2019 Franchise Tag, Restructures, RFA & ERFA

Eagles Restructure
Malcolm Jenkins
$5,490,000 savings

 

Falcons extend Vic Beasley
$9,604,000 savings

 

@LAOJoe ,

Don't both Malcolm Jenkins and Brandon Brooks have contracts good through 2022 ?


Asking for a friend.

 

No, I just looked it up. They’re both done after 2020.
I’m not sure exactly what the Eagles have done with those contracts, but both guys have 21/22 listed as “dummy” years. Not sure if there’s a cap hit involved, but they aren’t under contract for those seasons

 

They both have a cap hit of $1.5M for both 2021 and 2022 according to OTC.

 

Something to do with how they pro-rated bonuses. Fairly unique as far as I know. But they still won’t be on the roster in those seasons as it stands today

 

They are free agents after 2020 with dummy years.

If that makes them ineligible then I don't know if I have anyone that can be restructured by our rules that isn't for peanuts.

 

I really don't care one way or another. But, from where I'm sitting, it appears as if you already realized the cap savings from their contracts when the rosters were locked and now you're taking the cap save again.

Not my circus so I'll just move on.

 

I honestly have no clue. If you or someone figures something out I'll adjust. I was so busy when we started this I barely got my tenders in after the 1-day extension.

 

The Saints do this with Brees contract every time they have to change something -- I didn't realize other teams were going down this road yet. The dummy years just pro-rate out the bonus. So in theory the money would escalate if they are cut or walk in FA -- but in a restructure it just increases future cap hits as long as those years are still there. Since we have watched the Saints continue to kick the can down the road with dummy year bonuses for years now I think it's fair to say the Eagles might actually do an extension with one or both those guys.

Plus this is sort of what the Eagles have been doing for a year or two now. Gaming the system to create win now cap space. It is going to be real interesting to see what Roseman, a seemingly excellent GM, does when he has to pay Wentz, next year. I assume he gets the 5th year option which will run like $24 million...

 

My head still aches from figuring out how the Brees cap figures actually worked out. (I spelled it out in the GM discussion thread.)

I'd say Lyman has a great point - those contract years are in there. While the massive cap savings from those deals happened last year, there is still another $2 million of cap savings this year and again next year from padding the contracts with the two extra years. For cap purposes, those dummy years are real and should be considered. The right thing to do would be to include any dummy years when deciding if players are eligible for restructuring.

In this case, a quick and dirty compromise would be to reduce the amount of cap savings on the "new" restructurings by $2.086 million ($1061333 for Brooks, $1024667 for Jenkins). I'll skip the math and just say that offsets the extra benefit from the double dipping.

 

Well in truth I don't care either way. But in an exercise where no one questioned a 41 year old Tom Brady or ready-to-retire Gronkowski restructuring for a savings of $10+ million I don't know how we can harass the Eagles brass for those restructures.

For the record, I'm an outspoken critic of the ease with which restructures are done in this exercise. But considering how loosely we're governed in that regard, I'm not going to start nitpicking with these Eagles deals. While there might be some cap hit 21/22 based on how they structured the financials, fact is those players can play on other rosters....and by virtue of that, are not Eagles property in those years. I gotta side with Joe on this one

 

I think this is the most important part. There is no salary in future years and if they DON'T restructure those contracts the players become URFA. Dummy years are not real years because there is no contractual obligation on the part of the player to stay with the team.

I also agree restructuring has been a little too convenient in this exercise. I don't really have a problem with it though. GM's can play games with the cap all the time to make extra room. This is one of the few methods we are given to make room available other than just outright cutting a guy. I didn't even bother restructuring anyone this year because I didn't need to but if I inherited a really tight cap those restructures are sort of needed to participate...

 

join the club.

 

The flip side is that as of right now, those dummy years do exist. They will void at some point in the future, but until they void the league itself is treating them as real and allowing teams to reap the cap benefits as though the players will remain with the team.

That's the stickler - for all cap-related calculations, the NFL says these dummy years are legit until they do actually void.

(Side note: when I was researching the Brees contract, one source I found said that they do have base salaries attached to the dummy years. OTC and Spotrac might list them as 0, but that's coming from the web sites rather than from the actual contract.)

For our exercise, the "double dip" is the most problematic aspect of blowing off the dummy years. It's actually a triple dip. The second dip is that by pretending these years are legit, the real life Eagles already have $2 million in savings on these players reflected in the initial cap figures. By turning around and pretending the dummy years aren't there, Joe is still taking that savings and then adding another level of savings on top of it.

The third dip is that by tacking on those dummy years, the real life team got big cap savings last year. Did the Eagles roll over any leftover cap money to this year? If so, Joe's adjusted salary cap is already higher than it would be otherwise because of the dummy years being in the contracts.

Kinda tough to claim the extra contract years aren't real but the extra cap space is.

 

I've honestly never heard of "dummy years" in a contract. Unless that simply refers to years that the club has no intention of honoring in the contact.

Torgo makes sense to me....

Question: Derek Carr has a contract through 2023. Would any of his remaining years qualify as "dummy years", so that I could restructure his deal?

The reason I ask is that I suspect he does have "dummy years" on it, because I heard the talking about his contract on the radio, and they said that the Raiders have it set up so that can get out of that deal next season if they choose....

Just curious.

 

He doesn't have dummy years. Basically if the year he is to be a FA is not the last year of his contract (not because of options) then there are dummy years.

 

This year is a bit of a mess already. If we do this again next year we will make it all clear what counts in advance. I'm not trying to use every dollar I can get anyways. And we need to fix restructures/extensions anyways. Right now they are either too powerful or too restrictive depending on the team.

 

We just need all the teams to participate.....

 

That too but we had some issues we didn't get around to fixing and they stood out more than ever this year, and it had nothing to do with participation.