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Could one of the New Orleans Saints' most important tools go the way of the dinosaur? Reporters and NFL analysts have had time to fully explore the comments made by commissioner Roger Goodell at last week's owners meetings, and one statement stood out to Over The Cap's Jason Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is one of the foremost salary cap experts around, and his interpretation of Goodell's discussion should perk the Saints' ears up.
Here's an excerpt from Goodell's reflection on among owners ahead of negotiations on a new CBA, via Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio: "We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how’s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion."
The second point Goodell referenced was the rising cost of owning an NFL franchise. He clarified that to mean "the cost of stadiums, the cost to facilities, the cost of operation, the cost of investment, and how dramatically that’s impacting the ownership view."
That bit about the "integrity" of the salary cap stands out. Many teams around the league have adopted tools the Saints pioneered in maneuvering the cap, specifically the use of automatically-voiding "ghost years" that spread out signing bonus payouts in years players will never suit up for a team. It's just one example, but that trick allows a team like the Saints to sign a free agent safety like Justin Reid to a three-year, $31.5 million contract that carries a first-year cap hit of just $3.8 million. Some owners, Goodell's comments and Fitzgerald's commentary suggest, believe that kind of rules-bending is unfair.
Whether you agree is up to you, but it sounds like some owners feel pressured to actually invest in their teams in order to remain competitive. And their response to that pressure is to snuff it out rather than buckle. As Florio observed, superyachts don't pay for themselves.
Let's say that the NFL does ban void years in the near future. How dramatically does that change things for the Saints? Could they wriggle their way out of that jam? The easiest way to ban void years would be to require teams to attach a salary to future years, not just signing bonus proration; that would mean a five-year deal is really a five-year deal, not a three-year deal with two void years tacked on. But they could still come up with a solution like only paying out, on paper, base salaries in those two future years. That could increase the dead money owed when a player is let go after the third year, or sooner, but not prohibitively so. That we came up with a solution and a way around it in this paragraph suggests the NFL will need to come up with a stronger approach, when or if they get around to it.
Ironically, the best way to enforce comparable salary cap spending across the board would mean taking a step owners would balk at. Fully guaranteeing contracts just like MLB and the NBA do just might do the trick. Giving teams no outlet to play with funny money would force them to commit to spending every dollar in every contract, but that's another no-no for owners, who have fought tooth and nail to keep from guaranteeing all of the money in deals even with rookie draft picks. At some point, even they will have to realize they can't have their cake and eat it, too.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Roger Goodell: NFL owners worried about salary cap 'integrity'
Continue reading...
Here's an excerpt from Goodell's reflection on among owners ahead of negotiations on a new CBA, via Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio: "We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how’s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion."
The second point Goodell referenced was the rising cost of owning an NFL franchise. He clarified that to mean "the cost of stadiums, the cost to facilities, the cost of operation, the cost of investment, and how dramatically that’s impacting the ownership view."
That bit about the "integrity" of the salary cap stands out. Many teams around the league have adopted tools the Saints pioneered in maneuvering the cap, specifically the use of automatically-voiding "ghost years" that spread out signing bonus payouts in years players will never suit up for a team. It's just one example, but that trick allows a team like the Saints to sign a free agent safety like Justin Reid to a three-year, $31.5 million contract that carries a first-year cap hit of just $3.8 million. Some owners, Goodell's comments and Fitzgerald's commentary suggest, believe that kind of rules-bending is unfair.
Whether you agree is up to you, but it sounds like some owners feel pressured to actually invest in their teams in order to remain competitive. And their response to that pressure is to snuff it out rather than buckle. As Florio observed, superyachts don't pay for themselves.
Let's say that the NFL does ban void years in the near future. How dramatically does that change things for the Saints? Could they wriggle their way out of that jam? The easiest way to ban void years would be to require teams to attach a salary to future years, not just signing bonus proration; that would mean a five-year deal is really a five-year deal, not a three-year deal with two void years tacked on. But they could still come up with a solution like only paying out, on paper, base salaries in those two future years. That could increase the dead money owed when a player is let go after the third year, or sooner, but not prohibitively so. That we came up with a solution and a way around it in this paragraph suggests the NFL will need to come up with a stronger approach, when or if they get around to it.
Ironically, the best way to enforce comparable salary cap spending across the board would mean taking a step owners would balk at. Fully guaranteeing contracts just like MLB and the NBA do just might do the trick. Giving teams no outlet to play with funny money would force them to commit to spending every dollar in every contract, but that's another no-no for owners, who have fought tooth and nail to keep from guaranteeing all of the money in deals even with rookie draft picks. At some point, even they will have to realize they can't have their cake and eat it, too.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Roger Goodell: NFL owners worried about salary cap 'integrity'
Continue reading...
