Jason423

Dareus received a contract with $32 million in prorated money. Thats massive. His two year new cash flow I believe is second only to Suh. Its not the APY you need to look at but the structure of the deal. These are cap cloggers and every deal you sign like this has an impact on other players you look to re-sign in the future. If Dareus ends up being the only deal that they end up signing using that structure then it wont be a problem, but I have my doubts about that because they are setting a precedent. Once you get to two or three deals like that you become the Cowboys of the past.

I think what you saw last season is somewhat typical of what you get with a name head coach hire combined with new ownership being on the way. It was a very Rex offseason where he pushes how confident he is in certain players to the point where it clouds judgement. Prior to last year the only really bad contracts that the Bills had done were the Ryan Fitzpatrick one, which was just over-excitement from a few games, and the Mario Williams one which was meant to impact the team beyond the field. Last year Im not sure anyone in the league would have come close to their deals for McCoy and Clay. The real killer was the Dareus deal which was just a massive concession to a player who decided he was unhappy with the lack of an extension. The reason the Dareus deal is the real killer is because the team has two possible grade A talents on the roster in Gilmore, who is going to try to get a new deal this year, and Watkins, who is still at least a year or two away. But when you do a deal like Dareus' it sets a stage to where you are going to do bad deals for the other two players. At least with Williams there was the argument that as a UFA things are different but they dont really have that in their back pocket anymore. Id imagine that this is even a hang up with the Glenn deal especially after the Eagles just did that monster deal for Lane Johnson. If Taylor improves this year you also need to allocate big on the QB position one yer out. I don’t think the problem for the Bills last year was talent for the most part. The problem was that it’s difficult to fit in so many new veteran players in a given year especially with a new system the whole team is learning. I think they would be better off just accepting that there will be natural improvement and they can supplement what they have with the draft rather than free agency. If they are letting Rex run the show they probably are in danger of becoming something like the Saints with the huge signing bonuses and constant contract restructures. I think their best move is to not touch that Clay contract for cap relief but I don’t expect them to do that. My guess is they see the $8M or so in cap that this will open as more beneficial than looking at having more flexibility in the future. They can get to $20-$25M in cap room this year pretty easily and Id imagine Rex looks at that as enough to get another top guard, a 2nd tier wide receiver and a 2nd tier corner. This is really an important offseason for them. If they run their cap down to the ground by being active in free agency then its almost inevitable that this is going to be a year by year tight rope routine. Eventually those teams usually break. Whether it’s the Cowboys, Saints, Raiders, Jets or anyone else you end up at a big disadvantage compared to other teams because of that roster purge that is destined to happen. If they come out of this with basically the same team and the extensions are not so up front cash/bonus heavy then they should be fine in the future and able to run that good balance between the draft and free agency.

The year end reconciliation is simply the accrual of NLTBEs that do count, grievances won, etc..If what you are believing was the case you would never get teams like the Eagles being able to carry over $23 million this past season

Hey guys. I run the OTC website. This is an interesting discussion so I thought I would chime in. The biggest thing to keep in mind here is salary cap rollover. You can continue to roll over cap space as many times as you would want. Rollover is simply based on excess cap space. It has nothing to do with when it was initially created. So the Bills will carry over around $18 million to the 2014 season following the Branch extension. So their cap will be right around $145 million. Joel is coming up with the cap space projections by primarily adding futures deals and accruing escalators. The Bills had 45 players under contract at the time it was written. There should be 4 ERFAs to bring the number to 49, 1 RFA, and then 1 other deal factored in. That reduces cap space by about $3.5 million. CJ Spiller should earn a pretty hefty escalator and I believe both Eric Wood and Kyle Williams may earn raises. Those players should make up about the rest of the difference he is discussing.

Thanks.

Hi everyone. I'm the person who runs the Nyjetscap site that tires to cover the cap for the AFC East teams and I thought I would jump in on this one for a bit. The Jets dont have an easy out with the cap in terms of being ultra active in free agency, unless of course they decide they want players like Holmes on the team even longer, which I think could be a real possibility given the coaches comments about him. That being said the Jets cap has alot of built in flexibility based on the way they structure their contracts. I wrote something in it today under the articles section and am actually writing something else tonight that clarifies it a bit more. Its a bit different than the Bills cap system in which they try to match their overall cash spend close to their overall cap figure. The Bills use a number of different mechanisms to do it (for instance they are one of the few teams that does signing bonus, option bonus, roster bonus at start of league year for the first three years or so of most of their players, most only use one or at most two of those mechanisms) buts its essetially matching cap figures with their budget. The Jets are close to a cash/cap strategy in that the high cash spending mimics the cap hits. For example Holmes cap figure this year is $12.5 million with a cash payout of over $11 million. Its not the route of teams like the Panthers who have Charles Johnson getting paid $7 million with a $13 million cap hit. Because of that the Jets have significant cap flexibility to trade players and carry minimal dead money (assuming they can find a trade partner which I doubt they can for anyone except Cromartie) or to begin to resturcture and spread out cap hits like the Steelers and Giants do every year. Of course that just puts off the next "danger" zone of cap years for another 2 years, but you hope the cap rises more by that point in time. If personally recommend the Jets to do it with Sanchez to defer most of the dead cap to 2014 when its more reasonable to cut him. Sanchez does have an awful contract and there is no sugarcoating that one. I personally dont believe the cap story as a reason why the team is having a long GM search. As mob16151 pointed out above the Panthers got a GM and you cant even compare the two cap situations no matter what figure you hear in the press. The Panthers have players who are unmoveable and have no real avenue to restructure because of the awful job their prior GM did in negotiating those deals. Those are stories floated by people who were not going to get the job. If anything the Jets cap this year would give them an added year of security since they need it to get the books in order. IMO, what scares people off is the fact that Rex has to stay on board as the coach and that the team has an owner that meddles in the football operations. You dont want to float those kind of stories because you never want to completely burn a bridge which makes the cap story more convienient. Just my two cents....

I had a source that told me the 3M guarantee is guaranteed for injury and cap purposes but not for skill. That was the assumption I worked on with the dead money on the site. If that is true then the Bills owe him nothing for when he is cut. If they do owe him money Id imagine they would never cut him. His roster bonus is due the first week of the league year so that is the timeframe. If he is still on the Bills roster the week of March 20th he is going to stay the season.

Jets fan here and I run the cap site that attempts to track the teams in the AFC East. As many Bills fans have pointed out to me the Bills operate on a cash rather than cap budget. The cap savings for players, in that case, is pretty much meaningless. Your team has so much potential cap space that cap charges really are of no problem to the team. The fact that your highest cap player is only at $6.3 million tells you all you need to know about the cap. Thats not even top 5 on the Jets or Patriots and I believe 4th on Miami. The question is are the cash savings on Edwards, Merriman and McGee worth the release. Someone had asked me about the Bills cash budget next year and my estimate, after rookie savings, was no more than $99 million. That a ton of room to sign Stevie Johnson and add a premium guy like Williams without making any cuts. Id expect the Bills to keep anyone that could contribute next year since the cap and cash of most of the guys currently on the roster are all pretty low compared to most other teams in the league. The only thing that would really necessitate such a move would be Williams requiring something like 20 million in upfront money which seems pretty high even for a top level player like him.

I run the nyjetscap.com site and just wanted to throw in my two cents about some things. I was told that the Merriman guarantee is for injury only and not skill, meaning if you cut him you should not be on the hook for any additional money. Id be surprised if you guys do not re-sign Johnson. Hes a really good talent and clearly worth something in that 8-8.5 million a year range. His only issue is the diva stuff during a game, which is not that much different a problem than the Jets have with Holmes and most teams have with good WRs. I do think the Bills ownership might hesitate to give him a big money deal because they whiffed so badly on Lee Evans. You should just stick with Fred Jackson and move on when his deal expires. Players that age dont last, regardless of how much they have been used, and extending him can put you in a bad cap position in the future. You can do year to year deals after this season is he can still go. Spiller is terrible, but you can find a RB cheap in the draft next year or the year after. The Bills have a great cap cushion for next year. They have a $1.5 million exemption they can use (though they were one of just a few to not use the $3 million one in 2011) plus unused cap space from 2011 to carry over (somewhere around $20 million)if they want. They might not do either because it looks bad for a team that has a reputation for not spending money to see it reported that the team has $40 million in cap room to use, but at least for the near future the Bills are not going to need to worry about cutting guys because of the cap ramifications. Its strictly going to be about cutting guys that are making too much money for their production.