04-02-2022, 10:42 AM
I know a lot of fans wonder how does a team with only 10 million left in cap space sign a player to a 5 year 50 million dollar contract. They normally do 1 or 2 things to make it happen. Below is a link to Spotrac restructure page. It shows existing contracts that were altered to create cap for 2021, pushing that 2021 cap to future years.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/transactions/restructure/
The second way is how they structure the contract for cap purposes. They do the same thing if tight on the cap for that year. Less cap in 2022 for example, but more cap dollars allocated for the life (number of years) of the contract.
I like Spotrac to track the cap because of its many layers. It has a projected rookie pool, you can look at cap in future years, not just 2022. It shows the current cap situation and why teams are forced to play cap gymnastics (manipulate it) while others like the Bengals rarely take an existing contract and convert it to a big bonus to gain cap space. They do use the second way as they sign new contracts at times.
WE have the 9th most cap space as of now at 18.1 million with 5.3 needed for the rookie contracts (this takes into account replacing players in the top 51 so it has some offset in it). As I said, we also could create more cap if the FO thought there was a player we needed to get us to the promise land. As a result of the cap management by our FO, we are in great shape also in 2023 while some teams are not.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/transactions/restructure/
The second way is how they structure the contract for cap purposes. They do the same thing if tight on the cap for that year. Less cap in 2022 for example, but more cap dollars allocated for the life (number of years) of the contract.
I like Spotrac to track the cap because of its many layers. It has a projected rookie pool, you can look at cap in future years, not just 2022. It shows the current cap situation and why teams are forced to play cap gymnastics (manipulate it) while others like the Bengals rarely take an existing contract and convert it to a big bonus to gain cap space. They do use the second way as they sign new contracts at times.
WE have the 9th most cap space as of now at 18.1 million with 5.3 needed for the rookie contracts (this takes into account replacing players in the top 51 so it has some offset in it). As I said, we also could create more cap if the FO thought there was a player we needed to get us to the promise land. As a result of the cap management by our FO, we are in great shape also in 2023 while some teams are not.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
