Who do you sign? (With salary projections)

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(02-21-2022, 01:46 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Hendrickson's contract was essentially a prove it deal where the team could have cut him after 1 year if he didn't perform.

But yes, they could work magic. I just don't see them deciding to give a free agent $70 million guaranteed.

Again, it's not working magic. It's literally standard practice.

DJ Reader: 4yr/$53m ($13.25m/yr), 2020 cap hit of $10m
Trae Waynes: 3yr/$42m ($14m/yr), 2020 cap hit of $10m
Mike Hilton: 4yr/$24m ($6m/yr), 2021 cap hit of $5.4m

Former Bengals around the league...
Marvin Jones: 2yr/$12.5m ($6.25m/yr), 2021 cap hit of $4.3m
William Jackson: 3yr/$40.5m ($13.5m/yr), 2021 cap hit of $4.7m
Carl Lawson: 3yr/$45m ($15m/yr), 2021 cap hit of $14.3m

Lawson and Hilton are about as close to the "equal cap hit" contracts I have seen that we always seem to be using on here to disprove that the Bengals have a lot of FA money, and even they are $600-700k lower. You do that 5 times and all of a sudden $3-3.5m that "didn't exist" before exists... and they're not the norm. The norm is a much larger stagger towards the back.

Say you signed all of Reader, Waynes, Hilton, Bell, Hendrickson, and Awuzie all to the exact same contracts they signed as Bengals, but right now. The 4yr/$40m = $10m/yr = $10m less cap space this year that everyone is pushing isn't what would happen. That calculation would have the Bengals spend $61.5m per year and thus remove $61.5m in cap space from this year... but in reality the first year cap hits of all those contracts was just $48.9m. That's based off actual contracts the Bengals have already signed.

That's a difference of $12.6m in cap space. That's a ton of difference. It's not working magic, it's not even being particularly creative with making cap space like some of the more aggressive teams. It's literally just the standard.

Stop using equal cap hits that no team in reality uses to try to disprove the Bengals have cap space. People have been doing it for years and years and it's nonsense.