Approach Of The Extension “Deadline”

The Eagles currently have $5.83 million in cap space and there is a significant salary cap deadline approaching. After 4 pm on the Monday of the 10th week of the season (a week from today), any increase in a player’s salary will be treated as a signing bonus for cap purposes. Therefore, if teams have extra cap room available and wish to use it up, their best chance is to do so in the next week.

Now, this doesn’t preclude extensions after next Monday, it just means that it is harder to have a large increase in the 2009 cap value of the deal. To me, that means that the Eagles won’t have a lot of urgency associated with this deadline, since $5.83 million can be used up with surprising ease with signing bonuses on extensions and with injury replacements.

Set all that aside though. At some point, we should use up that extra cap space, and use it on extensions, and take as a given that there could be a different structure on that extension if it takes place after next Monday. So let’s identify who the likely extension candidates are.

In order to be a realistic candidate for an extension, let’s first eliminate some guys. First, guys who have deals which run through 2012 or longer are probably not candidates (sorry, Sheldon). Second, guys who are in their first or second years are not allowed to be extended under the current CBA (so no, by rule DeSean Jackson cannot be extended until next March). Third, players whose contracts were renegotiated in the last 12 months are probably not candidates, so no McNabb, and probably no Sean Jones (who took a pay cut prior to the season).

Another group that should be eliminated is the group of guys whose contracts expire at the end of the 2009 season and will have four or five years of experience. These guys will likely be unrestricted free agents if there is a new deal, but will be restricted free agents if we enter the Uncapped Year under the current CBA. Think about a guy like Winston Justice. If the CBA is extended, he is probably looking at a much bigger market as an unrestricted free agent than if he is tendered and a team has to pay a second round draft pick to get him. Thus, Justice probably will wait until February or March to see what progress is made before even considering an extension – and by then, the books are closed on the 2009 cap. It is possible these guys will jump early, but it doesn’t seem like it is in their best interests if there is any chance of an extension – or in the team’s best interest if there is any chance of entering the Uncapped Year. There just isn’t a lot of common ground.

Guys whose deals expire after the 2010 season, or even after the 2011 season, are a different story. Those guys will probably enter a capped environment, and even if the owners “win”, the cap won’t go down all that much in reality (the players and owners are really talking about moving the cap up or down 2-3%).

Guys who will be restricted free agents regardless of the CBA status – i.e. players who will have 3 years of NFL experience – will also be candidates for similar reasons.

Finally, guys who won’t face much difference in their market value regardless of whether they are restricted or unrestricted – and who KNOW that is going to be the case – are definite candidates as well.

Therefore, my most likely extension candidates are as follows (in alphabetical order):

Jason Babin: First, let’s recall that Babin was cut and immediately resigned in the preseason. This was done to allow the team to extend him without penalty during the season. So that suggests an extension is in the team’s mind. Further, his play in the first half of the season has warranted some consideration of an extension. We’re not talking huge money, but something south of what it cost to sign Juqua Parker or Chris Clemons.

Broderick Bunkley: His deal runs through 2011, but he is a core player, and getting some cost certainty on him now would be a typical Eagles move.

Brent Celek: His deal runs through 2010, and he is clearly a starting TE in this league. Maybe not a perennial Pro Bowl-type player, but not a backup either. I could see the team and Celek reaching a good deal.

Akeem Jordan: He will be a RFA after the season and will need to be tendered at a second-round level or higher. He has played better as the season has gone on, and has always been a very good special teams player. The question will be whether the team and Jordan agree on his value. This could be a Gaither-like situation in the end, where the team sees Jordan as Ike Reese, and he sees himself as Shawn Barber. But this is an avenue worth exploring.

Sav Rocca: He is having a pretty good year overall, probably better than the consensus would think. He is getting up there in age, and is a strange punter in some respects – recall that Ted Daisher was pretty skeptical of him when he arrived. He doesn’t seem like someone who would break the bank, and because the team would probably have to tender him at the minimum tender level ($1.01 million) which would merely give them the right of first refusal, and yet still seems high for Rocca, there is some space here to work on a low-cost extension to keep the punter in place.

Leonard Weaver: Here is a guy who knows that he won’t get much as an unrestricted free agent because after being a borderline Pro Bowl player last year, he got little interest as an unrestricted free agent. In fact, he may be worth more as a restricted free agent, because the Eagles would have to tender him at 110% of this year’s salary to restrict his rights. There should be room to deal.
  
Now, it could be that none of those guys get deals, and you can come up with your own priority list, but I think that is the short list of guys that Joe Banner should be thinking hard about. As an aside, Kevin Kolb is the wild card here, but I don't see how you can upset the McNabb apple cart now. That said, his extension got a lot bigger earlier with his play this year. Stewart Bradley's injury took him off the table, I think, or else he'd be high on the priority list. Also, there are other guys I left off (Victor Abiamiri, for example) who I don’t think have played well enough to merit consideration.

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The following question has come up quite a bit recently: if 2010 is an uncapped year, why can’t the Eagles sign players to huge cap numbers in 2010 and tiny ones thereafter? Thus, they’d have cheap players once the cap comes back once there is a new CBA.

The answer is that they can … but it is limited significantly. There is a rule that says that a player’s salary (assume this means cap hit) cannot fall by more than 50% from the first year of a deal to the second. So if you sign a player to a 5 year deal, the most you can have is 1/3 of the total value of the deal in the first year, and 1/6 each year thereafter. A 5 year, $30 million deal would have a $10 million cap hit in year 1, and $5 million cap hits thereafter (assuming a rational player wouldn’t sign a deal where his pay declines steadily over time). Contrast this with a level hit of $6 million a year, and you are talking about saving $1 million a year after the Uncapped Year hit.

Does that help? A little, but it isn’t anything to get too excited about.