1 less year doing it meaning for most of them they will have another additional year of earnings to widen the gap between them and Nate.
Players, or at least their agents, aren't simply chasing headlines to the extent they did just a few years back. They aren't dumb enough to think solely about how the number sounds anymore.
Vincent Jackson
Ben Grubbs
Carl Nicks
Marques Colston
Red Bryant
Ahmad Brooks
Carlos Rodgers
Peyton Manning
And just this season, Antonio Brown.
Those were some of the big names in free agency last offseason. Look at their contracts and identify the point at which the team is forced to cut them. Can't find it because many of their contracts go up and plateau or they hit a peak and start to decline in terms of the cap which means that even if the player starts to slip a bit, it's still reasonable to keep him because his number isn't going through the roof. Of course, those players are paid a bit more up front and like Jackson have larger cap hits up front but the trade off is, they can age and have their skills decline without getting cut and having to play on a cheap contract and their contracts don't ever force the hand of the team.
I haven't looked at all the contracts but there appear to be 2 big hitters from last offseason that break the trend. Brees and Williams and both have interesting structures themselves.
I think backloading to infinity is going out the window. Players just aren't that dumb to accept a little fraction of a lot when they can get a big fraction or possibly all of a little less. As for teams, I would think they'd rather avoid them because at some point in time they force a decision that generally results in forgoing the acquisition of another player because you have to keep the high priced guy or getting rid of the high priced guy because his cap space could better be spent on available players.
To be honest I'm not sure why teams started constantly backloading inflated contracts. "Win now" mode I guess. They're essentially paying a guy market value from 2017 and applying cap hits from 2007. 4-5 years from now a cap hit from 2026 pops up and they either have to cut the guy outright or restructure the contract to burden future years.
For the teams like Tampa who have taken a bigger cap hit for the signings in the first year, they have the advantage of not having their hand forced. Vincent Jackson has a cap hit of 13M for this year and next year but then it drops to about 10M and drops again to just under 10M for the remainder of the deal. They've essentially done exactly the opposite. They're paying a guy todays market market value and applying cap hit's from 2017 so 4 years from now they can reap the benefits of a cap hit from today. They can worry less about cutting a guy too early who still has some left in the tank because his cap hit decreases into the future and you aren't looking for an out at the first sign of decline. And they can have less regret about cutting a guy a year too late because they didn't just pay a guy a contract with a cap hit that was trending up while his play dropped off significantly.
Obviously you can't do this at every position and you have to have significant space to begin with, which Tampa did and still does, but I think Tampa especially but other teams as well have demonstrated that not all teams operate in the backloading manner and there appears to be a shift away from backloading a contract because it basically bites you in the rear down the line.
in the 7 year scenario you can only spread hits by 5 years for the original signing bonus but it still divides down to 3m per year.
in year 5 if you take 8m and spread it over 4 years(you'd add a year to the end) you are eating 5m in SB plus a low base. He'd cost 7m or even less in that 5th year.
You're right about the 5 year spread. I didn't realize that it was a strict rule but I've seen it so much in the structure that I should have. Good catch.
As far as spreading the restructure, if you're intent is cutting him anyway the following offseason no matter what, the number of years it's spread over is kind of washed out because it all comes current at the time of cut. Adding the year at the end in this case would reduce his cap hit for that specific year by 600K but also increase the dead money carried by an equal amount when compared to simply spreading it over years 5, 6, and 7. Also, I was under the assumption you could only spread it over the remaining years. You can't spread a signing bonus to the year after termination of the contract, it doesn't make sense that you could do it with restructured money which essentially becomes a signing bonus. Dallas didn't do that with Free this past offseason. Just doesn't make a ton of sense to allow bonus money to be applied to years after the end of the contract's written date. If you can then you can but doesn't sound too legit to me.
This post has gotten far too long. Been good discussion though. Has to be to keep my attention long enough to write all this out. In short, I think backloading is becoming a less frequent occurrence and I think Spencer would be wise not accept an inflated deal simply because the overall number is higher. I think he, and other free agents, stand to lose a lot more than they could gain by signing contracts with years that will never be seen. Taking less now in hopes of being able to keep your play on the uptick to an appropriate extent that offers job secure is a risk in a league as fluid as the NFL where the desired skill set at certain positions can change relatively quickly. I think getting money earlier in the contract when you know you can play is a smarter move than getting money later in the contract when you are battle age, durability and wear and tear.
