Using Up The Remaining Cap Room

Kudos to bsencore for bringing this nugget from Football Outsiders to our attention:

With Joey Porter in mind, I thought that perhaps the Eagles did not have enough cap room to take on the acceleration associated with terminating Westbrook in 2009. However, as I found out, the Eagles have $4.2 million in cap room, and by terminating Westbrook, would have incurred $1.5 million in acceleration. So the Eagles clearly could have made the termination effective on Tuesday, but it appears that the Eagles are looking to use that $4.2 million in cap room for other purposes. Perhaps the Eagles are looking to use that cap space to release other players in 2009 or simply would prefer to take on Westbrook’s dead money in 2010 rather than 2009.

A few things. First, what the heck, Sam, I thought you said the Eagles used up all of their cap room! Well, yes, they had as of the end of the year. But the thing was that for structuring purposes, a few players had LTBEs that were not achieved in their contracts. Michael Vick, for example, had a $2.26 million incentive that wasn't reached. Those dollars weren't added back to the cap until the season was over, so the Eagles got extra some cap room after the fact.

Second, why aren't they using up the cap room? Well, they still can. But using up Brian Westbrook's 2010 proration isn't the best way to do that. As I mentioned a few months ago, there is some question about what will happen to the prorations for players cut in an uncapped year. As I understand it, it is possible that players' dead money will stay in place. So if a guy had prorations running out to 2014, once the cap is in place, that dead money would remain if the guy were cut in 2010.

However, there is no question or ambiguity about what would happen if the guy were cut (or traded) prior to the 2010 league year. The prorations from 2011 and on would hit the 2009 cap immediately. That would be a way to roll cap space from 2009 to 2011 and beyond, if you think about it ... and I am sure the Eagles have.

So if you were going to cut a guy with that kind of cap hit, you'd do it before March 5.

Who fits that description? Three guys in particular:

• Kevin Curtis:  $1 million of prorations from 2010-2012
• Chris Clemons: $2.4 million of prorations from 2010-2012
• Reggie Brown: $3.5 million of prorations from 2010-2012

and let me throw in a fourth for fun:

• Joselio Hanson: $1.82 million of prorations from 2010-2013

Note that Halsell reported a $4.2 million cap space figure, so one could not cut Brown and any of the other guys together, but some combination of the other three is possible.

Another question: could this space be used for an extension? Maybe. For example, you could guarantee a $4 million salary for, say, Jason Avant or Leonard Weaver in 2010, and that would count against 2009 in full, I believe. But that doesn't seem like a probable or even helpful route, given how likely the uncapped year seems right now.

Obviously, this is all sheer speculation. But it seems like speculation that is consistent with how the Eagles operate.

How Much Do We Have To Spend?

That's the key question as we head into free agency. It used to be easier to answer that question, because we could just calculate the room under the salary cap, and we all had a sense of how much that could buy.

In an uncapped world, the answer is very different. We have to stop thinking about cap as a budgetary guide and instead think about cash. Over at the EaglesCap blog, BJ has gone though the effort of calculating what the Eagles spent on a cash basis in prior years. His results (in $ millions) for the last three years:

 

What will the team budget be for this year? These goal posts should serve as a useful guide.

Now, given the budget, how much cash are we already on the hook for? I have made some preliminary estimates of that number. I had to make a number of assumptions, including tenders for the restricted free agents (except Ellis Hobbs, who I assumed would be non-tendered) and made some guesses on escalators in some guys' contracts. My biggest guess, though, was Jeremy Maclin. His contract details were never released, at least that I saw. (If anyone has them, let me know.) I assumed that he has a $5.5 million cash payment of some sort next year, an option bonus of some sort. Could be off on that though by $3 million or so in either direction. Really tricky to guess without better data.

Anyway, let's start off with the 10 biggest cash commitments heading into 2010:

 

These guys represent a substantial portion of the cash commitments to the whole team. Looking at the top 51 salaries (a good off season rule of thumb for figuring out what will wind up being paid to the final 53-man roster, and admittedly based on cap rules), the Eagles have a lot of cash committed overall, nearly $115 million. In fact, the team is already pegged to spend nearly as much cash as it has on average in the last three years, and that's before we even sign a single draft pick or free agent ... or star wide receiver:

 

Now, all that said, there is a lot of cash tied up in guys who are rumored to be on the list to be cut or traded, or "dealt with" in some way during the off season. And given the commitment level, you can see why the Eagles would be looking to trim some less productive weight:

 

So how much do the Eagles have to spend? Depends on what they do with these guys listed above. But as you can see, the budget changes dramatically when you start removing these guys.

By the way, I included Clemons and Brown because they draw the ire of fans. But from a cash perspective, they really aren't that big a deal, keeping in mind that $635K is the minimum for players of their experience. It is certainly worth keeping them around until somebody takes their job, as opposed to proactively cutting them (trades, of course, are a different story, if one were to present itself).

For the more expensive guys, like Curtis and Howard, that decision becomes less clear. They make enough that an injury could put you on the hook for a lot of money for a guy for whom you don't have high expectations. And they each are due $1 million roster bonuses, so decisions could come soon on those two.

And for the other five guys ... well, why should the 2010 off season be any less interesting than 2009? But hopefully it is clear why difficult decisions will have to be made on all nine guys listed above.

The Gulf Between The NFL And The NFLPA

There was an outstanding article in the National Football Post today by Robert Boland about the CBA situation. His general point is that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the rhetoric about the NFL’s stance that the cap has to be cut 18% … that is just the initial offer.

It also obscures a bit of reality: there was a special adjustment that boosted the cap from $123 million up to $128 million this year. Backing out that one-time adjustment alone “slashes” the cap by 4%. Now, that adjustment reflects the shortfall of the cash payout that that owners had agreed to make to players during this CBA but haven’t, so it matters to the players on a theoretical level, but the truth is, that money isn’t going to ever be paid, so it is sort of crying over spilt milk to think of this as a concession.

More importantly, Boland points this out:

But any good negotiator knows where to look for helpful benchmarks or slack in an opponent’s proposal. An effective benchmark here is likely not rolling all the way back to 2006 numbers but limiting big jumps in salary growth in future years, and perhaps both sides looking heroic by taking a 10-percent cut. That would put player salaries at $115 million per team, just about the 2008 number. Owners would get more than $400 million back from their current spending, surely enough to ease margin pressure.

Let me look at his point a bit differently. The following graph [click for full size] shows how teams actually spent in 2008 (I don’t have 2009 numbers yet, or I would use those):

 
Let me explain the data first. Team salaries, from here, represents the actual cap (not cash) spent on players in that season excluding phony LTBE incentives and other roll over amounts. So it represents “true” cap spending in a year.

The average team salary in 2008 was $114.5 million. Setting the cap at that level in 2008 would only have constrained 15 of the 32 teams.

Now let’s compare that to what really was in place in 2008. The nominal salary cap was $116.7 million. However, because so many teams had rolled over LTBE money from 2007 to 2008, the average adjusted cap number for teams was $121.6 million. So teams didn’t have to be “cap efficient” in 2008 because they had plenty of space.

Remember way back in 2005, before the new CBA went into effect? Teams would minimize cap space paid in contracts today to be able to squeeze contracts under their cap. Teams in 2008 were doing the opposite. Many deals took bigger cap hits today than they needed to and left more cap space in the future. Deals are relatively more front-loaded from a cap perspective. That doesn’t change their cash values at all, it just changes how they are accounted for.

My point is that a $114.5 million cap probably would not have reduced team spending in cash terms by much at all, even for the 15 teams with some constraints. Those teams would have just been a little more creative with their accounting. So NFL teams could have reduced their cap from an effective $121.6 million to $114.5 million, or a 6% reduction*, and players would have been relatively indifferent.

Combined with the earlier 4% adjustment that I described, and that suggests that players could agree to a 10% drop in the cap from 2009 and their actual cash payouts wouldn’t be changed.

Now, obviously there is more involved than that, but keep those general guidelines in mind when listening to stories about the huge gap in the numbers between the two sides. The players could agree to what appears to be a huge concession … and not be giving up anything that would affect their bottom line.

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* Implicit assumption: the $5 million extra cap space from roll overs would effectively remain in place. I know the Last Capped Year rules wiped out LTBE roll overs, but the Eagles effectively got around this in the McNabb and Vick contracts, for example, by moving 2010 cash payments into the 2009 cap. Other teams merely front loaded contracts to have relatively large 2009 cap hits. It is hard to know exactly what impact all this will have until we have more data on the 2009 and 2010 seasons, but I think the $5 milion assumption isn't too unreasonable.

Revenue Sharing, Dead Money And Rookie Deals

There have been some NFL business issues cropping up that I wanted to discuss. For some, this will be dry, but for those interested, here are my thoughts on recent CBA developments, cutting players in the Uncapped Year and contracts for players in the 2010 draft.

League To End Supplemental Revenue Sharing

There has been coverage of the league deciding to end supplemental revenue sharing in 2010. Andrew Brandt has discussions of it here and here, and Mike Florio discusses it here. Both men’s views are worth reading.

Here is my take on what has happened, and what it means:

First, we are talking about supplemental revenue sharing (“SRS”), not all revenue sharing by the teams. This was the additional shared revenues implemented in connection with the 2006 labor agreement, and is on things like luxury boxes and other revenue that was previously unshared among teams, and was creating an increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots. It was a major issue at the time, so much so that the league was more focused on getting the SRS right than getting the CBA right. SRS constitutes between $100 million and $200 million per year that is transferred from high revenue teams to low revenue teams.

Second, understand that there is a cash accounting vs. accrual accounting concept at play here. Revenue sharing dollars are accrued during one season (i.e., counted as income for accounting purposes, even though cash isn't actually received) and then paid in cash the next. For example, revenue accrued in 2008 leads to a cash payment in 2009. So when the league says it isn’t going to pay 2010 SRS payments, it means it won’t be cutting a check in 2011.

The NFL and NFLPA are at odds on whether this is really what the CBA requires. The language at issue is this (Article XXIV, Section 11)

Revenue Sharing: For each season during the term of this Agreement, there shall be a program of revenue or cost sharing among the NFL Clubs which shall (a) be based on the Resolution adopted by the NFLMC on March 9, 2006 (2006 Resolution MC-1), approving this Agreement (including “qualifiers” established under Paragraph 5 of that Resolution), (b) provide for incremental revenue sharing as compared to the arrangements created by 1995 Resolution G-6, and (c) be reasonably satisfactory to the NFLPA. The revenue sharing program described to the NFLPA by memorandum dated March 10, 2006, has been determined by the NFLPA to be satisfactory. Any material modification to that program must also be reasonably satisfactory to the NFLPA.

The key question is whether the “program of revenue or cost sharing among the NFL Clubs” is the accrual of SRS, or the payment of SRS. The NFLPA will argue for accrual, while the NFL will argue for payment. This is a legal argument that will rely on precedents in this CBA as well as other things, and quite frankly, I have no ability to handicap who will win this debate. Florio suggests it is the NFL, and given his legal credentials, I would guess he is right, though historically he hasn’t been great at predicting these rulings.

In any case, here is why this all matters: the salary floor. I have argued before that the removal of the salary floor as part of the Uncapped Year is meaningless. The NFL has tried to make it a big deal, but the truth is that teams really haven’t been constrained by it – they are generally spending substantially in excess of the floor – and as a result, there isn’t any reason to believe it would materially change the overall NFL budget. There would be no reason to believe that the removal of the floor would impact cash spending at all.

However, if SRS is eliminated, that changes the math. Most businesses are run by balancing costs against projected revenues. Getting rid of SRS to be paid 2011 would force low revenue teams to balance costs against a lower revenue projection. Suddenly, there would be a reason for lower revenue teams to be more careful with their cash. Further, the higher revenue teams wouldn’t necessarily be willing to spend the SRS savings, because they know full well that SRS could continue to be part of a new CBA in 2011, and those SRS payments may wind up going back out the door.

So if the NFL prevails, this tactic removes $100 to $200 million from player spending in the Uncapped Year.
 
Bad Contracts Can’t Be Totally Expunged

The internet’s best source of salary cap information is a guy who posts under the name AdamJT13. He recently revealed an interesting piece of news related to bad contracts in the Uncapped Year.

One theory that had been going around is that teams could clear bad contracts from their books in the Uncapped Year. So a guy like Vernon Gholston could be cut by the Jets, and his cap hit would be removed permanently from their books once a new CBA was agreed upon.

Not so fast. It turns out that in the Uncapped Year, signing bonus prorations (i.e. “dead money”) stay in place if a player is cut prior to June 1. So, for example, if a player has $5 million in dead money in 2010, 2011 and 2012, even if he is released in 2010, there will be $5 million per year on the 2011 and 2012 caps, assuming a new is CBA in place by then.

If a player is cut after June 1, the remaining dead money hits all go into 2011. So there would be a $10 million dead money hit against a 2011 salary cap, assuming that there is a new CBA in place by then.

This policy makes a lot of sense. For example, you could imagine that via a wink wink deal, a team could cut a guy with a long contract and then immediately resign him on identical terms. If the policy I described above wasn’t in place, it would allow teams to remove prorations of previously-paid signing bonuses from their future books without changing what the players actually received in cash.

So as a result, while players may well be cut in 2010 because of bad contracts, teams will not be able to really avoid having to pay the price for those mistakes.
 
2010 First Round Picks: A Nightmare In Waiting?
 
My final discussion topic is something I’ve been thinking about recently. With Jake Locker returning to school, there has been some discussion of whether he is leaving a ton of money on the table. On the surface, I’d say he is. One of the features of a new CBA will almost certainly be to significantly limit the contracts of first round picks. Owners hate how much rookies can get (see Gholston) and veteran players (i.e. the NFLPA) resent it. The only people who will benefit in the future are guys not in the NFL yet, and therefore who don’t have a vote in this process. So it seems likely that some curbs on draft pick salaries will be put in place.

How much could this mean? Well, the top pick this year, Matthew Stafford, got a 6 year, $72 million deal with $42 million guaranteed from the Lions. Let’s make some numbers up and say that this gets cut to $5 million a year under a new CBA, so that Stafford gets 6 years, $30 million instead. If you believe that is the magnitude of the salary control that will be implemented at the top of the draft, then you get a sense of the money that the top pick in 2011 would lose as compared to the top pick 2009. And certainly, we hear lots of pundits saying that players are going to be entering the 2010 draft in droves because of this last chance money grab.

But what will really happen to the top picks in 2010? Roger Goodell has said that even if a new CBA is in place, rookie salary controls would start with the 2011 draft. But that doesn’t guarantee that the 2010 picks will be in the same situation as 2009 picks. This is especially true if there is a new CBA in place by the 2010 draft.
 
For example, imagine that a new CBA is agreed to before the 2010 draft. It has the top pick in the 2011 draft slotted at 6 years, $30 million. The Rams take a QB at the top (to make it interesting, let’s say it is Sam Bradford). Now Bradford is stuck in terms of leverage. NCAA rules prevent him from returning to college. And he can’t hold out a year and re-enter the draft, because he would guarantee that even if he were taken at the top, he’d make no more than the 6 year, $30 million deal. But there is nothing preventing him in the CBA from making something more like what Stafford got.

Thus, I think there could be a very large gulf between what players expect and what teams will be offering. And when there is a very large gulf – and not much incentive for teams to cave, because they can easily point out to their fan bases that the rookies are asking for multiples of what next year’s rookie class will get – there is not going to be a ready market for making deals.

So I wonder if Jake Locker isn’t actually very smart. A QB needs as much development time as he can get. Developing an extra year in college as opposed to playing in the NFL is difficult decision, made easier when you are potentially sacrificing tens of millions of dollars. Developing an extra year in college as opposed to potentially holding out for a long period of time for not much difference in money is not a hard decision. I have no idea if this is how he is thinking about it … but it has made me question whether the 2010 bonanza will really happen if there is a new CBA in place.

One final point: this won’t really be much of a problem at the end of the first round, where the Eagles will probably be selecting. Rookie costs in that range are reasonably in line with what players should be making. Oh, there could be holdouts (right Mr. Maclin?), but they probably won’t be nearly as severe as we could see in the top half of the draft.

Justice And Celek Contract Details

Reuben Frank helpfully provided details for Winston Justice's contract and for Brent Celek's contract.

The most interesting thing I learned from these was that the week 10 deadline for using raises in base salary to eat up cap space in the current year doesn't apply in the Final Capped Year. So Justice and Celek both got big raises that ate up cap space.

Also, if you are looking at the details, note that each player only gets a portion of the raise he nominally got for 2009, covering the remaining portion of the season at the time the deal was agreed to (I assume that Justice's deal was agreed to prior to the Bears game, and only announced later, due to the beautiful way the numbers work out with that assumption).

Justice got a $4.78 million signing bonus and a $1.22 million raise in 2009, for total guaranteed money of $6 million even. His total deal is worth $18.15 million in new money.

Brent Celek's new deal is a little dicier. There are some things missing from Reuben Frank's summary. First, we are short on bonus money. As I calculate it, there is only the $6 million signing bonus and the $2.02 million raise in 2009, for about $8 million in guaranteed money. I had understood that number to be bigger, so there must be guaranteed components somewhere that we have yet to learn about. I don't know what the salary cap impact of those will be. Second, to comply with the 30% rule, there has to be some phony LTBE bonuses in 2011 and 2012. However, these are the numbers based on the data we currently have:

Note that between the two contracts, $5.4 million of cap space was used up. My guess is that the Eagles have less than $200K of cap space remaining at this point. So to the extent that there are any extensions left to come, they have to be salary cap neutral for 2009. A guy like Nick Cole has the base salary to accommodate such a deal, but there aren't many others beyond him who does.

Joe Banner "Spends It All"

With today's extension of Brent Celek, Joe Banner has pretty much spent all of his cap space.

Two nuggets from Adam Caplan:

@caplannfl Celek's deal I'm told is $33 million total, $11 guaranteed.

Assuming* that $11 million guarantee is a signing bonus (effectively) the cap hit in 2009 is $2.2 million. That eats up most of their remaining space:

@caplannfl No other deals are expected to get extended. The #Eagles, I'm told, were around $3 million under the cap before the Celek deal.

The rest is for emergencies (losing more CBs or WRs, for example).

So despite Joe Banner's insistence that with the massive amount of cap space the Eagles had at the beginning of the off-season, "you couldn't hope to spend it all", he has done exactly that. Well done. As Eagle fans, we should root for a CBA extension in the off-season, because this team will have a huge competitive advantage in 2010 from a cap perspective if we avoid the Uncapped Year. Of course, we have the financial muscle to have the same advantage regardless, but it would really stand out with an extension.

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* Note: if we get more solid details on Celek's contract, I will update this post to reflect that.

Justice Prevails

The most unlikely contract extension I can recall is apparently in the books, as Winston Justice signed what is reported to be a 4 year extension worth $18.15 million, and a $6 million signing bonus. In the offseason, I thought this guy was going to see his NFL career end in August. And here he is starting and getting an extension. Good for him.

My thoughts on the deal:

• Justice would have gotten a tender of $1.176 million (3rd round comp), $1.759 million (2nd round comp) or $2.521 million (1st rond comp) depending on which tender level the Eagles went with. So you can think of the contract as effectively between $15.6 and $17.0 million of new money for three extra years. Not exactly Stacy Andrews money, but probably ok for a starter at RT.
• Because of the timing of the deal, Justice's 2009 base salary could not have increased from $530K. I don't think that amount counts in the $18.15 million anyway.
• At a minimum, the Eagles' cap room for 2009 shrinks by the prorated $1.2 million of the signing bonus.
• The interesting part of the deal (from my perspective) will be the structure of the remaining $12.15 million. If it is structured with a roster bonus in 2010, because of the cap rules governing the Last Capped Year and the Uncapped Year, that bonus will count like a signing bonus in 2009. And if any base salaries are guaranteed in 2010, that also counts in 2009. So what we are really waiting for is the details of future years. It is possible, though not especially likely, that they can use up most (if not all) of their remaining cap room ($5.83 million as of 11/9) with this deal. We'll see how it shakes out once the details are released.

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.

Is Maclin's Time Coming?

As Les Bowen has mentioned in the past, reading philadelphiaeagles.com is something like reading Pravda. Dave Spadaro had a couple of back-to-back bullets in his column today that resonated for me:

* I could be totally wrong about this, but didn't it seem like the Saints paid wide receiver Kevin Curtis very little respect? They single-covered him and tried to use press coverage on Curtis and held Curtis to 3 catches for 44 yards. According to the official play-by-play sheet, Kolb had Curtis as a target 9 times and completed just 3 passes to him. That isn't very productive.

* Meanwhile, Jeremy Maclin had a couple of catches for 13 yards and I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a few more reps in the coming weeks. The Eagles need his explosiveness.

Kevin Curtis definitely struggled this weekend, and not because of lack of talent or skill, necessarily, but because he is clearly hurting. And he especially seemed to get hung out to dry by play calling a little bit. As Derek noted in an e-mail this morning, "And that one deep ball yesterday ... that we called the play after he took a shot and LIMPED BACK TO THE HUDDLE.  I mean, seriously...."

The more interesting note here is what we do at the X WR position, which is where Curtis lines up. Last year the backup there was Hank Baskett, who is gone. I'm not sure that Brandon Gibson profiles well there and Reggie Brown would have to travel a long way back here from Siberia, so it isn't clear that the commute would be worth the effort. So that leaves the guy who was drafted to fill that role, and who got more attention from the offensive game planners yesterday: Jeremy Maclin.

I'd feel a lot better about that idea if he had showed more in training camp, but of course, he held out. The guy on the other side of that negotiation had a very interesting post about that holdout today:

In negotiating the contract for Jeremy Maclin, the wide receiver taken after Crabtree in the first round (albeit nine picks later), one of the difficulties was that the selection was sandwiched in the first round by players who were defensive linemen, offensive linemen, a tight end, a quarterback, etc. Should that matter, you ask? For the purposes of base contract and guaranteed money, not really. The player is picked where he’s picked; it’s of no import -- except for a quarterback -- what position he plays.

The place it matters is upside, i.e., escalators. It’s challenging to equate the level of difficulty of the escalator to players in entirely different positions where statistical accomplishments -- very important to a wide receiver -- are largely irrelevant, save for sacks. The primary escalation marker for many positions is playing time, not directly relevant to a receiver.....

In the Maclin negotiation, the concern about escalators from the Maclin camp was that even though the Eagles pass as much as any team in the league, they spread the ball around, lessening the chances for dramatic impact of the escalators.

Of course, the Eagles are already in a spot where Maclin could get a lot of playing time. He'd probably have a much easier time reaching the thresholds if he'd had an extra 10 days in camp to beat out Curtis from the start. I've always argued that training camp time missed is massively overrated in the long run, but in the short run, it matters.

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A few other useful notes from that Andrew Brandt article:

Carolina
A.J. Feeley received $50,000 to sign. The only team in the NFL under the Mendoza line of $1M of Cap room, look for the Panthers to try to restructure a contract or two soon since we’re in a season where all earned incentives are going to count on the cap when earned -- unlike previous years -- due to next year being uncapped.

Philadelphia
Jeff Garcia also received $50,000 to sign and a two-game guarantee of salary. The amount is moot, however, because Garcia, as a vested veteran, is guaranteed at least one-quarter of the 10-year minimum salary, an amount worth approximately $211,000.

Indianapolis
Hank Baskett, released by the Eagles and unclaimed due to his $1.545-million salary (the restricted free-agent tender for the second-round draft compensation) was given a $100,000 bonus to sign with the Colts after being pursued by the Rams and a couple of other teams.

And here are some players who took pay cuts prior to the start of the season, avoiding release by their teams:

- Sean Jones, Eagles

Jones took a $500K base salary pay cut, from $1.5 million down to $1 million.

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Finally, in Derek's honor, NFP also has a bit of praise for the great Mark Whipple.

Refresher On The Andrews Brothers Deals

With the news that Stacy Andrews isn't starting this weekend (don't worry, it's all going according to plan), it is probably worth reminding ourselves what the Eagles are on the hook for financially with the Andrews brothers.

Stacy's contract was reported to be a staggering (for a guy coming off of knee surgery who as it turned out was going to be moved to guard) 6 years and $38.7 million. But the Eagles didn't put in much guaranteed money. In fact, "all" they are on the hook for during 2009 is $1.62 million of base salary, a $3 million roster bonus, and a $500K workout bonus, for a total of $5.12 million. They also put in a $31,250 per game appeared in roster bonus, for a potential additional total of $500K. The remaining 5 years of the deal are worth about $32.9 million. If the Eagles decide to move in another direction, they are off the hook for that money in its entirety.

Now, is $5.6 million a lot for what boils down to a one year deal? Absolutely. But at least they have limited their exposure this year to that amount.

For Shawn, the bulk of the value of the contract extension that he signed in 2005was paid in a pair of $5 million bonuses that year and in 2006. He also got a large base salary in 2008 as a result of a performance escalator in his contract that was triggered by his Pro Bowl seasons in 2006 and 2007. From a cap perspective, though, all but $1 million of those bonuses have already been amortized, with the last proration hitting the potentially non-existent cap in 2010.

In 2009, however, the Eagles are only on the hook for a $750K base salary. He may have also received $275K in workout bonuses. His salary steps up in 2010 to $2 million, and rises steadily every year after that. So from both a cash and a cap perspective, by 2010 the Eagles commitment to Shawn will be non-guaranteed. If they wish to move on, it will be virtually costless.

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A note on Max Jean-Gilles, however. During the off-season, Derek posted an analysis by KC Joyner that showed just how unimpressive Max was in the run blocking game last year. In fact, Joyner had him ranked 168th out of 185 qualifying offensive linemen in terms of run blocking success last year; nearly half of the guys ranked below him aren't starting in 2009. It will be interesting to see how Max does this year; he has to know that he failed to make the most of his last opportunity.