03-14-2017, 07:14 PM
(03-14-2017, 07:07 PM)BonnieBengal Wrote: It's all about the money. Draft picks are cheaper under the current CBA.
There's more to the money side than just straight up cap hit, too.
Amy Trask (who was in the Raiders Front Office for a long time) has tweeted several times this FA about the importance of cash, and how it affects some teams more than others.
Put simply, the guaranteed portion of a player's contract is put immediately into escrow, meaning the team needs to have that much available cash at the time of signing. For a team like the Bengals - small market, lower merchandising revenue, lower concessions revenue, lower ticket revenue *and* lacking a rich owner (unlike the Jags) - cashflow can be a hugely important factor in the players they are able to sign.
This, btw, is the real reason why we tend to carry over so much money each year - it gives the team time to save up the cash they need to make that big contract extension happen.
