Pash: Proposal to players offered unprecedented 90 percent of salary cap in cash
In an interview yesterday on Sirius NFL Radio with Tim Ryan and Pat Kirwan, NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Pash noted that the NFL clubs offered players an unprecedented guarantee – an average of 90 percent of the salary cap spent in cash over a three-year period.
“For the first time, we were going to have a cash minimum as opposed to just a cap minimum,” Pash said. “You understand what the difference means and of course so did the union, which is why they pushed for that. The 90 percent was an agreed upon figure and because of the way teams change over time, we all thought that you couldn’t do it year-by-year so we were doing it at on a three-year basis to allow for the fact that teams go through cycles. Everyone on both sides thought that was a sensible compromise. It would have done a lot.”
Noted Kirwan, a former NFL club executive, “I think that is going to help a lot of guys in the middle-income bracket.”
In previous seasons with a salary cap, there had never been a requirement that clubs had to spend a minimum amount of cash. The salary cap floor applied only to the salary cap - not cash spent – and thus included “dead money” including prorated money from bonuses paid in earlier years of player contracts and money that was accelerated from future years for players no longer with that club.
Under last week’s proposal, such “dead money” would not be counted in the minimum cash guarantee ensuring that actual cash would be paid to players each season.
