Just A Simple Question Regarding This Year's FA

[Murdock2420]

(03-23-2022, 05:40 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: They eventually count when they're paid out, don't they?

Otherwise, it would be easy to manipulate the cap by just signing player to a vet minimum and then saying "you get a 10 million dollar bonus if you rush for two yards in a season.

They do count into the following year depending on the type of incentive.

There are two types of incentives: Likely to be earned and Unlikely to be earned.


Likely to be earned count against the cap. Unlikely to be earned do not. If you achieve an unlikely to be earned bonus, it counts against the cap the following year. If you fail to achieve a likely to be earned bonus, your team gets that money as extra cap space the following year.

What determines "likely" is what you did the previous year. Flat out. So if you had 9 sacks in 2013 a 2014 performance bonus for 10 sacks would be considered "unlikely to be earned" whereas a bonus for 9 sacks would be considered "likely to be earned".

It's all a bit of carefully structured gymnastics to float money down the road to later years.