“lucky”
It’s a tradeoff. Signing bonuses are spread evenly over the course of the contract. The classic “restructure” is you convert their salary for their year (except the veteran minimum portion) to a signing bonus. The player is happy because they get the money now, and the team gets to spread the cap hit.
However for long term planning it’s easier if the team limits the signing bonus $ and backloads the contract. That means they get to decide at a later date with a future cap number how to deal with it. If they give too big of a signing bonus then they have to take on the remaining cap hit if they want to trade or release the player. The teams can’t play games by ramping up the cap hit like they can with salary.
Maybe that Nigerian prince I sent some money to was nearly the buyer.
The problem is that it distorts competitive balance which kind of defeats the purpose of a salary cap. Going big on cash over cap for several years isn’t some stroke of genius, it’s simply outspending everyone to buy more talent. Now it’s time to pay, and it looks like the Rams might set a new record for undrafted free agent signings in 2023 just to fill out a roster. So who benefits from this other than the Rams in the year they win the trophy? I don’t wanna see teams dominate simply because their billionaire grifter owner spends $100M cash over cap, and I also don’t wanna see Baker Mayfield fly in for a primetime game on 48 hours notice. That only seems like a good outcome to me if you’re a Rams fan willing to sacrifice a lot of bad years for one ring.
given the spagnolo era of some real terrible seasons they did
Browns fans of sacrificed a lot of bad years for one baker mayfield playoff win you snap take the rang if you can. There’s a lot of death out there, the lions, the bears, the jets, the bills, the chargers, falcons/panthers/jaguars/texans/saints/vikings/cardinals/whoever else all have like one title at most in the last 60 seasons. Snap take it.
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Yeah I’d guess a high percentage of fans would sign off on 10 shit years in exchange for a ring now ainec
That goes against your point earlier that the dollars all hit the cap at some point. If a team pushes money down the line in certain contracts for a competitive advantage now then aren’t they signing up for a competitive disadvantage later?
I’m saying it works both ways. I pay money to watch NFL games primarily as a fan of the sport. I don’t want to see teams win by merely outspending everyone by $100M, and I suspect most people don’t either. Conversely, I don’t want to watch a glorified XFL team when it blows up and goes into a “rebuild.” That’s called baseball and there’s a reason it’s not popular beyond having regional interest. Those terrible teams also seem to be play in every single Thursday Night Football game which is another feature of the system.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I thought every team has to play at least one Thursday, and no one gets more than two.
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Literal cat is literal.
I’ve already banked the years so can I have 3 superbowls?
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Browns are already way outspending everyone with this tactic. 
that’s EXACTLY where I thought the Bears would be–been that way before the NFL existed
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This graphic is wild. You have 1 legit good team out of the top 7 and 2 out of the top 12.
Thinking about why that is my best guess is bad franchises who have bad front offices who can’t draft worth a shit chasing overvalued free agents(who also have a lot of flexibility in contract structure). The good franchises don’t really have to shell out often for the high end FAs because they are capable of getting better players through the draft for less.
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One thing underrated about the Rams and their run was just how much talent they had gotten out of the draft in recent years. As such it allowed them to shell out money and trade away draft picks to make their title run.
Simply put, winning teams draft well and get good value out of their free agents. But proper cap management also includes deferring cap hits to future years where appropriate.
This makes me impressed by the Cowboys.
I think you can just mostly list worst owners who spend money and worst owners who don’t spend money and it’s pretty close.
I guess differences are at the bottom Saints (cap space is used from years ago) and Cowboys (what happened)
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Jesus christ, at least Amon Ra avoided it
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