The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag: Jason Fitzgerald talks Rams & Saints cap success, QBs & team-friendly deals, big WR money & more

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap joins The Athletic Football Show for this week's Mailbag as he and Robert Mays dig into the current state of the NFL's salary cap, how teams like the Rams and Saints have navigated it with success, why more QBs don't take team-friendly deals like Tom Brady, how practice squad players count toward the overall cap and more from your emails and voicemails. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Tuesday, June 21st. I'm Robert Mays. Really excited about today's show. Obviously, we do the mailbags every single Tuesday. When the offseason started, a couple of you guys that sent emails and suggestions about doing something along the lines of a cap explainer pot. Just how does the salary cap work?

What are the loopholes? What are the weird eccentricities of how the financial landscape? of the NFL operates. And I wanted to have our next guest on to do that. And I figured it might be great to kind of combine you guys asking questions with us doing that show and just turn it into a mailbag. So that's what we're doing today. We are doing a salary cap and contract-based mailbag.

I appreciate all of the questions that you guys sent in. You make this easy. I didn't give you a ton of lead time on it. And we still got dozens of really, really good ones. So thank you very, very much. And here to help us sort through those questions. Just an invaluable NFL resource, somebody whose work I go to all of the time for me to better understand this stuff.

Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap. Jason, thank you very, very much for joining the show again, my friend. Yeah, no problem. Glad to jump on one more time. So you do something like this on your podcast pretty often, just kind of explaining some things that people are curious about as it relates to the cap, and we're going to try to approximate that the best we can on this show right now. So the first thing I want to start off with, a question that many.

many people asked in some way, shape, or form, essentially was, how did the Rams and the Saints do this? So I think that's a good place for us to start. And to streamline it a little bit more, I think the question is, how do they manage to skirt the cap and how do they manage to pay all of these guys and hand out all of these extensions and just keep kicking the can down the road as it relates to the actual machinations of the salary cap? So how would you best describe that? So those two teams are actually pretty different. The Saints, are basically what the Saints do is the Saints just, as you said, they just kick the can. They just have a credit card and they keep maxing out that credit card. Once the credit card is

maxed out, they call the bank and they get another credit card. And then they try to max that out some more. So if you look at the contracts on their team, they've basically paid everybody just in a signing bonus that they can prorate over five years. And their base salary is whatever is the minimum that the NFL will allow. So they basically, basically are just constantly buying on credit. And they're just kind of hoping, I think at least, they're hoping to kind of get to a point where the player contracts just begin to expire, you know,

and they can finally replace them with better players, younger players, who they drafted. I think the Rams is a little bit more calculated with the way they do their stuff. I think one of the big things that separates the Rams from a lot of other teams is the Rams are one of the most active, if not the, the most active team when it comes to trades in the NFL. So while we do look at rookie contracts as, you know, obviously the best thing that you can get, right, it's the best bang for your buck because they're the cheap players.

Typically, they give you the top performance. They are actually saving a little bit of money when they trade away these picks. You know, you say, well, they don't have any first round picks. Well, that also helps you in some sense. They don't have to worry about paying big signing bonuses to incoming rookies. They don't have to worry about those cap chargers at all. They don't have to worry about those players. really ever coming due for an extension because they don't exist on their roster.

So what they're doing is that they're trading and they're bringing in players and they're able to extend those players kind of early in their contract. So they're still getting the benefit of having a couple of cheap years. You know, Stafford last year was around 20, 25 million. They got to roll 25 million into his new contract, which brings the effective value down below 40 a year. they're able to do the same with someone like a Jalen Ramsey who they made the highest paid corner of the NFL and the effective value on their salary cap because they brought him in on a trade is actually a lot less than that.

You know, you see that a little bit more. Sure. So basically what happens is when you agree to a contract with a player, the contracts themselves are valued in what people call new money. So if a player has existing years on a contract, so let's say Jalen Ramsey, and I'm just going to make up some numbers here because I, I don't have the numbers for Ramsey in front of me. Let's say the first year that they traded for him, his salary cap hit.

The money that they owed him was probably only $5 million. And the second year he was under contract, maybe it was $12 or $13 million. When he signs that giant extension that is $20 million a year, nobody is taking into account the fact that the Rams got him for that first year at the cheaper cost. And during the course of the extension, it actually also includes that $13 million number that he was kind of already set to earn. So the Rams all in number on him is actually a lot less than $20 million a year on the salary cap. When you look at the way that they can account for it. And when you trade for a player and you didn't really have that sunk cost there to begin with, that's actually pretty beneficial for the way that you can manage stuff.

That's one of the reasons why the dolphins were able to do the deal they did with Tyree Kill. That's how the Arizona Cardinals were able to do a deal with the Andre Hopkins, where you can get these giant salary numbers that'll make someone happy. But on your salary cap and really on your books, you can account for it a little bit differently. So I think that's been beneficial for them. The other thing is the Rams are the best team in the league. I think when it comes to avoiding the kind of sunk cost fallacy. right you know a couple of years ago they they extended cooper cup and robert woods obviously cooper cup ended up being a superstar robert woods didn't work out as well he got injured and

what did they do they very quickly said all right even though we paid this extra money to him let's get him off the team let's get that salary out of here and you know just don't worry about it we can bring in new players to fill that void they did the same thing with todd girlie they did the same thing with jared goff they did the same thing with brandon cooks other teams would sit there and probably double and triple down on those guys who maybe aren't fitting in the systems, they don't do that. They just look to see whatever they can get for those players via trade. If it winds up being pennies on the dollar, it's pennies on the dollar, but they're still saving themselves guaranteed salary and roster spaces by doing that. So I think they're somewhat

creative in the way that they manage the roster. And I think that just gives them a lot more flexibility to keep, you know, adding and adding and adding. And they're proactive with their contracts as well. You know, Cup had two years left. Aaron Donald had the three years remaining that you can argue with whether or not they should have done the Donald deal at the level they did it. But in terms of the numbers, they're really only investing an extra 10 million or so a year, give or take a little bit, because they already had them down for, you know, 20 million a season. Again, give or take a couple bucks there. And now they just give them the raise to make them happy.

So you look at the Rams and I think the dead money and moving on and the SunCost fallacy is a really interesting conversation. So in 2020, between Brandon Cooks and Todd Gurley combined, they had almost $31 million in dead money, I think more than $31 million in dead money on their cap. What allows them to absorb something like that and continue to function in ways that other teams might not be able to? You know, I think in their case, it was just the fact that they had other talent that was there, other players that, you know, could kind of fill those voids. You know, I think when you look at Gurley, Gurley was like a non-factor.

So, yeah, you had that money that you had to account for, but they were able to go and find a route to, you know, trade for someone, trade for Jalen Ramsey, who's going to be cheap on the cap for a year or two for them, you know, and just find creative ways to bring, guys in and fit them in despite those, you know, big dead money totals. And I think, you know, what they realized is the situation would have been a lot worse if they had kept girly because the guarantees would have kicked in to where that dead money, because he would have been a dead roster spot, whether he was on the team or whether he's on the quote unquote dead money part of the ledger. You know, you just would have increased how much salary caps space you would have had to use on him over a two year period or three year period at that point. And is there in In terms of cash flow and what you're paying out, is there any sort of benefit to having it be dead money rather than salary that you're paying out in the given year?

Not really. I mean, when it comes to that, I think you just want to look at what the future implications are. The way that I always look at it is even if you have to pay a player to go away, which they had to do with Gurley. They paid a couple million to goff to get him to go away as part of that trade. I think that's okay because what you're looking at is what's the alternative. and the alternative is we can pay him $7 million to go away now and take this dead money hit or we're going to end up paying him another $20 million and we're still going to have a pretty big dead money hit, you know, a year or two from now.

Yeah, golf is 24.7 in dead money last year. I mean, just they're, the fact that they're running up these $30 million, $40 million dead money tabs and win in Super Bowls and still being competitive speaks to the other smart things they continue to do. Yep, it's pretty good. All right. Next one here. Similar question kind of linked a little bit. That's why I ordered it this way. Philip Nguyen says, with the recent uproar on the cash over cap method, I wanted to ask about what are the very specific risks that teams are betting on? I just want simplification on the pros and cons of operating like this. I feel like the teams do this never crash and are able to seek high rewards with very little risk. It almost seems like a salary cap exploit. What would you say to that?

So I think the reason we look at it is because when the teams really get hit hard by using this kind of strategy, they've already fallen out of contention. So no one really pays attention anymore to the fact that the salary cap is an issue for these teams. So when he talks about cash over cap. Yeah, exactly. So when you talk about cash over cap for people that aren't familiar with that, basically it just means that you're paying a large amount of the money at the front part of the contract as a big signing bonus, maybe an option. bonus in the second year. You're prorating that money over five years, so you're kind of dividing that cost up. So even though you're paying a lot up front, your salary cap numbers are pretty low. The risk in that is you're banking on that player actually being productive for probably three or four seasons. And one thing that you can tell from studying free agency is that's not the case for most free agents that you sign. Most free agents are out of there by three years, contract extensions that you sign with players. You could just look at the amount of players who have been traded in recent years. They're not working out for a lot of these teams for a number of different

reasons. So when you do that, yeah, you end up a team like the Atlanta Falcons who can't function because of their salary cap, you know, for the last two years, three years, they just can't function. Chicago Bears are another team that's in that same position right now. Hell, yes, they are. Yeah, you know, Miami has been in that position. The Jets have flown in and out of that position. So I think, I think what happens is we look at some of these teams and they're bad. And it's just like, well, their salary cap sucks. And we just kind of forget that they got to this point because of what they did with all those contracts, because of the way they frontloaded those deals or the way they continued to restructure them. You know, banking, you know, for Atlanta, for example, banking on a quarterback to continue to play at a super high level when he's like 40 years old and receivers to be productive when they're in their, their, they're, they're.

30s, it's just not a winning strategy. And when you start gambling on five, six, seven players like that all at the same time, maybe one will work out. But most of them, that's not going to be the case. So that's really the big risk with that. And when you do look at those couple of teams, you'll see they're in a crash and burn phase. And it's very hard to dig out from that. What about a team like New Orleans who has managed to avoid the crash and burn phase so far, but it does feel like it may be coming down the road? Is there a world where they just managed to outrun this and the cap goes up enough and somehow they avoid that catastrophic ending that some of these other teams have run into? They probably could. New Orleans faced this a couple of years ago. When Drew Breeze was in his prime, they had those back to back to back seasons, I think, where they went seven.

and nine. Worst defenses in the league, like historically bad. Yeah. And if you looked at the dead money that those three years, it was huge. The sum of that dead money was basically the equivalent of one entire year's salary cap. So, I mean, they were pretty hamstrung with what they could do with the roster when they kind of approached it that way, which was letting contracts expire and dealing with the dead money and all that stuff.

So this time, I think they're just continuing to push and push and push. But I think the question for them is do they get to a point where they're going to go, you know, seven and ten, eight, nine, and then you get another year where they have six wins. I have a feeling that's probably more what it's going to be like for them, that they're going to be in that range where they're probably competing for the last wild card spot, maybe not getting it. And that's really not competing for anything if you're competing for that last playoff spot all the time. but I have a feeling that that's kind of what they've set themselves up for. And people are probably going to look at that as a success. And you just kind of hope that most of those contracts fade away while they're able to do that. I'm looking at the numbers right now.

They had like $35 million and then like $42 million in $15 and $16. Which in $15 and $16 money, that's a shitload of money. Yeah. It's huge. And if it's, you know, everyone points back and it's like, well, you know, they got through it. they got through it. They got through it because they had that draft class in 2017 or whatever. That was just spectacular. You know, ask Seattle, is that really easy to, you know, duplicate a second time? Everyone is always waiting for that for Seattle. You know, it's like, well, what are they going to have those Legion of Boom type classes again?

You don't. So, you know, planning on that, you know, be happy you got it the last time. planning for it is something entirely different. But I think they can probably try to ride it out. And I have more faith in them riding it out if Peyton was still going to be there. I think that's actually probably the biggest loss of the offseason for any team. But you wait and see how it works out with them. Yeah, I mean, really one of the only reasons they got bit a couple of years ago and had to do even more restructuring is that the cap went down. I mean, there are bets that they seem to make.

You can correct me if I'm wrong about this were really dependent. on the trajectory of that graph going up and up and up and up with no hiccups whatsoever. And then we had an unforeseen and unprecedented sort of hiccup incited by a global pandemic no one could have planned for. Yeah, they in Atlanta were hurt the hardest by that because they really needed the cap to go up by a normal level at that point in time. So while they still would have been in trouble and they still would have been, you know, relative to the rest of the league, they still would have been in rough shape. you wouldn't have seen them be, oh, I forget what they started last, like two years ago,

I think they started the offseason 90 or 100 million over the cap. This year, this year it was only 70 million over the cap that they had to do. Next year, it'll probably only be 50. But, you know, they were hurt pretty bad by that. And that,

yeah, that's something you can't plan for. The last time we really even saw anything close to that would have been in 2011 when you had a, that last TBA and the cap dropped all the way down to 120.6. And teams at that point in time were probably structuring their contracts based on a cap of probably around 140 million, give or take a little bit, maybe 137, 138. And the new rules that came in place, they dropped the cap down, which heard a couple of

the teams that were kind of contending teams that had a little bit more invested in some older players. I'm wondering if you have an owner that's willing to kind of do this and say, we're going to convert all these salaries, we're going to throw a bunch of cash around in order to try to outrun this. Do you think there is some element of that that is a competitive advantage for some of these teams? Yeah, definitely. I think when you look at ownership and you look at a willingness to spend, I think those teams are always going to have a better opportunity. It's just getting the guys in the front office to be creative then with utilizing the money. So yeah, I think if you have people who are willing to spend, and they can live with some of the mistakes that happen along the way. I think you have a big advantage over some of the other teams in the NFL. Speaking of creativity, next one here from Ethan Giles, he says, Howie Roseman has often talked about is a salary cap genius of sorts. And I've heard how innovative the Eagles are and using weird bonus structures to stretch the cap. Do all these moves actually create cap space better than other teams generally do?

Or is it a case of obsessing over minutia that doesn't really move the needle in a substantial way? It's probably somewhere in between both of those extremes. I don't think the stuff they do, if you look at it on its face, you would say, oh, okay, well, you know, they're really creating a ton of cap room by having two option bonuses right at the front of a contract and everything else. But what they do is they've built themselves tons of flexibility into these contracts. And it's flexibility that benefits the team. It's not like the flexibility with the Saints, where it's just pushing money for the sake of pushing money. And the Eagles may have done that in the past. I'm not going to say that they haven't.

But some of the stuff that they've done has left themselves these big windows to release players and be able to use June 1 designations on those players. It allows them to trade players while also still getting the benefits of the lower cap charges while kind of negotiating with teams. They're not hamstringing themselves with giant roster bonus dates and all that kind of stuff. So I think what they're doing is they're just building a huge amount of flexibility to where they can really pick and choose when the cap is going to impact them the most. You know, Philadelphia would be, Philadelphia would be in a rough spot if they hit a real rough patch with their decision making to where, you know, all these guys, they extend that they're taking a gamble on all end up, you know, just being duds.

And odds are that's not going to happen. The Jordan Miladas of the world and people like that. Yeah. But, you know, stuff like that can happen. happen. What they're doing, and it's the right way to do it because they're doing it with most of their roster. They're trying to get ahead of the curve on a lot of their guys on extensions. And when you're doing that, you're taking more of a gamble because you don't really know 100% if these guys are really the real deal or not. You're betting on it because you invested in them in the draft. You're watching them in practice. You're watching them improve during the games.

And you're projecting them to do that. So you are taking a gamble that way. But if you get more that work out for you, then don't work for you, in the long run, you'll probably be better off. So I think that's really what they do. But I wouldn't look at it and say, well, they're magically creating cap space that no one else can create. I think they're just finding ways to maximize the way that they can use their cap space year in and year out and maintain as much flexibility as possible. So that kind of brings me to the next thing I want to talk about.

Brian, who's Jets Nome on Twitter said, I love to know what new cap gem national. seem to be in vogue, especially with newer, younger GMs entering the fray. Are there any changes to the approach for the new versus the old school? And a related question, Jonathan B sent us an email and said, can you explain some of the most popular levers that teams use when extending contracts, trades, or signing players? I always hear about them and how teams protect themselves down the road to make the cap work year over year. I think these are connected. I'm interested in what some of those levers and creative structures in your mind do look like, option bonuses, all of that stuff. What have been the newer kind of ways to be creative and create that flexibility in your mind that teams employed.

To be honest, I don't think that that's really been the case where teams have really gotten more creative with their cap, with the exception of a team like the Eagles. I think most of the teams, I think recently, I think a lot of the younger GMs, the focus has been more on analytics. It's been on, you know, increasing the kind of the buy-in throughout the organization on that. And even though analytics should obviously play a role in who you're targeting for contract and what those ultimate values should be for a contract and ways that you can structure a contract, I think really at this stage, most of your analytics stuff is, you know, do I go for it on fourth down or not? You know, it's still pretty much in that area.

I don't think you get that cross-functional support. I know when I talk with a lot of guys that work in the analytics departments, they're asking any questions about contracts because they don't really have a big, big level of input in that area or understanding of it. So they might come to me, just ask me questions about it for maybe something they're going to bring up. But I think that's where the more of the focus has been from the younger GMs, because most of the younger GMs are not coming up through the ranks of the football administration

departments to where you have salary cap guys, you know, really getting those promotions to where they're like, wow, now I can try something, you know, really cool. I think the main differences that you see is when you do- those guys are there? I mean, if you're just doing quick math on it for people that came from that side of it versus the scouting side of it. Like Brandon Bean is one of those guys. Roseman is one of those guys. How big is that number from people who come to the contract side versus the scouting side? It's pretty few. You know, the like Tannenbaum was one of the big, the first big ones to come through there. And then, you know, it looked good when things were going good for the Jets. And then

it was like, Tanenbaum can't do a thing. You know, the Jets are all screwed up. Then he goes to the dolphins and that was that one really didn't work. So, you know, it's been pretty few, you know, that have gone up there. I think the big difference that you see is that I think the younger guys are more open at least to input from the football admin guys from your contract guys. I think they're more open to input on different things that you can do in terms of managing your cap. It might not be an overriding philosophy or anything crazy, but it's just different different types of things that you can try, whereas some of the older school teams, like, you know, when you had Dave Gettleman with the Giants, you know, or the Saints or whatever, a lot of the,

a lot of the stuff that you would see them do is just very traditional, the Steelers, the Bengals, you know, it's just, well, let's negotiate a contract. We're going to throw them a big signing bonus and we'll prorate the money and then we'll deal with the cap headaches when they come and we'll restructure the deals. That's like the real old school way. and there's still a couple of those teams that exist. But I don't think anyone has really come through and really, you know, change the system, rock the boat kind of stuff.

The teams that are most ahead with that, again, is Philadelphia and Cleveland. You know, Cleveland, obviously, a lot of connections to Philadelphia. And if you look at some of the deals that they've done even recently, you can see them following some of the new stuff that Philadelphia has tried to do with, in particular, the way that they can get dead money to hit for these players. that have void years in their contracts. In terms of like different levers that people use, you know, I think the stuff that you look at just in general really just deals with like vesting dates on guarantees.

You know, typically you want to push those as late as possible if your team. San Francisco does a great job with that. They push all their vesting guarantees to April 1st. Other teams are able to get like fifth day in the league year. And then you've got certain teams that do it like right after the superintendals. Super Bowl. Those teams are screwed. There's no way to release those players to get them off a roster. You know, and some of it is really just being, I think, a little bit smart sometimes with the way that you structure the contracts. And I don't know if teams fight on this enough. But I think one of the

worst things that happens to teams right now is they do front load a lot of these contracts. And that's become a big part of a contract negotiation. And it's like a it's a, it's a a very good strategy in a sense to get a player signed. Problem is when those players outperform their contracts, when you get to the back end of those deals, they feel like they're underpaid. This is like what happened with Aaron Donald. So when you did Aaron Donald's numbers, the first three years of his last contract averaged close to $27 million a year. Now, this was supposed to be the benefit time for the Rams because the back end of his contract was going to drop to $18 million a year. Aaron Donald quickly said, wait a minute, I'm still the same player. What do you mean?

I'm making less money. I want to make more money. And it's like, okay, maybe maybe we need to rethink the way that we structure some of these deals to where when a player does make that turn into like a fourth contract year, if they're actually happen to get there, that they're still happy with the amount of money that they're going to be making that season. And I think that's one of the things that teams should actually be looking at a little bit more to do is find ways to do that, even if it means building escalators or something into a contract that a player can earn, just doing something so you don't end up having to renegotiate the entire contract. I want to talk about just option bonuses and roster bonuses a little bit because teams use

them very differently. Who are the teams that really incorporate roster bonuses into the way they do a lot of contracts? And what are the benefits and drawbacks of doing it that way? So I think the biggest drawback on the roster bonus is because your decision point is pretty early in the offseason. You know, usually third or fifth day of the league year. You don't have a lot of time to decide, okay, do I want to convert this money into a signing bonus? Do I not want to convert this money into a signing bonus? What if I want to trade the player? Well, now I'm really in a pinch because I've only got a couple days to trade him.

You know, that's what happened with Atlanta and Matt Ryan. You know, Matt Ryan had this roster bonus hanging over their head. And, you know, they're trying to make a play for Deshawn Watson. They're getting him to extend this roster bonus. And in turn, they're guaranteeing him more salary by doing that. And then finally, it's like, okay, now we didn't get Watson. Our marriage is broke with Matt Ryan. We got to trade him.

We can't push his roster bonus off anymore. Let's just take whatever we can get from, you know, anybody in the league. right now. So I think that's one of the big things with the roster bonuses that really works in the benefit of the players and works against some of the teams. The teams that traditionally have those roster bonuses built in there and usually they're in the second year of a contract, you know, teams like the Packers, teams like the Bengals, Raiders, typically teams that will not fully guarantee a lot of money up front, one of the kind of, I don't know, compromises that the two will make is, you know, they won't guarantee the salary in the second

year, but they'll throw them a roster bonus that's going to be earned on the third day of the league year. So third day of free agency. So it's functionally guaranteed. You know, they're not going to lose that. And so those are the kind of teams that typically use that stuff. And you might see a couple teams of bigger players. They'll use them towards the end of a contract. So that's what I was going to ask you about. So looking at the Mahomes contract and the Josh Allen contract. Yep. Mahomes has roster bonuses starting this year. It was pretty early in the deal. I mean, this year, it's 27.4, 34, 35, 38, 39, and then all the way through. Josh Allen start to kick in in 2025. So like you just said, closer to the end of the contract, what is the thought process behind, especially with the chiefs where you're building it as most of the deal? And then in the Allen one, including it a little bit later, what does that provide you in terms of flexibility? Well, for the team, really not a lot. Okay.

You know, this was I think why you do it essentially. I guess that's my question. I think with the Mahomes one, it was a question of how much money could they actually guarantee him. And when you're going to use these different rolling guarantee structures and, you know, getting money in somebody's pocket, I think these are the compromises of getting a cheaper contract was just finding ways to put money in his pocket earlier on. Gotcha.

Okay. So I think that's really the main reason behind it. You know, it doesn't benefit you. You know, as a team, you'd rather have that money being due in, you know, September, October, November because that gives you, again, that gives you time to decide what you want to do with the player. Even if that money is guaranteed, you know, it gives you time to explore different options, whereas the roster bonuses don't.

But that's the main reason why those are there. It's just a way to functionally guarantee kind of a big. portion of that salary early on. There's no, in terms of converting that stuff, there's no way to maybe extrapolate that or push it a little bit further down the deal if you want to, like with the Allen one. Let's see, the $25 million roster bonus in 2025 with a $14 million based salary, that doesn't give them a way to kind of prorate that over the rest of the life of the deal if they want to?

They can still prorate it. It's just that they would have to prorate it before it's actually due. So they would have to make that decision in March. versus, you know, let's say you need an emergency cap room in August because someone big became available in the trade. It's become a sunk cost because it's already gone. You already paid it.

He already earned it. Gotcha. Okay. This is the type of stuff that I'm glad you're here for. All right. Kent, you want to cue up our first voicemail here? Hey, Robert.

Big fan of the show here and pretty excited you brought Jason on to answer some questions. I have a question about quarterbacks. So if we look back over the past 20 or so years, right, Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers, two pretty good quarterbacks over that time. But one thing kind of stuck out to me about their contracts. So Tom Brady has made a lot less money, you know, per year than Aaron Rogers has. Tom Brady also has six Super Bowls with the Patriots. Here's my question. All these quarterbacks talk about wanting to win a Super Bowl, and a lot of them say that winning a championship.

championship is their number one priority. Why don't quarterbacks take less money a more team-friendly deal in order to increase the chances of their team being better and increase the chances of them winning that Super Bowl? Appreciate it. All right. I have my thoughts about this. I'm sure that your thoughts are much more nuanced and informed than mine. How would you respond to that question?

I don't think there's anything that you could prove that would say by taking less money. it's probably going to improve the chances for the team. The quarterback salaries are all pretty much, you know, kind of grouped together. And even if you took less, which, you know, Brady has obviously done, there's no guarantee that there's going to be talent that's available. You don't see teams for the most part. In fact, I don't think you'll see any team that loses a star player because of their quarterback contract.

They might lose one mid-level player. because of that, they're not going to lose a star player. And when you look at free agency, free agency is just a bunch of kind of B-list talent. It's not what it used to be where you had a bunch of stars going into free agency, where if you had extra money, you could really make a play at doing something. Would it help a little bit? I mean, it might.

But I think if, again, using Brady as an example, I think Brady realized this at the end of his run with the Patriots. He took less money. He really never pushed the envelope at all. Only once, I think, was the highest paid player in the NFL during that period of time. And the Patriots were one of the lowest spenders in the league. They didn't really, they didn't use those savings. They just took it as like, great, we don't have to pay Tom.

And we're still going to do the same with the rest of our roster. And I think that's probably how most teams would behave because they look at free agency. And most of the time, it's just like a void outside of a couple of players. is just like a black hole where, you know, you throw money into it. And basically it just kind of vanishes for, for most of the teams with those players. So I think that's a big reason why that doesn't work out, you know, so much. And Rogers, you know, Rogers actually took a pretty undermarket contracts, his first two times. He's made up for it with his last little bits of stuff that he's done now with his latest deal after

threatening retirement, wanting to be traded and all that other stuff. But I think that's really the big reason why they don't take less. And quite frankly, you know, with the quarterback salaries group so close together, you know, guys like Mahomes and Allen, you know, they become bargains at the prices they're at because they're a lot better than Dak Prescott. You know, I like Dak, but they're a lot better than, than Dak Prescott is. And they basically make around the same salary as someone like that. And that's just the way the quarterback contracts run these days. So in a sense, they are taking less relative to it. It's just that nobody pushes the issue of your quarterback. You know, somebody was asking me about this the other day. And I think they were

asking me about the Chargers quarterback, Justin Herbert, like, what would it take for you to sign an extension? $60 million a year. Like you shouldn't be signing within the market. it. And when you work the numbers out with the franchise tags, you're going to make a killing if you go tag to tag to tag. All you have to do is get past that first tag. It is ridiculous. And, you know, that's what I would do. You know, force them to be creative with the rest of the roster instead of me giving them a discount so they can just say, great, we've got a discount and still probably do the same stuff with the roster anyway. Our listener actually mentioned Justin Herbert at the end of his question. We cut it off a little bit early just thinking about what he would do. It's, you know, what's best for the team in the future and all that. I also think that it's important to take into account. There are a lot of different moving parts as part of this ecosystem, right? The agent is not incentivized to take any sort of discount. The agent is, that's his job, is to get the best deal possible.

So even if you're not leveraging every single bit of what you can do and how much you're worth, which most quarterbacks don't do, like you just alluded to, most quarterbacks aren't squeezing every cent out of these deals. They are taking less than they're probably worth as part of this. But I also think that it's in the best case of just players in general and agents in general for these quarterbacks to push as hard as they can because a quarterback like the first Kirk Cousins deal, which is all guaranteed, even though it wasn't a sea change with the league. I think ultimately that's good. I think that's good for future players getting paid. I think it's good for the ways that contracts are thought about. So I think it's important for quarterbacks, especially to kind of push some of this stuff forward in order to have teams budge on the way they do some business every once in a while. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I've been surprised that when you see the way things have worked out for Cousins. And Cousins is a decent quarterback. He's made a ton of money, all pretty much guaranteed over the last couple of years. He's going to continue to make it next year. And then we'll see what happens after that. But I'm very surprised that more people haven't looked at that and said to themselves, okay, look at what happened here with him. What would happen to Mahon?

if he did that, you know, instead of signing a 10-year contract extension, which was insane. And pissed a lot of people off, by the way. Oh, yeah, that was, that was one. When that one got signed and I was getting texts like, what in the world is going on here? I'm like, I have no idea. I'm like a 12-year contract, you know, 10-year extension. And then, you know, Schaefter's put now, oh, you think it's tied to the cap and it's all guaranteed. And it's like, no, it's none of those things.

I have no idea what they were thinking there. It was such a step back for players in the NFL to approach it that way. But it is what it is. And that's exactly how I would frame it. Those guys make it. That step back is other people don't want that. If you're going to drive this forward and players are going to get better, safer deals that are more in line with what they deserve, then you can't have those steps back. I mean, when you're going in, if you were the next quarterback in line after that Mahomes extension gets.

negotiated, you now have to come to the table and pretend it didn't happen, which is really difficult. It's such a knock against the direction that things should be pushing when something like that happens. And that's why when it comes to this stuff, the idea of even quarterbacks taking any sort of discount, I'm like, no, it's not worth taking a discount. The benefits you're going to get from it are not worth how it affects the overall ecosystem of players in the NFL getting paid. Yeah, I think, you know, if you did see quarterbacks really force the issue to where the franchise tag was only going to be used for quarterbacks for the most part. You would get a lot more fun in free agency. You would see a lot more competition around the league because the franchise tag wouldn't be a block for all these other guys that forces everybody into early extensions. And I really think that there would be a big domino effect if all the quarterbacks decided to kind of put their foot down and really want to push that gas pedal forward on the amount of money they made. But that hasn't happened at all. probably is not going to happen anytime soon.

A couple quick ones here from Jeremiah Sorensen from Copenhagen. First one, how do players on IR count against the cap? 100%, 50%. What if a player returns from IR? I figure you can knock this out pretty fast. Yeah. So on injured reserve, they basically count at the same exact salary unless they have what's called a split.

And that's really only for like bottom of the, bottom of the roster kind of players and young rookies. their salary would drop down from like 705 this year, 705,000 to maybe 430,000. And then when they, when they jump back up, they'll pro rate the difference for the rest of this season. Second one from him,

how does standard practice squad players count against the cap? What if a player is promoted for, say, one game? Sure. So they're paid a weekly salary. I think it works out for rookies this year is going to be just under 200,000. I think veterans are between like 240, and 330 or 300,000 for the year.

If they get promoted for a game, they'll be paid at the rate for their level of experience, whatever the minimum level of rate of experiences for that one week. So, you know, for a rookie, that means they'd go from a salary of like $12,000 for the week to $40,000. And that all counts on the cap. Not bad. No. You know, so the cap number of jump by like 30 grand or so.

It's all those little tiny moments where a guy gets promoted for one game. And I'm sure to us, it doesn't really mean much. But that $30,000 raise for one week is pretty good for somebody. You know, for those guys who don't get to don't get to play that often. And this might be their only season even in the league. That's pretty good. And, you know, if you're a team that has cap troubles like the Giants did last year, you might be in a position where you can't even do that.

You've got to rush to create cap room to bring some of those guys up for a week. All right. Next one here from Justin Kelly. So I had a question about a type of free agent tender that was used on a couple of veteran in past rushers this off season, but doesn't seem to be employed by teams all that much. Sometime after the draft, the Chiefs plays something called the UFA tender on Melvin Ingram, and the Ravens did the same thing for Justin Houston. I wasn't sure what this tender meant, as Ingram later ended up signing with the Dolphins,

and it doesn't seem like the Chiefs are getting any compensation back. From what I can tell, the last time the tender was used on a player was Marcus Gold in a couple of years ago. My question is, what does this tender mean for players and the teams placing it on them, and why is it used so infrequently? So basically the UFA tender is hardly, hardly, hardly ever used. But basically what the league has is a signing period for free agents. If a player hasn't signed a contract at that point in time, his prior team can tender him a one-year contract that's 120% of his lay. I forget exactly what percentage it is of his prior contract year.

And they can offer him a one-year deal. And really all it does is it lets them. maintain their rights in the compensatory process if he signs with another team. And then basically once, you know, July or August hits, they can't really force him to play on it, but they can kind of hold the rights on him on that contract. And, you know, it could be a cheap way in some cases to get somebody to stick on the team. The reason to choose so infrequently is that most players when their contract, expire, A, you don't want them back or B, their salaries were too high to bring them back at that

number. So you're not going to give them a raise. If you were going to give them a raise, you would have tagged them or you would have extended them. In the case of Houston and Ingram, their numbers were very low. So that was why the teams threw those tenders on there just to hold those rights in the event that those players wanted to come back. It's not a bad idea, especially with a veteran pass rusher like that, where you're probably in the market for an upgrade if you could find one. let's say free agency in the draft doesn't go the way you want it to and you're sitting there in June and July, maybe it's a lever that you actually want to pull. Yeah, it's not a bad thing to do when you,

when you have those kind of players and the salaries, not that much because you're basically saying, you've been out there as a free agent, you couldn't find a deal. We're giving you a deal that's a little bit better than what you got last year. Ingrams was a little different. That one was a little bit tricky. He actually would have gotten a worse deal than he had last year because the Steelers used void years in that contract. So that was actually negative for him. But for the other ones, yeah, you know, it makes sense.

You can come to an agreement pretty quick if the guy wants to keep playing. All right. Next one here from Jack. He says, I was wondering if Jason's noticed any trends in the last five years with how teams have changed their allocations of cap space throughout the roster. An example would be the running back position has declined in market value for a while. No need to rehash that. But I was wondering if there were less obvious shifts that can indicate how and why the league

has changed since 2017 or so. This can be referred to parameter, position, age, starting experience, whatever. Yeah. So, I mean, this year, obviously there's been a shift in the salaries going to wide receivers. You're seeing more teams invest in that position. And seeing certain teams say, you know, they're not going to invest in that position. The other position where I think you've seen a big jump has been guards. I think the guard salaries have gone up a lot in the last couple of years.

They had gone through a period where their salaries had gone up, you know, in the 2008 through like 2010. 10 and then that kind of crashed and burned. And that's obviously built its way back up again with the salaries that are out there. I think those are the two positions where I've seen kind of the biggest changes. You know, the other stuff is still, you know, a lot of, you know, kind of hit or miss as to whether teams want to really go crazy at certain positions. I don't know if we've seen, you know, seeing that evidence that teams want to pay up, you know, even for edge rushers. You know, you'll see certain teams that do it.

And then other teams kind of go with the philosophy of, well, we're not going to pay up for guys. We're just going to keep drafting guys. And we're going to try to go, you know, lower costs at that position. So I don't think there's really been a big change with the other ones. But those two positions, I think there's been a real big push for, more money overall of those positions. Has there been a position or two that you feel like has stagnated in its overall growth and trajectory that doesn't really make sense to you?

Like the corner market and the fact that it was relatively flat for a little while, that was like, man, we're really not valuing that position as much as we're valuing pass rushers and just again, the overall trajectory of the line doesn't seem to be the same. I'm wondering if you feel there's a disconnect with anything. So I think with the corners, I think that the issue that teams have had, which I think kind of makes sense is that when you have like the one great corner, you know, and I can, you know, as being a Jets fan, I can attest to this with Dorel Rivas, you know, and you go back to when they, they got beat up by the Colts in the playoffs. You had Dorel Rivas that was covered in the top

receiver. Okay, he's got him covered like a glove. Well, now Peyton Manning is just going to find receiver two, three, and four who are being covered by Lido Shepard and whoever else, and he's just going to destroy you. And I think. one of the things that teams have a hard time coming to grips with is, is it worthwhile to pay one guy $20 million and then just have a bunch of other guys running around on the field? Or do you end up having to invest super heavy in the position? So I think that's actually depressed the top of the market because I think teams are, I think more and more teams are kind of under the assumption that the number one corner doesn't really exist

in the league with the way that everything is played, that you kind of need a more functional group of players, which maybe you can find by signing a couple of guys in that 10 to 13 million dollar year range, then going 20 and, you know, another guy at three million bucks and another guy on a rookie contract. So I think that's been one of the issues kind of at that position. A tight end is a position that hasn't been able to shake out at all. Yeah. You know, all these guys who have put up receiver numbers in the past, whether it's dating back to Jimmy Graham, you know, George Kittled two years ago,

I think it was when he did his extension. They just can't push the market far enough to make any kind of significant change. And then you get all these crazy things like in Joku making almost the same amount of money because there's nowhere to go because you have a seal. on the position and everybody else is just grouped together. And so everybody ends up making about the same amount of money, even though they're far, far, far, far less productive players. The Kyle Pitts conversation that we're inevitably going to have four years from now is going to be a fun one. Yep, absolutely. And the corner thing, I mean, that's exactly how what the numbers tell

us, you know, the idea of it being a weak link system. You don't want one really, really good player and then a bunch of really bad players. The best reason example to me is what the Bengals did. you have the Trey Wayne's contract that's a disaster, and then the next year, instead of doing that, you're going to pay two guys $8 million and $7 million combined. And that's just a better way to solve the position. So I think that makes total sense. And there is not enough stickiness at that position year to year typically.

Very rarely do we see the same guy be the best player at his position at corner year after year. Maybe there's one or two of those players that pull that off. But it's not as consistent as something like edge rusher where you're going to get a guy that's probably going to be at the top of his peer group for five seasons. So a number one corner's value is not what it would be with the number one edge rusher and the consistency and reliability at that position just isn't there. So I think there's a lot of different factors. Yeah.

And I think that consistency is a really good point too because when you can get a couple of good players, you know, in that example that you used, you are kind of lessening that risk. Your odds are one of the guys is going to have an offseason, but one might have a good season. If all your money is invested in one guy, if he has a bad year, you're really screwed up. You know, because you don't have someone on the back end to help you out. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of that that plays a role into that. You know, when we talk about the, you know, where I'd like to see more analytics on the contract end of it, you know, those are really perfect areas for where you can kind of fool around with some of that stuff.

All right. A couple more here. Joseph Cox says, I'm a big Bill's fan. And this year, it's interesting how many contracts have. have teaser cap hits that will balloon next year. Josh Allen, von Miller, Malano, Mitch Morris, Micahide. With the Chiefs reloading, it makes sense to push this year. But curious how front offices do long-term planning against the cap. The bills have some key cogs that need to be resigned, Oliver Edmonds, Knox, Gabe Davis. Are they just hoping cap raises bail

them out? St. St. Style kicking the can, eventual reload year. What do you think about the bill situation here? I think the bills are fine. They did a couple things this year that I was a little surprised with the Miller contract being a big one. It's a fascinating thing. I think it's such a just one of those moments where you're like, know what, fuck it. Like, this is it.

Well, that's what it was. It was, we were so close the last two years. And let's be honest, they should have won last year. I mean, they should have beaten the chiefs.

They were the best team. They were the best team. You know, it is what it is. And so I think they just looked at this. It's like, all right, forget it.

Let's just go all out, do whatever we got to do to, to win this. But the way that their contracts are structured, they do a phenomenal job with almost everything they do. So I wouldn't look at them and worry about that stuff. I do think there are a lot of teams themselves included where they are all planning for a big jump to happen in 2024 with the salary cap. I think that's pretty much a given.

But I don't think it's like they're desperately reliant on it. I think they're smart enough and they'll be fine. And when it comes to long term planning, you know, there's so much turnover with rosters nowadays. I think most of your long term planning is like two-year windows. I don't even think it's three-year windows anymore. Because that used to be the standard, right? The teams would plan essentially three years in advance when they were looking at some of this stuff. Yeah, that's what it used to be.

And I think nowadays it's mainly just two. I think it's just a two-year window. And, you know, you see what you can do with those two years. And your main goal is to just not put yourself in the Falcon Bears position when you get to year three to where, you know, you're really going to have a problem. You say that the bills are so good at everything they do. are some of the hallmarks of just the way they operate that is somebody who studies this stuff all the time you appreciate you know they do stuff nobody else does it's they're the players that they sign in free agency tend to work out i i don't know what makes them different when it comes to their scouting they find

some of the best values i feel like in their system um you know they negotiate really good contracts that most of the players they're not willing there i mean they are willing to go in there and when a players underperforming. They go in and they look for pay cut, you know, their center. They did that with. And then when he plays better again, they're willing to come back to the table and say, okay, let's do an extension and, you know, we'll do a raise. And I think they're just really good in that regard.

I think they're proactive with a lot of their contract extensions. I think they're just really smart when it comes to that stuff. But their ability to go into free agency has really, it's been shocking. It's a total outwire. It's a total outwire. When you talk about those teams that were a disaster with the salary cap, the bills were an epic colossal just screw up when these guys took over the job. And when they did that job that first year and the second year, I'm like, these guys should

be the, you know, the executives of the year because you could see what they're trying to work through and how they're trying to work through it. And not only did they work through that, they actually became incredibly successful as an organization coming out of it. And most teams that go into those salary cap funks where, you know, they're taking, I don't know, the bills have maybe close to 70 million in dead money that one year. That 2018 year, it was right around there. Yeah.

It was like it was more than 60. Yeah. When you go into those funks, usually you put yourself on like a complete, complete, complete, complete rebuilding slide that's going to take you two, three years to climb out of. They didn't have any problem with it. They just hit everywhere in free agency to be functional. while they tried to work around Josh Allen, and then eventually he developed into a terrific player, and away you go. So, you know, I love almost everything they do. Not the Von Miller thing,

but everything else they do, I have pretty much love with them. I appreciate that, though. It's just a level of self-awareness. You're like, you know what? Why not? Like, this is our chance to do it. Like, we might as well go for it. I understand there's going to be something to pay down the road, but I understand the mindset as to how that happens. So I'm wondering, because we talked about this in our rebuilding show that we did a couple weeks ago. Do you think there's value and when you're in that sort of situation just saying, we're going to take it in the teeth one year? Like one year, we're just going to have to endure this heap of shit. And if we get out from under it, then we have smooth sailing because I do think that it feels like from an outsider's

perspective, my novice brain, there is some value in seeing it that way. So I think there's value in it if what you're getting out of would have really compromised you in the future. but for the most part, if you look at it historically, there hasn't been a correlation with these teams that have, you know, just embrace the tanking, so to speak, you know,

the dolphins, the one year when they were just trading everyone away, took on all that dead money, said, we're hitting the reset switch. Dolphins haven't been good. Yeah. You know,

and most of the time, the teams that do that, you know, when the Raiders had to do it, it's not like the Raiders rebounded after year. You know, the Raiders made, I think,

and then didn't make it again until this past year. So I think, I don't think it's like a cure-all, but I think when you have a situation where you're really going to compromise yourself in the future, you know, the bears would be an example of that if they kept someone like a Khalil Mack. You know, I think in that case, yeah, it's better to go scorched earth and just say, all right, it's time to start over. But I think if you can work your way through some of these things,

I think there's probably value to trying to, you know, work your way through it, at least to some extent, you know, to try to be somewhat competitive. That's why what the bills did was so interesting, though, because the year before they did that, they went out and signed those Micah Hyde and Jordan Poirer deals where it feels like they were trying to split the difference where we want to be a little bit competitive and get the right guys in here and spend a little bit of money, but also tear it down in this ridiculous way outside of that. It's really, really difficult to pull off that juggling act, but that's exactly why they've been so good at this. Yeah, it's really cool. You know, when you go back and you look at that, that's exactly the kind of players they brought in, whether that's supposed to change a culture, you know, bring new voices in the locker room, you know, find guys that are happy to be getting starting jobs and, you know, getting a chance to really play at a higher level and more opportunities. It just, everything has worked for him.

If you had to characterize one or two teams that you think just does the best work at this stuff, just consistently has made the right bets, gives themselves the right amount of flexibility. What is that group of teams to you? So, well, Buffalo is definitely one of them. You know, I think, I think big picture, I think Buffalo is the best team in the league, just best front office in the league when you take all that into account. When you get into just the contract aspect of stuff, you know, I love what Philadelphia does. which probably surprises some people only because they do a lot of void years and a lot of restructures and a lot of things like that. But I like the way that they approach things. I think that they're pretty good with that.

I'm hit or miss on the 49ers. There's times when I really love what the 49ers do and then there's times where it just kind of scratch my head and say, I'm not sure what happened there. I think Lynch got too involved with the negotiation and it ended up going sideways. You know, but those are those are the kind of the teams, I think, that stand out most of the time with, you know, with pretty much everything that they do. The reason I asked you that question is because I thought that you were going to say the bills and the Eagles. And that brings us back to the conversation we had before about how many teams have general managers that come from the football administration or contract side of things. And those are two of those teams. Yeah, there you go.

And, I mean, with the Niners, obviously, I mean, Paragma, right, though, is their president of, I think he's the vice president of football operations there. He's been there forever. So they have somebody that has a ton of say in the way their contracts operate, that even that person isn't the general manager. Yeah, they're a team that invests a lot in that side. You know, him, Brian Hampton, who's there. You know, they have a lot of people in that organization that I think do a really good job with a lot of the contract stuff. Just a couple questionable ones here and there. But, you know, I think overall. I think that's more about the coach, you know, loving a running back every once in a while.

I think that's what happens. You know, when I see Jerich McKinnon get signed for $7.5 million, I'm like, wait, who? The 49ers did that? What? I thought they would have paid up a million. Where did that come from? I also think it's really interesting kind of going back to what you were saying about

the new group of GMs not necessarily revamping the way that we do this. If you look at the contract negotiation folks and the people in charge of that side on some of these teams, a lot of that, the guy is still there through multiple general managers, right? The financial side of this is more about how the teams themselves operate as organizations than how the front office necessarily wants to operate. The one that is on my mind right now, like Rob Brzezinski is still there in Minnesota. Like, even though they have a new general manager and we think of him as this young,

progressive guy, the person who has done the contracts and handled the money on that team for a really long time is still there. Like Russ Ball got there in 2008 with the Packers. I mean, he's seen multiple general managers. So I think it's important to remember that, that a lot of the time the contract side of this is like the establishment of the organization more than this new age general manager presence that we want to lump it on to. Yeah, more often than not, that's definitely the case.

And even if it's not someone that is necessarily been with that organization, a lot of times it ends up being someone that's coming over for the management. council that maybe has a ton of experience in the NFL or someone who has done this job for a long time was out of it and is now kind of back in the fold again. So there's not really a, unless the general manager is going to step out of his lane to be like, yeah, I want to do something different and put a new stamp on it. A lot of times it's, you know, it just kind of ends up business as usual. Awesome. I really, really appreciate you doing this. I know I learned a ton over the course of this conversation. I'm sure that our listeners did the same. Thank you very much for the time. Let people know

where they can learn a ton more about contracts and the stuff that you guys are doing. You can just check it out at over the cap.com and you can see, I don't have the time these days to post a lot of stuff. We do a podcast every, every way, semi-weekly. I won't say every week. Semiweekly, we'll get some time to do podcast, put that stuff together. You can follow me on Twitter at Jason underscore OTC. I do a lot of Q&A or try to do some Q&As on there from time to time. Anyways, check out my book, crunching numbers that I did with Vijay and Adirajan. It's about the last CBA, but most of this stuff still holds true. So if you want to get a little bit better understanding of the fundamentals of the salary cap and all that stuff, you can check it out. It is on my shelf. I refer to it all the time. And over the cap is literally one of the only sites I visit every single day of my life.

So if you guys are looking for some really good resources, Jason provides a ton of them. Thank you very much again for the time, my friend. Always get to chat with you. I'm looking forward to the next time. All right, guys. That's all we got. Thank you again for the questions. Really, really enjoyed this conversation.

We will be back on Wednesday with me, Nate, and Lindsay. We're going to do the Hall very good. It's that time of the year. I'm going to talk about some guys that we just love watching that maybe aren't Hall of Fame caliber players, but guys, we still believe deserve some recognition. So please come check that out on Wednesday. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. I'd really appreciate that.

Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. tons of great stuff still flowing your way during the off season. So if you do not have a subscription, please collect that. We'll be back on Wednesday. Until then, appreciate the time. Talk to you guys soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.