Thread: Current OL Analysis & Offseason Implications

Originally Posted by WindyCity

Not 80% of the total budget, 80 % of our free agent budget. We start with 30 million, but we will spend about 10 million on Forte and resignings. (That's debatable but we'll use it)

Of the 20 million left for free agents he would take up close to 80% if we seperate his deal out evenly. (And here next. Find me one long term deal that's ever structured this way. The cap costs very from year to year in nearly every deal, even two year deals)

Pep got 6 years 92 million/42 guaranteed (Let's start here. Pep got $84 mil/6 yrs)

The guaranteed money does not really matter when we pay him, but when we choose to spread it out. (It matters a hell of a lot as far as cap management is concerned. A SB is amortized equally over the life of the contract one year at a time. A Roster Bonus if paid is charged 100% against the cap in the year it's paid. Workout Bonuses are paid and charged to the cap in the year they were paid out. Incentive Bonuses are either LTBE (likely to be earned) and charged against the cap in the year involved but credited back the following year if unearned. ULTBE (unlikely to be earned bonuses are only charged against the cap if and when paid. There is $7.5 mil of these in Pep's deal. There are a few more ways of shifting $$$ around that I can't even describe in detail but I'm sure Cliff Stein knows every one of them. The bottom line is cash out of pocket is cash out of pocket but structure is everything as far as the cap is concerned. They're two very separate matters).

We need to find a way to get 92 million ($84 mil) into 6 years because every cent of it counts against the cap at some point. the average is 15.3 million ($14 mil). (Right, but how you structure it makes all the difference in the world. If you want more $$$ in the latter years you put it into convertible salary and/or roster bonuses which is how Philly managed to hand out the deals they did last year. Or, if you have a ton of cap space immediately you front load the hall out of it like we did with Pep. Look at his first years cap cost compared to this years. You can't necessarily use a straight line cap number as you have below because contracts are seldom if ever structured that way. So it's more important to manage how the $$$ are charged against the cap then how they paid out)

Year 1: 15.3

Year 2: 15.3

Year 3: 15.3

Year 4: 15.3

Year 5: 15.3

Year 6: 15.3

Pep got $84 mil over 6 years with 50% ($42 mil) in guaranteed $$$. Here's the structure of his contract. As you can see they front loaded the hell out of it then wisely arranged it so the cap cost would be lowest this year because we had so many contracts expiring after 2011. Nice work by Cliff Stein there. His SB was actually very small. They packed a lot of the contract into his salary starting next year to protect against injury or decline in production. That also allows them to convert some of those $$$ into a SB and spread the cap hit out if they need to. This was well done considering we had a lot of cap room when we signed him and we didn't box ourselves in during the latter years.

Current Salary Information

Contract: 6 yr(s) / $84,000,000 Signing Bonus $6,500,000 Average Salary $14,000,000 End Year: 2015 Free Agent: 2016 / Unrestricted

Base Salary S. Bonus Misc. Bonus Cap Hit 2010 20,000,000 1,083,333 13,850,000 34,933,333 2011 900,000 1,083,333 11,850,000 13,833,333 2012 8,900,000 1,083,333 1,350,000 11,333,333 2013 12,900,000 1,083,333 1,350,000 15,333,333 2014 13,900,000 1,083,333 1,350,000 16,333,333 2015 16,500,000 1,083,333 1,250,000 18,833,333 2016 UFA $42 million guaranteed Signing Bonus: $6.5 million Incentives: $7.5 million Workout Bonus: $100,000 So we'll agree that of a $30 mil cap excess we'll spend $10 mil on re-signing our own FA including Forte. That leaves the same $20 mil left over I used in my computations. Even if I put 100% of the bonus $$$ in the SB and start at $4 mil in salary increased buy $1 mil each year until years 5 and 6 when he gets $10 mil each his first year cap cost is $11 mil. $11 mil/$20 mil cap excess = 55%. And this is a simple example. The actual structure would probably be so different there's no way to accurately compute his 2012 cap cost without knowing the structure of the deal but I can promise you it won't look much like either of our examples. All you have to do is look at Pep's to realize that. You may be able to come close to estimating what a certain player will get as far as total dollars reported is concerned but without knowing how the deal is structured there is no accurate, foolproof way to know what the cap cost is in any given year. Look at Pep's deal. How many times do you think a player has a $35 mil cap cost in the first year of his deal. So far I'd say the only other one is probably Manning. Without knowing the terms everything is a guess and usually a very wrong guess if any of us use any kind of a straight line formula to estimate affordability. We can offer MWill a Pep size deal and still have enough to fill two or three more gaps as long as all of them aren't deals like we've been talking about.

Originally Posted by WindyCity

How would you structure the cap hits? To fit 85 million dollars into 6 years because if we keep the cap hit at 11 million for 2012. I know that if someone can do it Cliff Stien can.

But if we keep the cap hit to 11 million in 2011 we will have to fit 74 million into 5 years.

2012:
2013:
2014:
2015:
2016:
2017:

I think our best option is to sign him backload the deal with convertable bonuses, as you suggested, and then we can extend him and roll the extra bonus money over a longer deal making it actually a 9 year deal.

It's hard to say exactly how it should be structured without knowing what Cliff Stein knows and that's my whole point. It's really waste of time to speculate any further than we do. Look at the bizarre structure of Pep's deal. A $35 mil cap hit in year one????? Not gonna see that too often.

What's interesting to learn from Pep's deal is how Stein structured at so in 2012 the cap cost was at it's lowest. We don't know what the schedule of other expiring contracts is and what the future cap limits may be with enough accuracy to predict. So it's pretty much a waste of time. Would any of us projected a $35 mil as Pep's first year cap hit?

You back-load the salary in the later years not the bonuses. The salary can be guaranteed in the form of a SB and amortized over the remainder of the contract if you extend the contract at that time. That's what they did with Urlacher when they gave him a bump a few years back.

This much I know. Cliff Stein is one of the best capologists in the NFL. If there's a way to get it done he can do it but just how is pretty intricate at times. There are a lot of factors to balance out that we aren't aware of which is why I don't bother to do much forecasting of contracts like you do. You may get close on the overall dollar value but trying to guess how it will affect the cap isn't possible until you know that terms. That's what makes the Spotrac site so useful. Once the deal is done it's reported there and you can use that in calculations but that just one piece of a 53 man puzzle.

Originally Posted by MPBears68

Obviously this stuff is immensely complicated with many possible variations. And Stein is known as a cap-friendly contract guru who can make things fit. And we also know that other big contracts (Url, Briggs) will be rolling off the ledger within a few years, with any extentions/new deals coming much shorter term and for lower $ given age considerations. The bottom line is that with reasonable finagling Mario Williams is financially SIGNABLE with sufficient cap space left over to also pursue 2, maybe 3, other FA deals that are considerably less pricey.

I'm not suggesting (purely economically here) that MWill + VJax + Carr is realistic but MWill + Meacham + Royal --or-- MWill + Meacham + RMarshall for example ARE DOABLE.

Basically, it comes down to 1 "big name" deal + 2-3 "small to medium" deals as a cap-realistic expectation for FA. So, who do you want to spend the "big name" money on? We aren't going to spend huge money on a CB, a S, a LB, a new RB, a backup QB, an LT etc for various obvious reasons. The only plausible places to spend it are on either a marqui WR (one of the "big 4") or a marqui DE. In my original post on this thread I made the case that it would be better spent on Mario with the leftover room going to WR (+ a relatively cheap backup QB).

It upgrades the WR corps enough with Jay's and Forte's abilities added, it makes our DL one of the best in NFL, and it allows us the flexibility to really bolster the OL with a 1st round BPA. Forgot who posted this originally on another thread, but the 1st round seems deeper with top notch talent at OL this year than with any other position of need for us and we have "issues" right now or shortly upcoming with virtually every player currently on the roster.

If Tice insists on not adding a Webb OT competitor (Adams), then I am liking more and more the thought of Glenn or Konz blocking for Cutler & Forte next year and beyond.

It is complex and there are some variations on a theme you can use but the root of it is always structure. The team always wants the deal as cap friendly as they can make it and the player usually wants as much as he can get as fast as he can get it. That's what makes the negotiations carry on so long sometimes. Neither side gets everything they want.

If what few details have been posted about Forte's deal are accurate the trade offs were a bigger guarantee and larger total package than was previously offered but I suspect much of that comes in years 3-5 where he'll need to stay healthy and productive to collect it. So many times we see these huge numbers trucked out and the agents love it but the bottom line is that not everyone collects 100% of their deal so how valid is it really except for the initial bragging rights?