Rubes

That will help with the three-peat.

Very true. If the Bills do sign Clay away from Miami, I just want everyone to be prepared for the contract specifics. I sense it's going to be bigger than most people are expecting, and I'm bracing for the shitstorm of OMG WTF posts afterward. (And then we can proceed to love the guy for his talent and production.)

Only two posts today; one on Harvin and one on Clay. Neither with any inside info. Not that I'm keeping track...

Our new #1 FA priority.

I've only been on Twitter for a year or two, but it's amazing how much info you can get from it before anywhere else. I have my feeds open at my desk all day, and it's quite distracting. But very cool. I follow almost the same list as Ontario above, that's some good stuff there that will keep you going.

What, nobody mentioning Mr. Whatnot?

Bulaga and Clay. Bada-boom, bada-bing. Done.

He may actually want to play tackle as well.

Wow, that brings back some very faint memories...

Dianna Marie Russini @NBCdianna 49ers will be releasing WR Stevie Johnson. It's been the plan for a while. I'm told he'll be picked up by another team quickly. #49ers

I'm finding it hard to believe this thread has reached page 4.

I know many of you will be disappointed... Tim Graham @ByTimGraham A blip among all the big names being reported, but Bills TE Lee Smith is expected to sign a big contract with another team tomorrow.

I, for one, appreciated the job he did for us.

Sorry, did I need to be more specific?

Cue the first criticisms of Terry as the "meddling owner".

Well well. Should be fun to follow. Personally, I have no idea if he's one to grab, but I guess we'll see how much Roman wants to go after him.

They made somewhat of a turn, true, but they still kept things fairly close to most of the main story arcs. At least, close enough. The descriptions of the first three episodes of Season 5 tells me they're still keeping most of the main story arcs, but the other information leads me to believe it will deviate much more as the season goes on. I haven't heard anything about Damphair, but my recollection is the Season 5 casting call did not include any new Greyjoys. So not a great sign.

Since there's always a test at the end, the challenge for you now is to 1. Describe how we extended and restructured McCoy's contract so that we end up paying him $16 million this year, but his cap hit is only $5.6 million, far less than it was before the contract re-do, and 2. Describe how much of his new contract is guaranteed money, and how that shakes out.

Either as a roster bonus, as suggested, or just as guaranteed base salary in the first year. I'll get to work on the contract.

I am by no means an expert in how NFL contracts work, or for that matter how the cap works. I especially have a difficult time with the concept of "dead money". Be that as it may, I thought I would put this together as a primer on the basics of how NFL contracts work and how they impact the cap, and see what others have to say with respect to corrections or further suggestions. It's also partly to make sure I have this right. But at least we could have some basic info out there to help us understand a contract and to know if it's a good one or not. There are two basic components to an NFL contract: base salary and bonuses. Base salary is the amount of money paid to the player for a specific season of play, while bonuses can take multiple forms: signing bonuses, roster bonuses, workout bonuses, incentive-based bonuses, and so on. Base salaries are non-guaranteed amounts specified for each year of a contract. Recall that NFL contracts are not guaranteed, which means that a player can be cut and the remaining base salaries are no longer owed to the player. (There are some specifics about when a player is cut that affects this, such as cutting a veteran player after the first game of the season, but I don't fully understand those specifics and won't get into them here.) Let's use a simple example of a 4-year "back-loaded" contract which specifies base salaries as follows: Year 1: $1 million Year 2: $2 million Year 3: $4 million Year 4: $7 million So this would be considered a 4-year, $14 million contract, with an average salary of $3.5 million (averages don't mean anything when it comes to contracts, but some people like to use it as a measure of one player's contract vs another). But, as you can see, $11 million of the $14 million is in the final two years of the contract, which is what makes it "back-loaded". If the player was cut after Year 2, then he would miss out on those $11 million. This is why huge contracts aren't often what they seem, because the big numbers are often back-loaded, and the player is likely to be cut before he ever sees the big money. Now, let's say the player gets a decent signing bonus, like $6 million, which is given to the player at the time he signs the contract. This is what we refer to as "guaranteed" money, since the player will get that entire amount no matter what happens to him. Signing bonuses are good for both players and teams since the player gets all the money, and the team gets to spread the entire amount over the full length of the contract (even though it's all paid right up front). So in this case, the $6 million signing bonus amounts to $1.5 million per year for each of the four years. So the total contract at this point is a 4-year, $20 million contract, with $6 million guaranteed, or you might also hear it's an average of $5 million per year. Often, teams will also fully guarantee the first year's base salary, so in this case it would be $7 million guaranteed. So the cap hit for each year of this contract is: Year 1: $1 million (base) + $1.5 million (signing) = $2.5 million Year 2: $2 million (base) + $1.5 million (signing) = $3.5 million Year 3: $4 million (base) + $1.5 million (signing) = $5.5 million Year 4: $7 million (base) + $1.5 million (signing) = $8.5 million That's a pretty cap-friendly deal, since the player only costs $6 million for the first two years, and only $11.5 million for three years. He can be cut after Year 2 or 3, saving up to $11 million of base salary if needed. What happens if he does get cut after Year 2? The team would not have to worry about the $4 million on the cap for Year 3 and $7 million on the cap for Year 4. However, they would still be on the hook for the $1.5 million bonus amount in each year, which is what adds to the concept of "dead money" -- they would have $1.5 million contributing towards the cap in Years 3 and 4 for a player who is no longer on the team. What happens if the player gets traded after Year 2? The original team would be off the hook for those $11 million in Years 3 and 4, but they would still be on the hook for those $1.5 million each of those years, so it would still be "dead money". The new team would adopt the existing contract, but they are only responsible for the base salaries in Years 3 and 4. The player would still be expecting to receive those $11 million over those two years -- but again, that is base salary, so it's not guaranteed money; the player could still be cut by the new team and he would receive nothing. Also, the new team may not be willing or able to fit that money under the cap. So, what many teams do is to convert that base salary into bonus (or guaranteed money). Let's say the new team converts $6 million of that $11 million into a bonus (all $4 million from Year 3 and $2 million from Year 4). The player instantly gets those $6 million (since it's now guaranteed), and the team gets to spread that $6 million over the remaining 2 years of the contract, or $3 million per year. The rest ($5 million) remains base salary. So the contract and cap hit for the new team now becomes: Year 3: $0 million (base) + $3 million (signing) = $3 million (was $4 million) Year 4: $5 million (base) + $3 million (signing) = $8 million (was $7 million) So the total amount of the contract is still $11 million, but the player gets most of it up front as guaranteed money, and the team gets a little bit of cap relief in Year 3. However, if the player gets cut during the contract, it creates more potential "dead money" for the team because of that guaranteed money. Another approach for the new team is to extend the contract, while also converting base salary into bonuses. Taking the same scenario if the player was traded after Year 2, the new team may extend the contract by a few more years, while converting a chunk of the original base salary into bonus, and adding a bit more bonus on top of that. Let's say the new contract extends the original contract by 2 years, so the player now has a four-year contract with the new team. Let's say they convert $6 million of the remaining original $11 million base salary into bonus ($2 million from Year 3 and $4 million from Year 4) and add another $4 million bonus on top of that, for a total signing bonus of $10 million, which is now spread out to $2.5 million per contract year. With some hypothetical new base salaries for Years 5 and 6, the contract now looks like: Year 3: $2 million (base) + $2.5 million (signing) = $4.5 million Year 4: $3 million (base) + $2.5 million (signing) = $5.5 million Year 5: $4 million (base) + $2.5 million (signing) = $6.5 million Year 6: $5 million (base) + $2.5 million (signing) = $7.5 million The new contract would now be announced as a 4-year, $24 million contract (or $6 million per year), with $12 million guaranteed (presuming the first year's salary is also guaranteed). The player gets a ton of money guaranteed up front ($10 million), while the team gets to spread out the contract to a reasonable cap hit each year, at the risk of having a higher amount of "dead money" if the player eventually is released. So that's what I've got. There's obviously more that could be added, like the workout bonuses or incentive-based bonuses, but I think these are the basics. The cap implications become a bit more obvious when we start talking about really large contracts, like McCoy's, where the base salaries are initially really high; converting those high base salaries into signing bonus has a much more pronounced effect on the cap hit each year, but again, increases the risk of "dead money" should the player be released. There's also a lot of talk these days about contracts being made "fully guaranteed", so that there is no risk to the player of being cut. This would take some work to plan it out so that base salary and signing bonus are balanced appropriately such that teams aren't completely killed either by the cap hit or possible dead money, but the idea is that these fully guaranteed contracts would go to high-profile players that have little risk of being cut and therefore killing teams with dead money.

This is a concept that seems to be lost every year around this time. People don't like paying $X million to a player because they think he's only worth $Y, but the $Y is often based on last year's thinking and doesn't take into account the way salaries rise by significant amounts every year.

Come on baby, come to papa

If we can fill those holes, I'm thinking a Round 2 LB or S might be in the plans.

Glad to hear there is definite interest on our side. I'd like to see him on our sideline.