This is hindsight analysis and once again, fails to acknowledge that if we had a normal, so-called “healthy” cap, then suddenly Carr’s first year is written more traditional cap-wise, with more bonus-type money built into the beginning, and we’d still be in the same boat of not being able to cut him this off-season.
I am so tired of hearing the phrase “at some point the bill has to be paid.” It’s a silly trope based on real world principles and, after over a decade of us never having a truly bad “cap hell” roster, at some point you’d think people would realize that it doesn’t apply the same to the NFL.
The more apt way to look at our situation is that we pay our bill every single year and our creditor keeps raising our credit limit significantly, in virtually guaranteed fashion except for the one year they got hit hard by the pandemic. We choose to take advantage of those guaranteed credit increases more than most teams, some out of necessity, and some out of want-to so that we can keep the “must keeps” who we want and so that we can go out and sign the “must acquires” who we want, including the highest paid free agent on the market a year ago.
Also keep in mind, the teams themselves have a lot more data than we do in regards to league revenues and cap projections. They’re working with actual, more accurate hard numbers, both in terms of cap projections as well as in terms of future restructure plans with each and every contract. The team isn’t taken by surprise when we start an off-season $80 million in a hole. The plan to remedy that has long been figured out and we are likely going into the off-season trying to figure out what we are going to do with the $30 million-plus in cap space we already know we’ll have.
Again, if we had a healthy cap, we’d be in the same boat with Carr’s contract, just with a different form of the same problem that every team faces.
Teams aren’t out here cutting bad contracts left and right. Many teams are stuck with contracts they don’t want, and that’s a part of what helps them keep the illusion of a healthy cap.