2019 Franchise Tag, Restructures, RFA & ERFA

Agree. That appears to be a problem.

 

I see the “technical” point you’re making. My counterpoint is simple though. Percentage wise, compare his already granted savings to the overall salary for those players. Now see if that percentage is even close to the amount other GMs are saving on their restructures, of players who won’t even be in the league by 2021 no less.

In short, I’m saying we’re way too fast and loose with restructures in this exercise to nitpick Joe’s savings on the Eagles. We’ve let more egregious “would never happen” restructures happen than those. So why start restricting now?

Next year I’m all for putting a tighter net in place. Insert your bad pun gifs here.

 

If we don't hear from Arizona by Sunday, can we find a new GM for that squad?

 

It makes the most sense when you look at the Drew Brees contract. The Saints signed him to a five year deal in 2016. But they put a void clause in there that said the final three years of the deal would automatically void on the final day of the 2017 league year.

It wasn't a player option or a team option, which you'll see in other contracts. This void was automatic - the contract itself actually spelled out that the deal ended after 2017 and that the final three years would never happen. That's where the description of dummy years or bogus years (as opposed to option years) comes into play.

It's crazy, but the league allows it.

The "big picture" question is whether we count the contract years as real or not. My take is that if the league is treating them as real for cap calculations, they're painting us into a corner. We're using the cap numbers, so we're using the dummy years.

I mentioned a potential compromise adjustment above for Joe's situation, as we didn't have guidelines in place for this ahead of time. It's obviously up to Tim to decide if it's suitable.

The general idea is that if we're going to pretend those years aren't in the contracts, so be it - we just need to go all the way and pretend that the embedded cap savings created by those dummy years aren't in the contracts either. In other words, we remove the double dip effect.

If the bogus years weren't in the already restructured contracts, both players would be eligible for restructuring this year - but their cap costs would be higher due to their restructure money from last year being spread over only three years instead of five years. It works out to a difference of $1,061,333 for Brooks and $1,024,667 for Jenkins.

I don't know if the Eagles rolled over any unused cap from last year. If so, there's additional extra money already embedded in Joe's cap from the savings on those dummy years in 2018 that got rolled over to 2019. I'll leave it to Joe and Tim to figure that one out.


Carr's contract does not have dummy years. What he was referring to on the radio is that it's structured so that after this year the team can afford to release him if they want to. This year, his salary is guaranteed. Next year those guarantees are over and there won't be much prorated cap hit left from his signing bonus. So if the team wanted to walk away from the deal, they could release him and still have a cap savings.

 

That's why I calculated the compromise numbers. Joe said if anyone had a solution, he was all for it. I think it's simple enough - just take the extra savings already created by the bogus years that were put in by last year's restructuring and remove it from the new savings created by restructuring a second time, and he's good to go.

It's 2.086 million on this year's prorated signing bonus numbers, and possibly some adjustment on the rollover cap amount.

 

I would have loved to do the DeSean Jackson extension instead just like the Eagles (I did the trade here) but that is not possible in this excercise as the extension happened after the cut date. My cap hit for him is $10M but irl it is extended with a 3.164M cap hit this year instead and dummy years at the end. (there they are again). And because it isn't there I can't use the otc tools to get the numbers for restructures. That is a big flaw in the tool.

As for the double dipping argument... is that really an issue. I am just wondering. There is no real rule that prevents you from restructuring a restructure. I believe it happens often enough.

 

How about we just move on along as is.

 

The problem is that there is also no real rule that says you can't restructure a guy with more than two years left on his contract. That rule is preventing TopDawg from restructuring Carr and preventing all of us from restructuring plenty of otherwise suitable candidates.

When the real life Eagles restructured these two players last year, they did it by a contract extension. That's how it works out mathematically. The void clause means the players will either have a new deal two years early or will be out the door, but all cap calculations are done as a legit contract extension.

You're saying hey, forget that the Eagles extended these guys. Even though their cap figures are already based on 2022, I'm going to extend them again anyway. I'll reward myself for the Eagles using a dubious contract move and take a big cap savings on guys whose contracts were already extended beyond the limits of our restructuring rules. Oh, and at the same time I'm also going to keep the savings that the Eagles gained from putting in the extra two years. But the rest of you still can't restructure anyone under contract beyond 2020 because your teams did NOT put in bogus void clauses.

 

I get what you are saying. Before moving on to fixing this I want to know if anyone knows how the heck I could do DeSean Jackson properly when the website with the tool does not have him available since he already extended. I would have done him if I could.

 

I just ran a restructure for DeSean Jackson on OTC. It came out as a $320,000 savings. However, I believe since you just signed him (post roster lock) he would have more than the 2 years max allowed remaining on his contract.

 

We should be able to figure something out for that one pretty easily. Do you have details of the prior contract? In particular, do you know when it would have ended and what his 2019 base salary would have been before the real team restructured?

 

I believe Jackson was 10M no dead cap (Tampa had to eat it if any). The real team then did a restructure/extension to save $6.836M.
OTC had an interesting extension mechanic that made different numbers than spotrac. Goes to show no one outside the front offices knows WTF is going on.

 

That restructure you ran is on his real life restructure/extension he signed after the exercise locked. His current real life cap number is 3.164M. For me it is currently $10M if I am not mistaken since I do not have his contract altered.

 

Then take the difference between the two as a cap save and let's move on.

 

So it would be $8,706,500 savings between the two instead of $10,792,500?

 

Lyman I looked at a similar player on the OTC tool. If you go to extension on Agholor (whish is close to Jackson's contract) on the right it shows possible $6,865,600 in savings. Seems similar to Jackson. So it seems the tool allowed something similar for Jackson to what the Eagles did in real life, so it falls under our rules.

I haven't done it yet but I would assume Desean falls under our rules for around the real life salary cut.

This is one reason I don't like using the tool compared to how we used to do it via %. Once a move is done IRL it's tough to use the tool ourselves.

 

Yep.

 

There's a lot of flexibility in those numbers in that the team decides how much base to convert to bonus and how many years to extend the deal.

Refresh my memory... what's stopping you from using the same cap figures as the real team? Seems like a no-brainer just to count him as one of your three restructures and plug in his actual $3.164M cap cost instead of the old $10M.

 

Because when the real team signed him as a free agent, they signed him to a three year deal (plus the two dummy years). As such, he doesn't qualify in the GMO for a restructure or extension.

 

You are thinking of the wrong Jackson. They got Desean Jackson with 1 year left in a trade from Tampa IRL. We emulated that trade here.
Malik was the FA.

Desean does qualify and it seems using Agholor on OTC as reference, what Torgo said probably flies. That said I am not making that move quite yet if at all.