New CBA Agreement!

[Goodell]

... well almost anyway. Got excited earlier with the Commish talking about agreements and the schedule for the league business to resume again within days, but looks like we aren't quite there yet. Hopefully soon.

[Goodell]

With the talk about voting on the proposed CBA, we should see more details emerge or get down to whatever last rules compromises are needed to bring football back.

One that I read about recently was a possible "soft cap" in the early years of the deal to ease into the new structure and prevent massive cuts for teams over their cap. Or possibly no penalty for being over the cap in the early years of the agreement, or exceptions for existing players already on roster.

http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2011/7/2 ... -surfacing

Some of that grey area would be bad for us in terms of setting up strict rules, and we can't just allow teams to spend whatever like uncapped teams could because it's not real money for us unlike real owners.

If there are a lot of exceptions or soft caps or no cap enforcements in realty next year, definitely something we'd have to talk about for how we can best structure things for us. But we'll wait to see what the actual real details are when there is a real agreement and real NFL teams making transactions under those rules before we change how ours will be structured accordingly for that new reality. Lots of questions...

no mention yet of how dead money affects cap...
http://nfllabor.com/2011/07/21/nfl-club ... agreement/

The NFL statement released about the agreement shows at least that all teams are expected to carry themselves under the cap. There was no mention of how released players and their previous bonus considerations might affect the 2011 or future cap numbers.

[Onyxgem]

This does not sound like it is a done deal as the owners put some stuff in the CBA that was never agreed on so should be interesting to see where they go from here.

[Jared A]

I read about a rookie cap. That'd be bad, for sure. The rookie wage scale is definately going into affect, but a cap that a specific team can spend on rookies would extremely limit how many picks a team could make.

[Goodell]

I read about a rookie cap. That'd be bad, for sure. The rookie wage scale is definately going into affect, but a cap that a specific team can spend on rookies would extremely limit how many picks a team could make.

I think they had something like a rookie salary cap before too if I'm not mistaken, but not a lot of details about that weren't known or something that seemed to be a big part of building a team. Found an article from 2008, for example, that said this: "While a rookie salary cap already exists, it is 'ineffective because teams have found ways to get around it.'"

As that relates to us, sounds like first round draft pick contracts (especially near the top) will be much lower than they were before. As we've done, we'll take our cue from those real rookie contracts for those slots when making ours.

It's possible we could add something like a rookie draft salary cap, but from my perspective (and it can definitely be discussed/voted) only if it really became an important part of team building and something much more known than it has been in the past. If the only effect of that is just lowered contracts for draft picks, we'd pick up that effect as we adjust our rookie contracts accordingly. If you saw future stories about real teams having to trade away current draft picks because they couldn't fit them into a rookie salary cap and it became an important element of team building with reporters talking about this team has $x left under their rookie cap, I'd think we'd want to reflect that impactful element of reality here, but otherwise some of the details might get too complex and not really an essential part of the team-building process.

Definitely one of the details to keep an eye on (if not now, down the road), and we'll definitely be more immediately looking at what the contracts rookies are signing as that would immediately impact the types of deals our draft picks would get as usual.

[Dustin S.]

My understanding of the soft cap was that a team could designate one player this year, and have 3 million of his salary not count on the cap. and next year its up to 3 players for 1.5 million each. right?

[Adam K]

My understanding of the soft cap was that a team could designate one player this year, and have 3 million of his salary not count on the cap. and next year its up to 3 players for 1.5 million each. right?

I also thought it was just for first-round picks.

Furthermore, there is a spending minimum. So teams cannot be way under the cap.

That is if this deal ever gets passed.

[Ulrich82]

There has been a rookie spending pool for a while now, but as Troy mentioned, it was never very effective. . However, as I understood, each team was given a percentage of its total salary cap that could be spent on rookie. The percentage from each team was based on how many and which picks each team had going into the draft (I don't know if it was altered by draft day trades of picks). In other words, a team with 2 first round picks in the 2009 draft was designated a larger rookie pool than a team with 1 first round pick.

I would guess the new rookie system would function similarly. The idea is not to limit each team to spend only X dollars on rookies, but rather to limit the total value of rookie contracts without making completely preset contracts as in the NBA. If a team has two first round picks, their new rookie pool should be enough to pay both players fairly for their draft slot. The system is not meant to restrict teams from having multiple picks.

Anyway, that is just my two cents. I guess we will have to see exactly how this plays out, but I wouldn't worry about the rookie contract limits putting any artificial limit on draft picks.

[sportznut]

The best way to handle rookie contracts in this league is to mirror the NFL contracts, and not limit draft picks. Basically the same way we've done it from day one.

As for our cap situation, and fake money, just like last year with an uncapped year IRL, we can't have any assemblance of a soft cap in this league IMO.

Its just not realistic. No matter how the rules are set up, if you allow a team to go over their soft cap, you might as well not have a cap, and we know we can't have that here.

Our goal has always been to mirror the NFL as much as humanly possible, but there simply are things we can't duplicate for the betterment of our league.

Just my .02

[Jared A]

Sounds like an agreement has been reached... hopefully something will be posted soon.