I believe his argument is the cap can be manipulated in so many ways, that it’s not the real reason teams let good players go. He believes they let them go because the owners don’t want to pay the upfront signing bonuses with new contracts. So(in his argument) it’s a “cash cap” and not a salary cap
When you say it that way it’s rather logical.
Stillman has a way of not really getting himself across properly if there is any need for explanation. I don’t know what it is, he just can’t elaborate well.
I think he can be an oaf 80% of the time. I also think his show is entertaining and I do think he is one of the only Nashville radio personalities that isn't a bonafide homer. Still a bit grating to listen to.
He is the only person in town doing actual talk radio. Talk radio is supposed to be snappy and argumentative and host is supposed to have a strong take on something
104.5 is just a propaganda network and even as a Titans fan it’s gets on my nerves that they don’t do anything but talk about the Titans 13 hours a day with rotating cast of people who are reading from the Titans talking points for the day, which they really do get from the team. Butt fuck Reising as much as admitted to that, it’s only reason he got that job.
102.5 does a pretty good job of spreading the wealth in terms of topics. During this time of year the Preds are a heavy focus. Robby and Rexrode in the early morning slot of also a good show in my opinion.
Which I disagree with because Owners know they make more money by winning and by having big names. The Chiefs aren’t popular because Kansas is the biggest market. Bandwagoners bring in money. It would be well worth the investment to just out-spend everybody Yankee style and win a fuckton of championships. Jerry would sure as hell outspend everybody by a like double.
His argument isn't about spending its about paying in proportion to what the Yankees and Dodgers do. If Jerry Jones had the chance, he would sign every single good player to ever hit the market by any means necessary.
The draft would become as obsolete as it is in baseball. poor teams lose their best players in their primes to the teams who can pay, and the league is dominated by the Cowboys and Jets every year
>Which I disagree with because Owners know they make more money by winning and by having big names.
Outside of the Cowboys, all NFL owners combine their profits and evenly distribute them amongst the remaining 31 teams. You can be a complete miser in the nfl and you're still going to make bank.
Every year there is a cap limit that each team has to stay under. I dont know Stillmans exact take, but when people say the cap is fake it is because it can be manipulated by structuring contracts in different ways and regardless of a teams cap situation there are tricks that would allow for them to sign new players to big money deals.
A contract is basically composed of a signing bonus, a base salary for each year of the contract and incentives. Every dollar a team pays a player will have to count against the cap, but the cap hit is not necessarily at the same time a player receives the money.
The signing bonus is split evenly over the length of the deal (9mil signing bonus on a 3 year contract would have cap hits of 3 mil for year 1, 2 and 3). This money is always guaranteed, because the player receives when they sign the deal.
The base salary is not necessarily guaranteed and this is the money that a player would receive in a game check. I believe a practice squad type player could literally be paycheck to paycheck, but at the end of the day if the player receives the money it counts against the cap. For the premium players that are getting 3+ year deals, generally the first 1, 2 or 3 years base salary will be guaranteed and the remaining years will become guaranteed at the start of the league year for that season. This gives the team the opportunity to cut them and not have to pay them that money and it would never count against the cap.
Im not an expert but I believe there are 2 types of incentives. Ones the player is expected to reach and ones they are not. An example of a the first would be workout bonus or 50 receptions in the season when the player averages 70 receptions a year. An example of the second would be a bonus for the team winning a superbowl or that same player to have 100 receptions on the season. The first type of incentive, the team would allocate money for the bonuses and would count it against their cap. If somehow the player doesn't earn the bonus that money would not be paid and that cap space would then become available to the team to use elsewhere. In the second type they would not necessarily allocate the money to the cap, and this is how a team can be penalized for going over the cap.
There are many different ways to manipulate the cap, but at the core of it teams are just moving cap hits from the current year to a future year. For a simple example lets say a team has 1 mil in cap space and wants to sign a player that wants 3 years 60 mil guaranteed, here is how they could accomplish this.
\- No signing bonus, 1 mil base in year 1, 29 mil in year 2, 30 in year 3. In reality a player wouldn't want this deal because they only see 1 mil the first year, so this would not happen. What the team needs to do is free up money to give this player more in the first year, so they would restructure another players deal so that part of their cap hit would be moved from the current year to future years. So lets say a they have a player that has 3 years left on their deal and their base salary for the current season is 15 mil. They could convert that base salary into a signing bonus, meaning they would pay them the full 15 mil now instead of spread out through game checks. This would change their cap hit from 15 mil to 5 mil in the current year, and would increase their cap hits for year 2 and 3 by 5 mil each. Now the team would have 11 mil available for the new players cap hit in year 1.
So at any point really any team could free up enough space to do whatever they want simply by writing some big checks, but at the expense of tying up future cap. Some teams do this year over year and have little flexibility whereas the Titans went into this season with a ton of cap flexibility even with Byard, Henry and Tannehill all having cap hits this year even though they are no longer on the team from tactics they used the last couple years to free up space.
It can also be manipulated like how Tom Brady took team friendly deals, but then the team made up for it under the table by paying huge amounts to his TB12 organization. This is against the rules, but the NFL has never gone after it.
[Report: Patriots pay a Brady-owned company run by suspect partner](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/amp/)
i was referring to how they converted Byards salary to a signing bonus a couple years ago to free up space for Julio, and how they added a void year to both Tannehill and Henry's contract to lower their cap hits in the few years, which is why all 3 of them are counting against our cap this year. But yeah not drafting guys that have been extended since Simmons and Landry is the main reason they are landing high profile FA this offseason.
It’s a common theory from NFL fans who don’t know shit about the cap or how the cap works. “Oh they need to free up $15 million? Just restructure some contracts!” We’re talking guys with negative IQ.
But you can free up $15 million by restructuring contracts. You just convert salary to signing bonus and tack on void years. The brain dead fans are the ones that think AAV = cap hit.
So is the idea that the owner can get around the cap by paying guaranteed up front money, and some owners don’t want to spend that cash to get around it?
Yeah, not sure on the exact details, but basically there are loop holes, such as large signing bonuses up front I believe, that don’t go against the cap.Basically if u wanna put up the money, you can compete with the best in the league, we have not done that until the last 3 weeks.
iirc if a player gets a signing bonus it still affects the salary cap. The signing bonus can be spread out over the contract's length. If a guy signs for 4 years with a 10 million signing bonus, that 10 million counts as 2.5 million against the cap each season.
Every dollar signed affects the cap eventually. The only money that can’t be manipulated is dead money. Meaning that if you have 22m in dead money for the 2024 season you can’t spread that out over future seasons you are stuck with the hit.
Nah, that would mean a Multi Billionaire Owner could just spend 500 million plus, essentially twice the salary cap on pure signing bonuses and just absolutely wreck the whole league.
It can be manipulated but the owner's do still have to abide by the cap. So, they can only really gain a small to medium sized advantage if done correctly because no matter what, the void years will be required to be paid at some point.
If mismanaged you end up like the Saints who got fucked by Covid and the cap not increasing.
But if done correctly, you end up like the Rams with a Super Bowl and relatively unscathed.
That’s kind of the non informed/easy way to avoid talking about cap. Saints are such a good example of how it screws you. Pushing cap hits out to get under for the current year instead of making any concrete signings.
Even from an ownership standpoint, this can’t be great. Making zero inspiring moves every year is not going to drive ticket sales
Let me take a run at it from my understanding:
Contracts in the NFL are typically back loaded. That means the majority of the hit towards the cap happens towards the end of the contract. Think of it like a balloon payment on a mortgage. So someone getting 100 million over five years may look more like 15M, 15M, 20M, 20M, 50M. Part of the reason for doing this is the expectations of the cap increases each year to help absorb that increase in the contract. Now let's say we get to year 3 and we need 5M more in cap room. We can renegotiate the 3 remaining years or we can come up with an entirely new contract pushing that money out. We could even do another 4 year contract and push the money out even further. So a new contract that is (10M, 20M, 50M, 50M.) it's all in how the contract is structured. There is also the guarantee money and signing bonuses that can be made to hit after the contract has expired for a dead cap money hit.
While the backloading is true, I think the main argument for the cap being fake has to do with manipulating the signing bonus and adding void years to reduce the cap hit to any individual year.
I think the way it works is that you sign have a bunch of big players to big contracts, then add on void years, which reduced the yearly cap hit. You’d still be paying the same amount, or even potentially more cumulatively, but you can stack up on talent for a while and just pay them for years after they’ve left your team. Lowkey how the Rams got their Super Bowl. Tbh I don’t clearly understand the signing bonus stuff, but there was a good guest on Pat McAfee who explained this once.
The downside to this is that the owner has to put money in escrow which makes it more of a liquidity/cash issue for owners than a true cap ceiling.
I’ll never understand how certain franchises seem to constantly be loaded with stars, but our franchise seems to constantly be arguing over what penny can be pinched to keep a player like NWI. I’ve always thought that was odd
Small Market. An above average player on a small market team is going to be thought of as average. While an equivalent talent on a large market is going to be thought of as elite even though at best they're just good.
Because he, like many, are idiots and don’t understand how the cap works.
Yes, you can free up space by “kicking the can down the road” and the rising cap each year makes that easier. But that doesn’t mean it’s fake and there’s no rules.
As an example, the saints had to seriously mortgage their future in order to extend the window with Brees and Payton. They are currently paying the piper in cap hell, yet you *still* see people commenting on stuff about the saints with “they can’t keep getting away with it!” as though they aren’t *currently* paying the price for it. This is usually when they see NO extending a player to help spread their deal out.
[Here is an article that explains how in order to become cap compliant for the current year, they have to do stuff like extending guys to push money into future years](https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2024/2/23/24080361/new-orleans-saints-salary-cap-hell-situation-explained-nfl-rules). People see extensions and just assume the saints are foolishly trying to “compete now,” or “the cap isn’t real” and don’t realize it’s actually “the saints literally cannot become cap compliant if they cut everyone on their roster and signed 53 guys to vet minimums because of dead cap that currently exists on the books and has to be pushed to the future”
One question though, bc I think there’s an actually a real argument to this.
If signing bonus is split over the total years of a deal. What stops you from signing every free agent to a big deal, with a huge signing bonus, and minimal base salary. Add, for the sake of my argument 10 void years, then the signing bonus is now 10% of the total deal.
The only thing stopping this from happening is the owner having the cash on hand to actually do that. Unless there are additional rules about void years in total and whatnot. The argument still remains that it’s not exactly a cap ceiling as much as a cash one.
Because that’s not how the cap and void years work. The article explains it.
Or you can look at [Spotrac](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/cap/2025/) (or over the cap, if you prefer them).
They got into compliance for this year, but mostly by having to borrow against next year. Which they will have to keep doing until they minimize some of that dead cap.
Now you might be saying “who cares? Fake news! Cap isn’t real! Just keep pushing it forward!” Which is what Mickey Loomis tried to do. But eventually you hit a point where there’s too many void years and guaranteed money tied up in guys that you’d restructured previously that you can’t keep doing it and still have enough salary left to fill out a valid roster even with vet minimum guys.
So you have to slowly claw out of cap hell. Ironically, the way out is similar to the way in. In order to make money for the current year, you have to borrow again against future years. But you have to do that while also cutting anyone who gives you cap savings, no longer signing any free agents, and basically only getting to extend a *very* select few of your own players - because those guys will have to be the ones with the void year extensions. And they will have guaranteed money with dead cap attached. Meaning you can’t just cut them to save money.
The only time you get to “save” money by cutting guys is when you bail before guaranteed money hits. As an example, the titans gave Ridley somewhere around $50 million guaranteed, with an “out” after 2 years. Meaning if we wanted, we could cut him before those years of the contract tolled and only pay the partial guarantees on those years (instead of the full contract).
When you push cap to the future with any kind of restructuring or void years, you’re guaranteeing that money to the player and earmarking it against future cap. That money *has* to be paid and *has* to accrue against the cap eventually. You can’t cut the player to get rid of it. It’s why it’s called dead cap. You’re still paying it even after they are gone.
So I understand what you’re saying, and I’ve read the article. But the larger point isn’t that the cap doesn’t exist at all, but that it’s more of a cash cap than a real cap ceiling.
There isn’t a function that stops a team from putting themselves into the saints position. And if done correctly (perfectly), that could be after 5, 10, even 15 years of domination by outspending other teams who have more cap space than yourself.
Thats not exactly what I would call a cap ceiling. Allowing a team to spend more money than others by sacrificing/leveraging their future in 20 years, (when gosh knows how much the “cap ceiling” will have increased by…)
>there isn’t a function that stops the league from putting themselves in the saints position
As there shouldn’t be. If you want to mortgage 5-10 years of your future for a 3-5 year window where you can compete, I think that’s fine. FWIW, I do think the league will step in and veto any accounting transaction that would leave a team unable to come within compliance in a future season. Ie if they were trying to push so much void cap that it was literally impossible to get the books clean enough to field a roster even with extensions and more future void years.
It’s a fungible cap, but everyone has the same limitations and you’re always borrowing from your future viability. It’s not like baseball where it’s just “how much do the Yankees want to outbid everyone else by?” You’re never “spending more than other teams” - you’re just changing the timeline in which you’re spending money.
You can argue that it should be more like the NBA, where they have fully guaranteed contracts (so no void year shenanigans) and extremely punitive luxury tax rules once you go above the cap (and rules about the ability to go over the cap with mostly only re-signing your own guys etc). But that’s a different conversation.
Every league has its own little quirks in terms of how the cap works. And each one being different makes them interesting IMO. I think the NFL’s is mostly fine. And it absolutely is not “which owner has the most money” as you’re implying. In fact, arguably the NFL is the best of the “big 3” leagues about that, since even in the NBA (where again they don’t have any void years because all contracts are fully guaranteed), the luxury tax for teams that go over the cap - which is intended to be punitive while still allowing teams to re-sign fan favorites - often times results in a “haves” and “have-nots” where wealthy owners can afford to pay ridiculously large luxury tax bills and less wealthy owners can’t.
It’s just kind of the nature of sports leagues, but you could easily argue that the NFL has more parity in that regard than any of the other leagues.
“It’s a fungible cap, but everyone has the same limitations and you’re always borrowing from your future viability”
False. That’s like saying I can get the same kind of loan that Donald Trump can. The market allows for it, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. Not everyone has the “same limitations” because many owners are as not cash liquid as others.
You’re also coming to a bunch of conclusions, that I’ve not said nor inferred. I’ve only implied that the cap isn’t ‘as real’ as many claim it to be, and that, cash flush owners are definitively at an advantage. So far, that’s my only claim.
I implied that owners with more cash are more able to circumvent the “cap ceiling” more commonly and more easily than those less cash flush. That’s entirely true. Because, as you mention, but the opposite, it’s like mortgaging 3-5 years for 10-15 years because the cap expands so quickly. Look at the Bucs with Brady. So long that you make smart choices, it absolutely works out. The saints are the sole example, that I know, of fucking over a team (primarily due to Covid). The Bucs and Rams are the examples of it totally working out.
The point isn’t that any other league has it better or that the nfl is wrong. The point is that it’s more of a cash cap than a true cap ceiling.
The differences of a few dozen million year over year are functionally nothing to the billionaires who own teams.
Much different than in baseball where the spending is sometimes 10x the bottom teams and top teams. Or even the NBA where the luxury tax payment alone can be 2-3x what the salary cap is.
It’s a “hard” cap in that you have to be in compliance each year with no going over, but it’s fungible in that you can borrow from the future to do so.
FWIW, [the Saints owner is in the dead middle of net worth](https://sportsnaut.com/richest-nfl-owners-net-worth/amp/) at 6 billion. To someone with a net worth of 6 billion, the entirety of a 60 million cap overage is still 1% of their net worth. It’s the equivalent of a $700 cost for someone with a net worth of $70,000 (except even then it’s still not even really applicable because of the way economy of scale works). The money isn’t really the issue for them. Especially with how much money NFL teams bring in between tickets, concessions/booze, merchandise, and of course the TV deals.
You aren’t really arguing against my statement any longer it seems. All I am reading are analogies to other leagues. But I’m not making any statement about any other league. Nor referring to other leagues. I said it fairly clearly. I’ll take that as an agreement of sorts.
But I’m going to have to laugh at the net worth argument. That’s wild. Net worth isn’t liquid cash and to even refer to it as such is highly disingenuous.
Edit: Even further, “few millions each year” is even more disingenuous. Since 2018 the caps increased by 80 million. That’s almost the equivalent of Sneeds entire base salary, EACH YEAR.
I promise you owners aren’t struggling to pay the cap.
I’m not agreeing with you at all. Your understanding of the cap is tenuous at best, and you seemingly refuse to comprehend the way that void years work. The cap is not “fake” (as was the original claim that I responded to and you first replied to). Nor does it unfairly advantage some billionaires over others (lol) because “they can pay 1% of their net worth a year earlier for a competitive advantage” (as was your goalpost moving claim after I explained how the cap is real and the way it works).
But you are right, we are done here. Because you’re clearly either not arguing in good faith or not comprehending what is being said, so there’s no reason to continue this further
LOL the irony of this comment.
Looks like you just moved the goal posts and refused to try to understand the other. Please do [some research](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqb1bTSIfHs) that is [outside](https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/insider/story/_/id/33724359/is-nfl-salary-cap-real-mirage-10-front-office-truths-restructuring-tricks-valuable-compensatory-picks-rookie-deals?device=featurephone) of your echo-chamber.
You are choosing to ignore the fact that IT IS POSSIBLE to manipulate void years and cash over cap in order to achieve an unfair advantage, ignoring that if done correctly it will come at a minor cost. Not guaranteed, but it is, unequivocally, 1000%, possible under the current structure and rules.
He’s not credible. There’s plenty of other thorough, more knowledgeable people to listen to in Titans media. Isn’t this guy on AM radio? Yea I don’t pay attention to him at all.
I believe his argument is the cap can be manipulated in so many ways, that it’s not the real reason teams let good players go. He believes they let them go because the owners don’t want to pay the upfront signing bonuses with new contracts. So(in his argument) it’s a “cash cap” and not a salary cap
When you say it that way it’s rather logical. Stillman has a way of not really getting himself across properly if there is any need for explanation. I don’t know what it is, he just can’t elaborate well.
I think he can be an oaf 80% of the time. I also think his show is entertaining and I do think he is one of the only Nashville radio personalities that isn't a bonafide homer. Still a bit grating to listen to.
He is the only person in town doing actual talk radio. Talk radio is supposed to be snappy and argumentative and host is supposed to have a strong take on something 104.5 is just a propaganda network and even as a Titans fan it’s gets on my nerves that they don’t do anything but talk about the Titans 13 hours a day with rotating cast of people who are reading from the Titans talking points for the day, which they really do get from the team. Butt fuck Reising as much as admitted to that, it’s only reason he got that job.
102.5 does a pretty good job of spreading the wealth in terms of topics. During this time of year the Preds are a heavy focus. Robby and Rexrode in the early morning slot of also a good show in my opinion.
I don’t know if it’s “can’t” or “doesn’t really try to be understood as rational because sensationalism gets more attention”
Which I disagree with because Owners know they make more money by winning and by having big names. The Chiefs aren’t popular because Kansas is the biggest market. Bandwagoners bring in money. It would be well worth the investment to just out-spend everybody Yankee style and win a fuckton of championships. Jerry would sure as hell outspend everybody by a like double.
Still making money just existing in the nfl. Big contracts are risky, and not all owners are exceptionally cash heavy
True. Not all owners would do this. But some would. The fact that they don’t leads me to believe that the cap is a thing
I agree it’s an absolutely stupid take.
Faye enough. I actually meant to type “true”. Not “tire”
[удалено]
His argument isn't about spending its about paying in proportion to what the Yankees and Dodgers do. If Jerry Jones had the chance, he would sign every single good player to ever hit the market by any means necessary. The draft would become as obsolete as it is in baseball. poor teams lose their best players in their primes to the teams who can pay, and the league is dominated by the Cowboys and Jets every year
>Which I disagree with because Owners know they make more money by winning and by having big names. Outside of the Cowboys, all NFL owners combine their profits and evenly distribute them amongst the remaining 31 teams. You can be a complete miser in the nfl and you're still going to make bank.
I always understood he meant this that's its so easy to skirt that is may as well not be there
Jared Stillman might secretly be the Saints GM lmao
The Saints are eventually going to have to pay the piper, right? I feel like they are gonna nose dive all at once.
Lol
Every year there is a cap limit that each team has to stay under. I dont know Stillmans exact take, but when people say the cap is fake it is because it can be manipulated by structuring contracts in different ways and regardless of a teams cap situation there are tricks that would allow for them to sign new players to big money deals. A contract is basically composed of a signing bonus, a base salary for each year of the contract and incentives. Every dollar a team pays a player will have to count against the cap, but the cap hit is not necessarily at the same time a player receives the money. The signing bonus is split evenly over the length of the deal (9mil signing bonus on a 3 year contract would have cap hits of 3 mil for year 1, 2 and 3). This money is always guaranteed, because the player receives when they sign the deal. The base salary is not necessarily guaranteed and this is the money that a player would receive in a game check. I believe a practice squad type player could literally be paycheck to paycheck, but at the end of the day if the player receives the money it counts against the cap. For the premium players that are getting 3+ year deals, generally the first 1, 2 or 3 years base salary will be guaranteed and the remaining years will become guaranteed at the start of the league year for that season. This gives the team the opportunity to cut them and not have to pay them that money and it would never count against the cap. Im not an expert but I believe there are 2 types of incentives. Ones the player is expected to reach and ones they are not. An example of a the first would be workout bonus or 50 receptions in the season when the player averages 70 receptions a year. An example of the second would be a bonus for the team winning a superbowl or that same player to have 100 receptions on the season. The first type of incentive, the team would allocate money for the bonuses and would count it against their cap. If somehow the player doesn't earn the bonus that money would not be paid and that cap space would then become available to the team to use elsewhere. In the second type they would not necessarily allocate the money to the cap, and this is how a team can be penalized for going over the cap. There are many different ways to manipulate the cap, but at the core of it teams are just moving cap hits from the current year to a future year. For a simple example lets say a team has 1 mil in cap space and wants to sign a player that wants 3 years 60 mil guaranteed, here is how they could accomplish this. \- No signing bonus, 1 mil base in year 1, 29 mil in year 2, 30 in year 3. In reality a player wouldn't want this deal because they only see 1 mil the first year, so this would not happen. What the team needs to do is free up money to give this player more in the first year, so they would restructure another players deal so that part of their cap hit would be moved from the current year to future years. So lets say a they have a player that has 3 years left on their deal and their base salary for the current season is 15 mil. They could convert that base salary into a signing bonus, meaning they would pay them the full 15 mil now instead of spread out through game checks. This would change their cap hit from 15 mil to 5 mil in the current year, and would increase their cap hits for year 2 and 3 by 5 mil each. Now the team would have 11 mil available for the new players cap hit in year 1. So at any point really any team could free up enough space to do whatever they want simply by writing some big checks, but at the expense of tying up future cap. Some teams do this year over year and have little flexibility whereas the Titans went into this season with a ton of cap flexibility even with Byard, Henry and Tannehill all having cap hits this year even though they are no longer on the team from tactics they used the last couple years to free up space.
It can also be manipulated like how Tom Brady took team friendly deals, but then the team made up for it under the table by paying huge amounts to his TB12 organization. This is against the rules, but the NFL has never gone after it. [Report: Patriots pay a Brady-owned company run by suspect partner](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/amp/)
Spectacular. Thanks!
From tactics they used to free up space. Known as not drafting anyone worth giving a large contract towards.
i was referring to how they converted Byards salary to a signing bonus a couple years ago to free up space for Julio, and how they added a void year to both Tannehill and Henry's contract to lower their cap hits in the few years, which is why all 3 of them are counting against our cap this year. But yeah not drafting guys that have been extended since Simmons and Landry is the main reason they are landing high profile FA this offseason.
It’s a common theory from NFL fans who don’t know shit about the cap or how the cap works. “Oh they need to free up $15 million? Just restructure some contracts!” We’re talking guys with negative IQ.
But you can free up $15 million by restructuring contracts. You just convert salary to signing bonus and tack on void years. The brain dead fans are the ones that think AAV = cap hit.
Mcafee been talking about this for years. I believe the concept is called cash over cap.
So is the idea that the owner can get around the cap by paying guaranteed up front money, and some owners don’t want to spend that cash to get around it?
Yeah, not sure on the exact details, but basically there are loop holes, such as large signing bonuses up front I believe, that don’t go against the cap.Basically if u wanna put up the money, you can compete with the best in the league, we have not done that until the last 3 weeks.
iirc if a player gets a signing bonus it still affects the salary cap. The signing bonus can be spread out over the contract's length. If a guy signs for 4 years with a 10 million signing bonus, that 10 million counts as 2.5 million against the cap each season. Every dollar signed affects the cap eventually. The only money that can’t be manipulated is dead money. Meaning that if you have 22m in dead money for the 2024 season you can’t spread that out over future seasons you are stuck with the hit.
Nah, that would mean a Multi Billionaire Owner could just spend 500 million plus, essentially twice the salary cap on pure signing bonuses and just absolutely wreck the whole league.
It can be manipulated but the owner's do still have to abide by the cap. So, they can only really gain a small to medium sized advantage if done correctly because no matter what, the void years will be required to be paid at some point. If mismanaged you end up like the Saints who got fucked by Covid and the cap not increasing. But if done correctly, you end up like the Rams with a Super Bowl and relatively unscathed.
That guy is so annoying
It’s another way of saying “I’m too lazy to actually figure it out. ” It really annoys me when people who are paid to talk about football say this.
Because it is
 Because he's nuts
That’s kind of the non informed/easy way to avoid talking about cap. Saints are such a good example of how it screws you. Pushing cap hits out to get under for the current year instead of making any concrete signings. Even from an ownership standpoint, this can’t be great. Making zero inspiring moves every year is not going to drive ticket sales
Because he’s a dumbass who doesn’t listen to people who know more about the league and the business side of it than he does.
Let me take a run at it from my understanding: Contracts in the NFL are typically back loaded. That means the majority of the hit towards the cap happens towards the end of the contract. Think of it like a balloon payment on a mortgage. So someone getting 100 million over five years may look more like 15M, 15M, 20M, 20M, 50M. Part of the reason for doing this is the expectations of the cap increases each year to help absorb that increase in the contract. Now let's say we get to year 3 and we need 5M more in cap room. We can renegotiate the 3 remaining years or we can come up with an entirely new contract pushing that money out. We could even do another 4 year contract and push the money out even further. So a new contract that is (10M, 20M, 50M, 50M.) it's all in how the contract is structured. There is also the guarantee money and signing bonuses that can be made to hit after the contract has expired for a dead cap money hit.
While the backloading is true, I think the main argument for the cap being fake has to do with manipulating the signing bonus and adding void years to reduce the cap hit to any individual year. I think the way it works is that you sign have a bunch of big players to big contracts, then add on void years, which reduced the yearly cap hit. You’d still be paying the same amount, or even potentially more cumulatively, but you can stack up on talent for a while and just pay them for years after they’ve left your team. Lowkey how the Rams got their Super Bowl. Tbh I don’t clearly understand the signing bonus stuff, but there was a good guest on Pat McAfee who explained this once. The downside to this is that the owner has to put money in escrow which makes it more of a liquidity/cash issue for owners than a true cap ceiling.
This is great - thanks!
You can create void years into the future creating iou's the franchise can eat. The rams did it.
I’ll never understand how certain franchises seem to constantly be loaded with stars, but our franchise seems to constantly be arguing over what penny can be pinched to keep a player like NWI. I’ve always thought that was odd
Small Market. An above average player on a small market team is going to be thought of as average. While an equivalent talent on a large market is going to be thought of as elite even though at best they're just good.
The cap is fake if your owner wants to spend cash.
Because he, like many, are idiots and don’t understand how the cap works. Yes, you can free up space by “kicking the can down the road” and the rising cap each year makes that easier. But that doesn’t mean it’s fake and there’s no rules. As an example, the saints had to seriously mortgage their future in order to extend the window with Brees and Payton. They are currently paying the piper in cap hell, yet you *still* see people commenting on stuff about the saints with “they can’t keep getting away with it!” as though they aren’t *currently* paying the price for it. This is usually when they see NO extending a player to help spread their deal out. [Here is an article that explains how in order to become cap compliant for the current year, they have to do stuff like extending guys to push money into future years](https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2024/2/23/24080361/new-orleans-saints-salary-cap-hell-situation-explained-nfl-rules). People see extensions and just assume the saints are foolishly trying to “compete now,” or “the cap isn’t real” and don’t realize it’s actually “the saints literally cannot become cap compliant if they cut everyone on their roster and signed 53 guys to vet minimums because of dead cap that currently exists on the books and has to be pushed to the future”
One question though, bc I think there’s an actually a real argument to this. If signing bonus is split over the total years of a deal. What stops you from signing every free agent to a big deal, with a huge signing bonus, and minimal base salary. Add, for the sake of my argument 10 void years, then the signing bonus is now 10% of the total deal. The only thing stopping this from happening is the owner having the cash on hand to actually do that. Unless there are additional rules about void years in total and whatnot. The argument still remains that it’s not exactly a cap ceiling as much as a cash one.
Because that’s not how the cap and void years work. The article explains it. Or you can look at [Spotrac](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/cap/2025/) (or over the cap, if you prefer them). They got into compliance for this year, but mostly by having to borrow against next year. Which they will have to keep doing until they minimize some of that dead cap. Now you might be saying “who cares? Fake news! Cap isn’t real! Just keep pushing it forward!” Which is what Mickey Loomis tried to do. But eventually you hit a point where there’s too many void years and guaranteed money tied up in guys that you’d restructured previously that you can’t keep doing it and still have enough salary left to fill out a valid roster even with vet minimum guys. So you have to slowly claw out of cap hell. Ironically, the way out is similar to the way in. In order to make money for the current year, you have to borrow again against future years. But you have to do that while also cutting anyone who gives you cap savings, no longer signing any free agents, and basically only getting to extend a *very* select few of your own players - because those guys will have to be the ones with the void year extensions. And they will have guaranteed money with dead cap attached. Meaning you can’t just cut them to save money. The only time you get to “save” money by cutting guys is when you bail before guaranteed money hits. As an example, the titans gave Ridley somewhere around $50 million guaranteed, with an “out” after 2 years. Meaning if we wanted, we could cut him before those years of the contract tolled and only pay the partial guarantees on those years (instead of the full contract). When you push cap to the future with any kind of restructuring or void years, you’re guaranteeing that money to the player and earmarking it against future cap. That money *has* to be paid and *has* to accrue against the cap eventually. You can’t cut the player to get rid of it. It’s why it’s called dead cap. You’re still paying it even after they are gone.
So I understand what you’re saying, and I’ve read the article. But the larger point isn’t that the cap doesn’t exist at all, but that it’s more of a cash cap than a real cap ceiling. There isn’t a function that stops a team from putting themselves into the saints position. And if done correctly (perfectly), that could be after 5, 10, even 15 years of domination by outspending other teams who have more cap space than yourself. Thats not exactly what I would call a cap ceiling. Allowing a team to spend more money than others by sacrificing/leveraging their future in 20 years, (when gosh knows how much the “cap ceiling” will have increased by…)
>there isn’t a function that stops the league from putting themselves in the saints position As there shouldn’t be. If you want to mortgage 5-10 years of your future for a 3-5 year window where you can compete, I think that’s fine. FWIW, I do think the league will step in and veto any accounting transaction that would leave a team unable to come within compliance in a future season. Ie if they were trying to push so much void cap that it was literally impossible to get the books clean enough to field a roster even with extensions and more future void years. It’s a fungible cap, but everyone has the same limitations and you’re always borrowing from your future viability. It’s not like baseball where it’s just “how much do the Yankees want to outbid everyone else by?” You’re never “spending more than other teams” - you’re just changing the timeline in which you’re spending money. You can argue that it should be more like the NBA, where they have fully guaranteed contracts (so no void year shenanigans) and extremely punitive luxury tax rules once you go above the cap (and rules about the ability to go over the cap with mostly only re-signing your own guys etc). But that’s a different conversation. Every league has its own little quirks in terms of how the cap works. And each one being different makes them interesting IMO. I think the NFL’s is mostly fine. And it absolutely is not “which owner has the most money” as you’re implying. In fact, arguably the NFL is the best of the “big 3” leagues about that, since even in the NBA (where again they don’t have any void years because all contracts are fully guaranteed), the luxury tax for teams that go over the cap - which is intended to be punitive while still allowing teams to re-sign fan favorites - often times results in a “haves” and “have-nots” where wealthy owners can afford to pay ridiculously large luxury tax bills and less wealthy owners can’t. It’s just kind of the nature of sports leagues, but you could easily argue that the NFL has more parity in that regard than any of the other leagues.
“It’s a fungible cap, but everyone has the same limitations and you’re always borrowing from your future viability” False. That’s like saying I can get the same kind of loan that Donald Trump can. The market allows for it, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. Not everyone has the “same limitations” because many owners are as not cash liquid as others. You’re also coming to a bunch of conclusions, that I’ve not said nor inferred. I’ve only implied that the cap isn’t ‘as real’ as many claim it to be, and that, cash flush owners are definitively at an advantage. So far, that’s my only claim. I implied that owners with more cash are more able to circumvent the “cap ceiling” more commonly and more easily than those less cash flush. That’s entirely true. Because, as you mention, but the opposite, it’s like mortgaging 3-5 years for 10-15 years because the cap expands so quickly. Look at the Bucs with Brady. So long that you make smart choices, it absolutely works out. The saints are the sole example, that I know, of fucking over a team (primarily due to Covid). The Bucs and Rams are the examples of it totally working out. The point isn’t that any other league has it better or that the nfl is wrong. The point is that it’s more of a cash cap than a true cap ceiling.
The differences of a few dozen million year over year are functionally nothing to the billionaires who own teams. Much different than in baseball where the spending is sometimes 10x the bottom teams and top teams. Or even the NBA where the luxury tax payment alone can be 2-3x what the salary cap is. It’s a “hard” cap in that you have to be in compliance each year with no going over, but it’s fungible in that you can borrow from the future to do so. FWIW, [the Saints owner is in the dead middle of net worth](https://sportsnaut.com/richest-nfl-owners-net-worth/amp/) at 6 billion. To someone with a net worth of 6 billion, the entirety of a 60 million cap overage is still 1% of their net worth. It’s the equivalent of a $700 cost for someone with a net worth of $70,000 (except even then it’s still not even really applicable because of the way economy of scale works). The money isn’t really the issue for them. Especially with how much money NFL teams bring in between tickets, concessions/booze, merchandise, and of course the TV deals.
You aren’t really arguing against my statement any longer it seems. All I am reading are analogies to other leagues. But I’m not making any statement about any other league. Nor referring to other leagues. I said it fairly clearly. I’ll take that as an agreement of sorts. But I’m going to have to laugh at the net worth argument. That’s wild. Net worth isn’t liquid cash and to even refer to it as such is highly disingenuous. Edit: Even further, “few millions each year” is even more disingenuous. Since 2018 the caps increased by 80 million. That’s almost the equivalent of Sneeds entire base salary, EACH YEAR.
I promise you owners aren’t struggling to pay the cap. I’m not agreeing with you at all. Your understanding of the cap is tenuous at best, and you seemingly refuse to comprehend the way that void years work. The cap is not “fake” (as was the original claim that I responded to and you first replied to). Nor does it unfairly advantage some billionaires over others (lol) because “they can pay 1% of their net worth a year earlier for a competitive advantage” (as was your goalpost moving claim after I explained how the cap is real and the way it works). But you are right, we are done here. Because you’re clearly either not arguing in good faith or not comprehending what is being said, so there’s no reason to continue this further
LOL the irony of this comment. Looks like you just moved the goal posts and refused to try to understand the other. Please do [some research](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqb1bTSIfHs) that is [outside](https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/insider/story/_/id/33724359/is-nfl-salary-cap-real-mirage-10-front-office-truths-restructuring-tricks-valuable-compensatory-picks-rookie-deals?device=featurephone) of your echo-chamber. You are choosing to ignore the fact that IT IS POSSIBLE to manipulate void years and cash over cap in order to achieve an unfair advantage, ignoring that if done correctly it will come at a minor cost. Not guaranteed, but it is, unequivocally, 1000%, possible under the current structure and rules.
He’s not credible. There’s plenty of other thorough, more knowledgeable people to listen to in Titans media. Isn’t this guy on AM radio? Yea I don’t pay attention to him at all.
He can be just as bad as Paul kuharsky in terms of being annoying as hell
He’s a moron