Contract Restructuring - Future (1 Viewer)

I just dont see it being a huge deal. Over half the teams in the NFL are dealing with the same issues of balancing huge contracts and a flat cap. The Owners/League will not let stupid accounting rules ruin the game of football. They come up with some new way to move around money, write off the way it's carried, and stuff like that. Look at how they allow teams to carry over cap space year to year, it's all accounting gimmicks.

Not worried at all. At worst, at some point we will have to go through a year or 2 of rebuilding at some point, but its not like there will be a "Going Out of Business" sign on the Saints facility.

1st and formost... YES!! Absolutely, it matters and will effect the cap but as someone else pointed out, the salary cap will reset itself... For instance, the saints will cut Will Smith's $9million cap hit and the Falcons will sign him for $3.5 million to be their starter and the Falcons will cut John Abraham and the Saints will sign him for $4 million to be our starter (not liturally) but basically, teams will purge and the value of players will go down but as I read somewhere else, just like real life, the middle class will fade away, the top guys will still get over paid and force teams to go with younger, less expensive players...

This is why I wish there would have been an individule cap to what a player could make.. No one needs to make $22 million a year while the guys that block for him or catch his balls make $500,000...
 
The truth is with Drew's deal, we are looking at several years if cap hell. We'll just have to deal with it.
 
This might be a stupid question but who comes up with the cap number? I know it's the NFL but is it the "insert derogatory name here." Is it pulled from thin air or is there some sort of formula used to determine it?
 
This might be a stupid question but who comes up with the cap number? I know it's the NFL but is it the "insert derogatory name here." Is it pulled from thin air or is there some sort of formula used to determine it?

The cap is calculated using a very complex system which is why they are never sure what it is going to be until just before the start of the league year (this year it is March 12th) I also wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a further adjustment from the 123m in the next week or so.

http://nfllabor.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/collective-bargaining-agreement-2011-2020.pdf

download a copy of this and go to article 12 for a complete run down on how it is done. Hope your have a degree in accounting to figure out everything in there.
 
The "June 1" rule lets you spread a player's cap hit over 2 years if he is released or retires after that date. In addition, a club may designate one player well before June 1 and designate him to be a June 1 cut. If Drew still has a sizable about of dead money left when the time comes for him to retire, I'm thinking the Saints will probably exercise this option.

I'm also thinking right about the time Drew retires and his dead money comes home to roost, the guy who takes his place will be a second or third year player still playing out his rookie contract, making next to nothing. By the time he gets ready to sign HIS new contract, Drew's money will have rolled off the books, and the cycle will begin again. It's all a part of the ebb and flow.
 
Here's the problem which might arise with redoing-reconstructing contracts by converting salaries into bonuses.

In essence, when a GM is redoing a contract, essentially he guarantees the portion which is paid out to the player in form of a bonus. When the GM is doing that to quite a few players.....like M Loomis is doing right now, injuries could decimate the Saints, when the guaranteed money has to be paid out by the club for many years after the reconstructed contracts. Teams stay on the hook for the guaranteed portion.

That could be pretty bad for the Saints down the road....
 
The truth is with Drew's deal, we are looking at several years if cap hell. We'll just have to deal with it.

I think that's what we are always cognizant of. We are laying all our chips on the table now because we will probably be losing when he retires.
 
Here's the problem which might arise with redoing-reconstructing contracts by converting salaries into bonuses.

In essence, when a GM is redoing a contract, essentially he guarantees the portion which is paid out to the player in form of a bonus. When the GM is doing that to quite a few players.....like M Loomis is doing right now, injuries could decimate the Saints, when the guaranteed money has to be paid out by the club for many years after the reconstructed contracts. Teams stay on the hook for the guaranteed portion.

That could be pretty bad for the Saints down the road....

That's why you only restructure your core players, guys you know will play out their contracts.
 
That's why you only restructure your core players, guys you know will play out their contracts.

That's the problem. The core players, who are highly paid. Those are the contracts which needs reconstructing. Too many of those reconstructed, and that guarantees that the player gets paid for the guaranteed portion.

The problem is injuries. We know that in our SB year, we had like 15 injured players on IR. No one knows who will get injured in the future, and it could be, that in any given year an inordinate number of players with reconstructed contracts will get injured. That's when it starts backfiring to the club. They are on the hook for $millions, potentially.

Example...W Smith, & R Harper. If their contracts are reconstructed, and they get injured, then even if the Saints want to get cut them, their money will still have to be paid in the future, which makes them almost immune to being cut.

That's bad for the club.
 
That's the problem. The core players, who are highly paid. Those are the contracts which needs reconstructing. Too many of those reconstructed, and that guarantees that the player gets paid for the guaranteed portion.

The problem is injuries. We know that in our SB year, we had like 15 injured players on IR. No one knows who will get injured in the future, and it could be, that in any given year an inordinate number of players with reconstructed contracts will get injured. That's when it starts backfiring to the club. They are on the hook for $millions, potentially.

Example...W Smith, & R Harper. If their contracts are reconstructed, and they get injured, then even if the Saints want to get cut them, their money will still have to be paid in the future, which makes them almost immune to being cut.

That's bad for the club.

But how often do injuries really effect a player from one year to the next? Career ending injuries are very rare. If they are one of your highly paid core players then they obviously proven enough on the field to warrant the big contract and probably have been pretty healthy throughout their career.

Like Harper for example. Say he gets hurt this year, chances are high that it won't effect his play next year. The only players you have to worry about are ones with an injury history and then they probably don't deserve the big contract anyway.
 
Where it becomes an issue also is with players that are brought in that are great system players. They get overpaid by another team and then don't perform, usually they are also older players. Then cutting them to clear dead weight creates a problem also. So long as a GM is willing to cut a bit too soon or not get entranced with something that will lead to buyers remorse all is good. Brees, Evans, Harper, all these guys take excellent care of themselves. No problem to extend.
 
The dead money which is what the signing bonus could become if the player is cut or injured may not become too large of a financial headache for Loomisto handle until the back end of Brees' contract. If so, then Brees may be able to restrucuture again and clear a lot of cap space. At about the same time, the Saints will probably look for his replacement who would come in at a lot lower price. So, it is possible we may never have to totally reload in terms of having 1-2 down years.
 
Like Harper for example. Say he gets hurt this year, chances are high that it won't effect his play next year. The only players you have to worry about are ones with an injury history and then they probably don't deserve the big contract anyway.

But if Harper's contract gets reconstructed this year, and the Saints want to cut him next year.....then the Saints will have to pay all the money into the cap, which was the reconstructed salary....which makes them more likely to keep Harper for another year or 2, depending how much money they reconstructed. Say, $2-3 mills for 3 years, then the Saints will owe to the cap 2/3 of the reconstructed money. Which is around $4-6mills, depending how much money they reconstructed.

Now one player isn't such a big deal....but 4-5 players like that could be a potential problem down the road.
 
The dead money which is what the signing bonus could become if the player is cut or injured may not become too large of a financial headache for Loomisto handle until the back end of Brees' contract. If so, then Brees may be able to restrucuture again and clear a lot of cap space. At about the same time, the Saints will probably look for his replacement who would come in at a lot lower price. So, it is possible we may never have to totally reload in terms of having 1-2 down years.

You and I must be the only two people on this forum that feel the Brees contract will not really hurt us all that much. In my opinion, Loomis shouldn't have any problem signing Brees to an extension before the final two years of his contract are up. Give him a sizeable signing bonus that will total as much or a little more than his base salary over 2015-2016 (roughly $40M), then spread the cap hit over a 5 year period. In years 3, 4, and 5 of the contract, you can give him a significantly lower "base" salary just like Tom Brady just agreed to, with the assumption that Drew will be retiring before these final years.

The Saints would be able to cut ties with his large base salary through 2016, Drew gets his originally agreed upon $100M by 2016, and the Saints get Brees to play for all 5 years of the original contract AT LEAST. And if he leaves before 2017, then that's a "dead" money cap hit of only $7.4M in 2017, 2018, 2019. At that point, we will likely have seen the Salary Cap rise to the point where this will really not hurt the team's chances to be competitive any more than having a couple of overpaid veterans would.

I'd rather the team pay an extra $7M for an extra 3 years (or $6M over 4...) to retain Brees at least through 2016 (or as long as he'll play under the next contract.)

I just don't see how $7M of dead money for a 3 year period is going to "cripple" the team... Can someone explain that to me?
 
But if Harper's contract gets reconstructed this year, and the Saints want to cut him next year.....then the Saints will have to pay all the money into the cap, which was the reconstructed salary....which makes them more likely to keep Harper for another year or 2, depending how much money they reconstructed. Say, $2-3 mills for 3 years, then the Saints will owe to the cap 2/3 of the reconstructed money. Which is around $4-6mills, depending how much money they reconstructed.

Now one player isn't such a big deal....but 4-5 players like that could be a potential problem down the road.

That's why you do it with your core players, guys you have no intention of cutting.

Personally I think Harper has too many weaknesses in his game for us to extend our commitment to him by giving him more guaranteed money. If he's not in his highly specialized role he struggles and it's no guarantee that Ryan will use him like that, he didn't with his past safeties.
 

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