2013 UFA & Salary Cap

[badboy]

Originally Posted by Ole Miss Texan

I think this is such a relevant thread to this season it's crazy. People may think "let's worry about 2012"... but if that's all we worry about there will be ZERO room to sign these even more important guys next year. You better believe Rick Smith and Chris Olsen are looking at this and that's affecting what kind of offers they put on the table right now.

When we extend new deals or restructure existing contracts, 99% of the time the cap hit is lowest in the year you do it. That means in 2013, Foster and Myers cap hits are going up. On top of that you've got all other exisisting deals that are going up and it's going to squeeze us even more.

Andre Johnson goes from $4.8M hit in 2012 to $10.3M in 2013.
Brian Cushing goes from $2.3M hit in 2012 to $5.6M in 2013.

Expiring deals of Matt Schaub, Duane Brown, Antonio Smith and Connor Barwin.

Joseph $10M
Demeco $7.8M
Antonio $8.5M

If we think this free agency period is boring, I can't wait to see the boards in 359 days. If we had re-signed Mario for even $10-12M per year... you could have said goodbye to a couple guys above. Shoot we still may have to. The TV revenue can't come soon enough.

If these escalators are true & most should agree they are, how does the cap remain apprx $123m next 3-4 years as recently posted another thread? Something smells in the NFL.

[GP]

Roughly 14 of the 16 teams who have the most cap space are not good teams.

Even with their cap space, they can't turn their team around with a mere $10 or $14 million to spend this year. Maybe the Broncos can, but the Patriots are the only team in the top 15 or 16 (in cap space) who are legit contenders in that group. The rest are teams like Seahawks, Browns, Chiefs, Bucs, Jaguars, the run of the mill teams that are not well-coached nor well-prepared teams when it comes time to challenge for the whole enchilada.

We're good to go. The lean years under Kubiak...the persistence and the will to survive it all, coupled with an overhaul on defense, has us sitting pretty as the draft approaches.

Yeah, I don't like being THAT close to the cap. But hey, we could be the Panthers or the Saints right now. Now THAT would suck eggs, right???

[Wolf6151]

Originally Posted by badboy

If these escalators are true & most should agree they are, how does the cap remain apprx $123m next 3-4 years as recently posted another thread? Something smells in the NFL.

I agree with you BB, something smells in the salary cap area. I'm thinking the owners are keeping it low on purpose to get back at the players for last years CBA, and to maximize profits.

[welsh texan]

Originally Posted by Wolf6151

I agree with you BB, something smells in the salary cap area. I'm thinking the owners are keeping it low on purpose to get back at the players for last years CBA, and to maximize profits.

I completely agree, when the CBA was announced this was not what any of us expected the cap to look like moving forward, I wonder if the players knew they'd negotiated it to look like this?

If they did, we certainly never got a hint of it.

Its hard not to begin wondering exactly what they were doing for all those months during the negotiations, if all they got was an extra day off here and there. I'd also be very surprised if there aren't repercussions from all this.

I thought a lot of the huge contract numbers we've been seeing were a sign that the ball was in the players' court when it came to contracts, if the cap is going to be $180m within 5 years, as some had expected, it made sense that the top tier guys could expect to be given contacts that smash all records.

I wonder if Calvin Johnson, Mario Williams etc are going to end up hurting their teams when the pinch sets in.

[Dutchrudder]

Originally Posted by Wolf6151

I agree with you BB, something smells in the salary cap area. I'm thinking the owners are keeping it low on purpose to get back at the players for last years CBA, and to maximize profits.

I think the bolded is the main objective here if the cap isn't going to change. In a league that has a hard salary cap, all teams are on a relatively equal playing field with regard to personnel acquisitions. So I don't think they really care what that number is in regard to players, but rather in regard to what their bottom line is. If the league kept the cap stagnant for 5 years, all teams still have the same amount of money and they can push top contracts downwards to save money.

[badboy]

Trying to remember what the new percentage of profits the players' cut dropped to? I think it went from 55% to 48% and that will impact the players also.

[ChampionTexan]

Originally Posted by Wolf6151

I agree with you BB, something smells in the salary cap area. I'm thinking the owners are keeping it low on purpose to get back at the players for last years CBA, and to maximize profits.

Here's another article that ties into this conversation. It provides a little bit of perpective on why the cap will stay essentially flat for a few years, and talks about the deal itself. McNair is actually the one interviewed for the SBJ article referenced:

Kaplan’s report also confirms that the union borrowed against future years in order to pump the cap in 2012 from as low as $113 million per team to $120.6 million per team, not much more than the $120.375 million per team in 2011. The same thing will happen in 2013, which means that gains to be realized in 2014 and beyond will have already been, to a certain extent, consumed by the players in order to drive up the numbers in 2012 and 2013.

Kaplan points out that, last March, the players walked away from a proposal that would have guaranteed $146 million per team in 2012, $150 million per team in 2013, and $161 million per team in 2014.

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith called that offer the “worst deal in the history of sports,” in part because of the gross reduction in the players’ take and in part because the formula included no portion of the league’s financial upside.

So, instead, the players eventually traded a proposal with a high floor and a low ceiling for a deal with a low floor and a high ceiling. And for now the numbers are congregating at the floor.

Obviously the deal in place has potential to pay the players as a whole considerably more than they're getting right now - it just may be that a big chunk of those in the league at the time it was negotiated may be out of the league when that increase hits.

LINK

[Playoffs]

“It is staying pretty flat for several years,” [Bob] McNair [chairman of NFL's finance committee] told Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal while departing last week’s league meetings. McNair added that, after 2014, the cap will “gradually” increase.

[badboy]

Again I ask, where is all the extra tv money going?

[welsh texan]

Originally Posted by badboy

Again I ask, where is all the extra tv money going?

The answer seems to be that they've spent it ahead of time, as the previous couple of posts, they've borrowed against future years in order to keep them above $120m, so as the TV money rolls in, the first few years its only going to be paying off what they've already spent, hence the flat cap.

Seeing what the players turned down, compared to what they ended up with, looks ridiculous. I fancy doing a few negotiations with DeMaurice Smith on that evidence.

[ObsiWan]

Originally Posted by welsh texan

The answer seems to be that they've spent it ahead of time, as the previous couple of posts, they've borrowed against future years in order to keep them above $120m, so as the TV money rolls in, the first few years its only going to be paying off what they've already spent, hence the flat cap.

Seeing what the players turned down, compared to what they ended up with, looks ridiculous. I fancy doing a few negotiations with DeMaurice Smith on that evidence.

I'll bet you could talk him into buying the Tower of London.