Dead Weight

[THE PISTONS]

(03-01-2017, 12:54 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Well the numbers are the numbers, and when they pay Bell that big contract he is going to command, they will have to make it work and cut some people. I didn't say they won't make it work, I said it will be interesting to watch....

It doesn't look like they're too worried:

"So the Steelers’ Big Three of Brown ($14.5 million per year), Bell ($12 million) and Ben Roethlisbeger ($20 million) will average $46.5 million per year on their various deals. It represents a commitment by the Steelers to stick with their star power on offense as they try to bring home a seventh Lombardi Trophy."

"The rest of their team will stay relatively intact, with a few contract decisions still ahead. They enter this year with more available salary cap room than they’ve had in quite some time, approaching an estimated $35 million."

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2017/02/27/Antonio-Brown-Le-Veon-Bell-Ben-Roethlisberger-Steelers-contracts-team-shows-commitment-to-winning-with-offense/stories/201702270189

[Sled21]

Like I said, Bell is franchised this year. It is when they have to give him a new contract that things will get interesting.

[THE PISTONS]

(03-01-2017, 04:16 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Like I said, Bell is franchised this year. It is when they have to give him a new contract that things will get interesting.

How? He's getting $15 million this year. His long-term contract will likely have a lower cap number.

If anything...a long-term contract helps them.

[McC]

(03-01-2017, 01:12 AM)jowczarski Wrote: @BengalChris - That line about carrying over no money from 2011 to '12 didn't make sense to me because it was the first year of the new CBA that allowed for that. John Clayton wrote in '12 that the Bengals carried over $15M from 2011 to 2012.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/7570116/nfl-plenty-cap-room-improve
Spotrac and Over The Cap are great resources but always remember they are incomplete, pull their information from other people/sites that report figures, and in some ways include educated guesses. For instance, those sites didn't know McCarron was actually a restricted free agent in 2018.

Edit: As for the argument about moving on from older players, that is a fair one. They try to choose to honor a contract to the end and get something out of those players rather than incur those costs + cost of a new player. Worth questioning that methodology in some instances.

If finances come first, where does that leave winning a SB?  No better than second, right?  Yes, we wanna win a SB, but this way and this way only.  How many recent SB champs have operated this way? 

If we could win a SB but it came with three years of sucking afterwards, would we take the deal?  In a NY minute.  Go for broke at least a little more, before it's too late for Andy and AJ and Geno and the rest.  They need to stop acting like they have all the time in the world.

If the Bengals go back to the 90's, it won't be because they took a chance or two.  It'll be because they refused to.

It's very possible '15 was THE chance and it got bad lucked away and won't come back again.  And the hangover from the playoff loss was just too big.  Add all the other factors, last year was doomed.

So, you go from meltdown to breakdown and then leave town and you're looking at being worse than the 6 win team going into the draft.  Are you good enough to bounce that far back?  Is it time to step outside the comfort zone or do they think they're too far away to do that?  Do they ever give you their honest assessment of the team?

[Sled21]

(03-01-2017, 04:17 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: How? He's getting $15 million this year. His long-term contract will likely have a lower cap number.

If anything...a long-term contract helps them.

Not really, if he is like every other player he will want a lot of money up front....

[Housh]

(02-28-2017, 10:43 PM)jowczarski Wrote: A lot to unpack here.

The Pistons, who did the quick math down to about $28 is on the right path. Add likely RFA tender T.J. Johnson ($1.9M), the practice squad ($1.3M) and the widely recognized injury protection pool (roughly $5M) you're looking in the area of about $16-20 the club is looking to spend this offseason. Fungible. Just like last year when we wrote the club was looking to spend about $15. They went over that.

The argument here, to me at least, is disagreements over the Bengals methodology. That is fair.

Should they cut guys like Hall, Peko and Maualuga, Jones, etc. and incur dead money? All reasonable questions to ask and be mad about. They will argue that if they don't some players see the life of the deal, they won't be able to get them agree to them in the first place (thus creating more cap issues with having to pay out more up front).

They do not use roll over money for current-year free agents. Never have. Should they? It could be argued they should. That's their view point.

Should they roll the dice on injuries and shallow out the injury protection pool? Maybe. It could be argued they should. Again, they choose to go that route.

As for the draft pool...total estimate. It's not determined until AFTER the draft. Any projection you see is based off the club standing pat and keeping all 11 picks. The pool changes with trades, etc.

It's not worth latching on to the Brown and Bell decisions in Pittsburgh, in my opinion. They've been cutting and restructuring guys for years in order to do this. They've generally had a cap mess. If the Bengals had those guys, I believe they would pay them. People get mad at M. Jones and maybe Zeitler leaving, but know who hasn't gotten away after their first deals? Geno Atkins. A.J. Green. Andy Dalton. An in-his-prime Whitworth. They've made sure to get those guys done, at near top of positional market value.

That's where "sign your own" comes into play. They can't keep everyone. No one does. It's easy to list who went away. But honestly, the rollover two years ago was entirely used on A.J. Green. Would you have preferred him hitting the UFA market? Marvin Jones received the same total dollars and years Detroit offered him. He chose to leave. Not much the club can do there. They made a decision on an aging Nelson. Objectively, I make the same call and it was the right one. Same with Sanu. Last year they used the roll over on Bernard, Hewitt and Williams. Now, if you want to argue that they should have planned for Jones' potential departure in the 2015 draft, that's valid and right.

Meant to rep this up yesterday but my internet went down. This post is great and really calmed me down a little bit. I think this scrutiny of the cap comes from so many years of losing. And seeing what winning teams do and how we don't do the same.

I like how you go over the cap in an understandable way but also include bits about how maybe some decisions were wrong.

[BengalChris]

(03-01-2017, 01:12 AM)jowczarski Wrote: @BengalChris - That line about carrying over no money from 2011 to '12 didn't make sense to me because it was the first year of the new CBA that allowed for that. John Clayton wrote in '12 that the Bengals carried over $15M from 2011 to 2012.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/7570116/nfl-plenty-cap-room-improve
Spotrac and Over The Cap are great resources but always remember they are incomplete, pull their information from other people/sites that report figures, and in some ways include educated guesses. For instance, those sites didn't know McCarron was actually a restricted free agent in 2018.

Edit: As for the argument about moving on from older players, that is a fair one. They try to choose to honor a contract to the end and get something out of those players rather than incur those costs + cost of a new player. Worth questioning that methodology in some instances.

With regards to the carry over from 2011 I just listed what is reported by spotrac.com. What is interesting is that spotrac shows that the Bengals carried over $15M from 2010 to 2011. It very well could be wrong and maybe that $15M should show on 2012 and not 2011.

here's the link: http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cincinnati-bengals/cap/2011/

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(03-01-2017, 08:12 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Not really, if he is like every other player he will want a lot of money up front....

Majority of contracts are back loaded. The Bengals just pretend that players need front loaded contracts in order to sign so they can use up their cap space on crappy/mediocre players.

Look at a bunch of contracts. The vast majority will have much bigger cap hits in the last two years than the first two. Unless by up front, you mean signing bonuses, but that doesn't matter for cap space since it's prorated throughout the length of the contract.

[t3r3e3]

(03-01-2017, 04:56 PM)McC Wrote: If finances come first, where does that leave winning a SB?  No better than second, right?  Yes, we wanna win a SB, but this way and this way only.  How many recent SB champs have operated this way? 

If we could win a SB but it came with three years of sucking afterwards, would we take the deal?  In a NY minute.  Go for broke at least a little more, before it's too late for Andy and AJ and Geno and the rest.  They need to stop acting like they have all the time in the world.

If the Bengals go back to the 90's, it won't be because they took a chance or two.  It'll be because they refused to.

It's very possible '15 was THE chance and it got bad lucked away and won't come back again.  And the hangover from the playoff loss was just too big.  Add all the other factors, last year was doomed.

So, you go from meltdown to breakdown and then leave town and you're looking at being worse than the 6 win team going into the draft.  Are you good enough to bounce that far back?  Is it time to step outside the comfort zone or do they think they're too far away to do that?  Do they ever give you their honest assessment of the team?

Reality is they " the Brown family" do in fact have all the time in the world.  The team is family owned, has no shareholders, is not beholden to the public, and has the best stadium deal in professional sports.  There was no rush during the 90's.  My personal opinion is that the main goal of the 90's was to generate enough revenue to buy out minority owners.  That is complete.  Now, it's to operate as a steady income generator for the family.  Yearly profit margins must be maintained.  Large (practice bubble, FA retention/signing), medium (larger full-time scouting dept., a real hall of fame, real GM), and small (Gatorade, hot dogs) items that affect the margin are to be avoided, minimized,  or controlled.  Loyalty is valued over performance.


Only then is winning considered.   :paul:

[jowczarski]

Just got back from Indy, will try to hit some of these good points:


@Luvnit2 - but they never deviate at any point for any reason… Simply, the Brown family seems to exercise no flexibility in spite of not one playoff win since 1990 and zero Super Bowl wins in almost 50 years.

This is fair, and something I would agree with. There is a middle ground between being very disciplined (which they have proven they can be) and dropping $65M on a guy with $36M guaranteed (which NFL history shows usually doesn’t work). I have written and said on our BBP they need to stop with the 30-year-old signing. Find the 26/27-year old 4-year vet that still may have upside, and worst case can maintain his athleticism.

You can’t make that “one big splash” every single season – but there is a time to pick and choose and take a risk.

A real-time example: Dont’a Hightower is that risk. He has not played a full season since 2013. He had a meniscus and shoulder issue last year. He’s a middle linebacker. He will command a nice salary. My opinion? This is an instance where you should release an unproductive player w/ no dead cap in Maualuga ($3.6M or so) and make that splash. Now, the risk is how many games will he and Burfict actually play next to one another? But to me, I think this is a more reasonable type of target than Hawk/Dansby which has just killed you the last two years.


@Wyche’sWarrior – retaining the coaching staff

Fair question. The Bengals are ninth in the NFL in spending since 2013. What have they gotten for those dollars?

@samhain - Now we have Adam, making a lot of money just begging to be released and a good starting corner in Dre due for a payday.  what is so hard about this for them to figure out?  Cut a habitual criminal who likely won't be available to you for a chunk of the season to pay a much younger, capable player that will.  Totally insane not to do this IMO.

Totally fair question. I reported in January that they were still struggling with this. I can tell you after the combine that this remains the case.

@McC - If finances come first, where does that leave winning a SB?  No better than second, right?  Yes, we wanna win a SB, but this way and this way only.  How many recent SB champs have operated this way?  

I think they’re on the same level. They want to win the Super Bowl their way. And they’ve outspent New England. The Patriots are just as disciplined with how they operate as the Bengals are. They just do things differently and honestly, more cold-heartedly. Perhaps that is the way to go?

It's very possible '15 was THE chance and it got bad lucked away and won't come back again.  And the hangover from the playoff loss was just too big.  Add all the other factors, last year was doomed.

Honestly, I agree with you that 2015 was their best team since ’88 and they would have gone to the Super Bowl had Dalton not gotten hurt. It was the peak year, the buildup from 2011. Everyone was healthy and playing at top form.

Now, I am on record believing the QB has turned a corner – so as long as he doesn’t totally regress, I think that window (plus Green/Atkins/Dunlap/Eifert/Burfict) carries into this year Next year will be more interesting as they have to consider second contracts for some of these guys.

So, you go from meltdown to breakdown and then leave town and you're looking at being worse than the 6 win team going into the draft.  Are you good enough to bounce that far back?  Is it time to step outside the comfort zone or do they think they're too far away to do that?  Do they ever give you their honest assessment of the team?

In the NFL, yes. They can win 11 games next year. Honest assessments? Yes.

@Housh – thank you!

@TheLeonardLeap - Majority of contracts are back loaded.

That is true. What the Bengals want to avoid are the massive signing bonus numbers, the only guaranteed number an NFL player can get. Other teams toss in other bonuses and a massive base salary late in a contract but those are not guaranteed. Hence the dead money issue from those huge signing bonuses that stretch into years four or five. Some teams don’t mind rolling with millions of dead money. The Bengals do – if they’re paying a player, they want him playing for them. It’s not a unique position to have, and many in the league would prefer to do it that way.

[bambino5130]

(03-04-2017, 08:33 AM)t3r3e3 Wrote: Reality is they " the Brown family" do in fact have all the time in the world.  The team is family owned, has no shareholders, is not beholden to the public, and has the best stadium deal in professional sports.  There was no rush during the 90's.  My personal opinion is that the main goal of the 90's was to generate enough revenue to buy out minority owners.  That is complete.  Now, it's to operate as a steady income generator for the family.  Yearly profit margins must be maintained.  Large (practice bubble, FA retention/signing), medium (larger full-time scouting dept., a real hall of fame, real GM), and small (Gatorade, hot dogs) items that affect the margin are to be avoided, minimized,  or controlled.  Loyalty is valued over performance.


Only then is winning considered.   :paul:

Well written Sir