2018 Restructured Contracts

Please, only post your restructured contracts here for verification

Rules for Contract Restructuring:
Owners may choose to restructure up to three contracts for any three players on their roster. All restructures will be done through spotrac.com's restructuring tool or with overthecap.com's extension tool. Here are the links -
http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/tools/roster/
https://overthecap.com/calculator

Once an owner has decided which contracts he will be restructuring the player or players names will be posted to this thread as a record of the move. Owners may then change the dollar amounts on their spreadsheet to reflect the cap savings.

 

Can you explain the 2 years or less in more detail? From what I understand about restructures, you convert base salary to a signing bonus, which you can then spread out over a max 5 years. So, it’s best to restructure someone with multiple years remaining. But this rule states 2 or less. Can you help me understand?

 

It's tough to get a legit restructure system that doesn't possibly break the system. So basically our only possible restructures are the types that are more like "restructure and extend" like Terrell Suggs had in 2014, but not as generous. We are looking to tweak it but possibly not this year.

So you can "restructure" a player by removing 40% his cap hit or 25% off 2 as long as they have 1 or 2 season remaining on their contract. You can even restructure someone you trade for, but once you restructure there is no going back. Also I don't think it was posted here yet but you can't restructure an RFA or rookie contract.

It isn't exactly NFL rules but that is kind of impossible and we'll take suggestions for how to improve it for next year.

 

If I remember correctly, this was one of the things that @beachbum had an idea on.

If we can get something together before the first of February we can still add it to this season.

 

I don't like the fictional numbers we used last year (40% / 25%). And I think it's disingenuous to try and insert "extensions" that require player agreement in a one-year exercise. Who determines what a player is willing to accept?

The easiest and most accurate way would be to use the contract as is and go from there. Both Overthecap.com and Spotrac.com have calculators built into their websites that will calculate a restructure and if you can't figure those out I'm always available to calculate it.

 

That is fine with me. Should restructures be unlimited? Isn't there no cons to players and the only con being the very real risk of committing to a player you can't cut with very bad cap issues later?

 

It's certainly a real issue but NFL teams do it all the time. Just look at what the Ravens have done the last few years.

And then there are teams like my Steelers who write contracts with low initial guarantees with the intention of restructuring 2nd year roster bonuses when necessary.

 

Sucks a bit to lose those "Terrell Suggs extensions" with low remaining original year and more years added on at a higher number later. Actually Jason Peters had one year extended 2 years in advance to save around 20% last year. Not as drastic at 1 at40% or 2 at 25% but it was huge.

Should it be scrapped or just nerfed in a way? @Tim?

 

We have to limit the number of restructures available. It's just not feasible or realistic to let people go at a large chunk of their roster (and it will be extremely difficult on commissioners to keep up).

The original percentages could be shifted, we could use the spotrac restructure calculator or we could run them through a third party here ("beachbum, your table for two is ready").

I'm open to suggestions so long as they keep an idea of simplicity at their core, especially in the first year that we potentially switch our approach. In year 2 we could expand it some since everyone would have more familiarity.

 

I like the idea of keeping restructures true to reality. But there should definitely be a limit since it can be abused too easily with no repercussions. Maybe a limit of 2 restructures per team per year?

 

Isn't that quite a big issue for a one-year exercise though? With the Rams, I could restructure the base salaries of Whitworth ($8m base, 2 years left), Ogletree ($3m, 4 years left), Brockers ($5m, 2 years left), Barron ($7m, 3 years left) into signing bonuses to create (by my probably dodgy maths $13.4m of cap room, but increasing the cap commitment by $9.5m in 2019, $3.1m in 2020 and $0.75m in 2021. I don't have to deal with those additional commitments (and I could do it for every player on the roster to really make a bunch of money available).

It is something that NFL teams do, but its something that they then have to deal with. As this is, as I understand it, considered to basically be a one-year deal, we don't have to deal with the cap implications down the road.

I like the idea of using the Sportrac calculator (although I can't see where this is - does anyone have a link), but a limit of 2-3 players per roster (or maybe a max dollar amount that you can put into future years?).

 

@Chris and anyone else that wants to take a look

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/tools/roster/

Choose your team from the drop down and beside any player that is eligible to be restructured, just click on the restructure and it calculates the new salary and cap savings for that year. You can check on every contract to see which one(s) would be most beneficial to your team. I do caution though...Even though we are on a one year window for this exercise, I would still grade on ALL MOVES that are made and will effect the teams future, that would include restructures just for the sake of restructure.

 

Ok, after looking over some things with spotrac and how it will/may affect how we go about things, I'm inclined to make this part of the official rules this season -

Rules for Contract Restructuring:
Owners may choose to restructure up to two contracts for any two players on their roster. All restructures will be done through spotrac.com's restructuring tool.

Once an owner has decided which contracts he will be restructuring the player or players names will be posted to this thread as a record of the move. Owners may then change the dollar amounts on their spreadsheet to reflect the cap savings.

____________

Before I make this official, I will open to floor to any further questions or suggestions.

 

Would it be worth putting the link in from IrishDawg's post in there? I wouldn't have found it, and it makes it really really simple.

 

Yep, I'll definitely have the link in the top of the page with the rule.

 

Chris, just to bring up one thing, yes the cap commitments are higher in future years but it doesn't change the price of the individual player because of roll over cap. The real issues are twofold. Firstly it's that that space is made to sign more players this year, so that rollover will be gone anyways and it shouldn't be done lightly, and because 2 If a player busts you are screwed, sometimes whether you keep him or not.

I agree there has to be a limit. I just worded it that way to get Tim's attention and input directly instead of indirectly like he likes to do at times. We just can't trust some people to not over-commit.

 

I understand why a limit is necessary but it puts me at a significant disadvantage because the Steelers design their contracts so that they can guarantee previously non-guaranteed 2nd year roster bonuses and free up space. The Tuitt and AB contracts are a lock to be restructured in March. If those are the only two allowed in this exercise than it doesn't give me much flexibility.

 

However, under the constraints of this exercise (whether you feel it will be AB and Tuitt or not) you are more beneficial doing it with Heyward and Reothlisberger to maximize your cap. It will more closely represent what you have to work with...($10.88M in cap relief)

 

If we are doing it with the cap calculator it may be better to have the limit at 3 instead of 2.

 

Very interesting. I mean restructures are mostly just for purposes of this exercise. I would not in reality touch the Manning or Pierre-Paul contracts because I want out from those sooner rather than later. With the old system it would be silly not to restructure Manning but if we use the Spotrac system he isn't nearly as valuable to mess with. Spotrac feels more "real" from a savings perspective though.