Originally Posted by
soulman 
I think possible is the right word Chi. The key is to put more dollars into a signing bonus and fewer dollars into salary in the first year or two and then let the salary rise over the remaining years of the contract. For cap purposes the signing bonus is amortized over the life of the contract so as an example on a 5 years deal only 1/5th or 20% of the entire bonus each year for the 5 years duration on the contract. That's a major benefit for a team looking to add higher priced talent like MWill.
To get it working properly though you need to have an agreement from the owner that's he's willing to spend those signing bonus dollars now because even though the cost is spread out for cap accounting purposes the player get the bonus money when he signs the deal. When George McCaskey said money would not be an isssue this is what he was talking about. The team can't spend more than the cap in cap dollars but they'll spend far more than that in real dollars.
That's why a guy like MWill would accept a low salary like $2.5 mil in his first year under the new 6 year contract. If you gave him a $30 mil signing bonus upfront so his total compensation for the first year is $32.5 mil but all that gets charged against the cap is his salary, $2.5 mil and 1/6th of his signing bonus, $5.0 mil = $7.5 mil cap value. The problem comes in when you have an owner who won't or isn't able to front that kind of money. If George McCaskey says money isn't an issue then yeah, provided the structure is right, we could sign all three and still have room for some of our own although we may need to release a little more dead weight.
As far as Forte is concerned we have to reserve that franchise value against the cap now just like the reserve for signing draft choices but when a new deal is signed the cap will gain back whatever the difference is between his actual cap cost for 2012 and the cost of the tag.
Does this make sense or did I make it to complex?
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