Cranx
☠️ Banned ☠️
The salary cap thing is exceptionally confusing, however, the fact is that there is very little "real" money involved in the actual numbers. With a few snips here and some cuts there, the 'Fins are in a decent cap place- not great but decent.
Basically, there are two types of money in the NFL: guaranteed money and, what I like to call, “contract money.†The guaranteed money, like the name implies, is money that the player will get no matter what. In today’s NFL this usually comes in form of signing bonuses. This can also come in the form of salary money when you have a player whom the team wants to keep but who have a high cap figure. This was the case with Zack Thomas last year. They wanted to restructure his high cap-figure salary but definitely didn't want to lose him. They restructured his contract which put more money in the back end of it, but guaranteed the money in order to make it palatable to ZT. While this helped them out with the cap last year, the bill will come due later on. The ‘Fins will likely be restructuring a couple of contracts along these lines this year.
“Contract money†on the other hand is what's reported to the media and is the number we all see. This is the total amount of the contract which includes both guaranteed and potential earnings. With this money, if the player's productivity decreases, or the team just doesn’t feel that the player’s worth it-for whatever reason- the team can cut him and not have to pay him any of the remaining contract aside from unpaid signing bonus money. In this case the team will generally be charged a cap penalty but it's only money on paper and is not actually paid to anyone.
This year the Dolphins are in poor cap-condition but it’s not terrible. In a couple of seasons from now, however, our favorite team may have to pay the piper so to speak and enter into a rebuilding phase when the debts they’ve incurred come due. Hopefully the ‘Fins can avoid this through some creative accounting but if not we’ll see who the real ‘Fin-fans are.
Hopefully this will start anyone who’s interested on the road to cap understanding. There’s a lot more to it than this but these are the basic tenets of the cap. Good luck trying to figure the rest of it out.
:confused:
Basically, there are two types of money in the NFL: guaranteed money and, what I like to call, “contract money.†The guaranteed money, like the name implies, is money that the player will get no matter what. In today’s NFL this usually comes in form of signing bonuses. This can also come in the form of salary money when you have a player whom the team wants to keep but who have a high cap figure. This was the case with Zack Thomas last year. They wanted to restructure his high cap-figure salary but definitely didn't want to lose him. They restructured his contract which put more money in the back end of it, but guaranteed the money in order to make it palatable to ZT. While this helped them out with the cap last year, the bill will come due later on. The ‘Fins will likely be restructuring a couple of contracts along these lines this year.
“Contract money†on the other hand is what's reported to the media and is the number we all see. This is the total amount of the contract which includes both guaranteed and potential earnings. With this money, if the player's productivity decreases, or the team just doesn’t feel that the player’s worth it-for whatever reason- the team can cut him and not have to pay him any of the remaining contract aside from unpaid signing bonus money. In this case the team will generally be charged a cap penalty but it's only money on paper and is not actually paid to anyone.
This year the Dolphins are in poor cap-condition but it’s not terrible. In a couple of seasons from now, however, our favorite team may have to pay the piper so to speak and enter into a rebuilding phase when the debts they’ve incurred come due. Hopefully the ‘Fins can avoid this through some creative accounting but if not we’ll see who the real ‘Fin-fans are.
Hopefully this will start anyone who’s interested on the road to cap understanding. There’s a lot more to it than this but these are the basic tenets of the cap. Good luck trying to figure the rest of it out.
:confused: