Was Tom D. really a cap genius?

[Mickey]

Yeah, our cap number for this past season was pretty good. We were 16th in the NFL in terms of having the most cap space available as of Sept. of 2005 (NFL Salary Cap 2005) However, I think I speak for most fans when I say that the cap is not that important, winning is. To the extent a healthy cap is related to winning, it is important but it is not an end in of itself.

 

The more talent you have, the higher your cap but the reward is more wins, at least in theory. The less talent you have, the more cap space you should have unless you "overpaid" for players. The best judges of talent will have lots of wins and a low cap number and the worst would have few wins and a high cap number.

One way to measure this, by no means scientific, is to simply divide each team's payroll by the number of wins. The result is how much each win cost the team in terms of paychecks. Those teams with the lowest cost per win (CPW) figure are the ones whose management presumably made the best decisions in terms of payroll, cap management and talent. Just for fun, I did just that:

 

Using CPW as our measure of GM performance, TD doesn't rate very highly.

The Bills, at 16. 4 million bucks per win, rank 24th in the league. Only Houston (38.8), New Orleans (26.6), Titans (21.1), SF (20.5), Green Bay (20.4) and Detroit (16.7) rank worse in terms of what they paid to get the few wins they were able to eke out in 2005.

 

The teams with the best CPW are Indy (5.7), Seattle (6.3), Denver (6.4) and Cinn, tied with Denver (7.2).

 

Miami spent 9.1 million dollars per win, which is 7.3 million dollars less per win than we spent.

 

TD did a good job keeping us under the cap if you elimenate actually winning games as part of the criteria of judging whether a GM has done a good job managing the cap. Anyone can create cap space by dropping good players and signing lousy ones at a discount.

[BuckeyeBill]

I don't think that TD was a cap genius. He gutted our team when we were in way over our heads in cap money. Got rid of the players bleeding away most of the cap money.

 

He did bring in good free agents, but they were paid well... so it made our cap figure average.

 

Having Moulds restructure his contract, franchising Clements and cutting Mike Williams will not make Levy a cap genius now will it?

 

I think TD's genius is how he worked the Peerless deal to get McGahee. Too bad he couldn't pull off the same magic with Bledsoe.

[eSJayDee]

I don't think that cap space as of the beginning of the year is indicative of how well you handle the cap.

What I would consider to be well managed is not mortgaging the future at the expense of the present and not having dead cap space (which is in essense paying for past performance in the present). That is the fiscally responsible approach that allows you to (theoretically) be competitive at all times.

The other approach is to borrow to enhance performance. This is what Butler did. It allows you to (theoretically) field a better team now at the expense of sometime in the future.

Managing the cap well allows you the flexibility to affordably borrow if the need arises (i.e. like signing Milloy or a Corey Simon when many/most teams couldn't feasible come up w/ the space.)

 

I haven't seen the cap #s that you use for your calculations, but since there's both a min & a max allowed cap dictated by the CBA, I suspect that the $/win is largely a function of # of wins.

[d_wag]

I don't think that cap space as of the beginning of the year is indicative of how well you handle the cap.

What I would consider to be well managed is not mortgaging the future at the expense of the present and not having dead cap space (which is in essense paying for past performance in the present).  That is the fiscally responsible approach that allows you to (theoretically) be competitive at all times.

The other approach is to borrow to enhance performance.  This is what Butler did.  It allows you to (theoretically) field a better team now at the expense of sometime in the future.

Managing the cap well allows you the flexibility to affordably borrow if the need arises (i.e. like signing Milloy or a Corey Simon when many/most teams couldn't feasible come up w/ the space.)

 

I haven't seen the cap #s that you use for your calculations, but since there's both a min & a max allowed cap dictated by the CBA, I suspect that the $/win is largely a function of # of wins.

560151[/snapback]

 

well if your using "dead cap space" to evaluate TD's cap management, that isn't going to look very favorable........

 

this year we had bledsoe on the books for around 5M, and now we've got two big possible hits in mike williams and eric moulds on our '06 books........there are also numerous vets on the roster that the bills may want to dump but don't have the flexability to do so given their large dead cap numbers........

[sfladave]

Yeah, our cap number for this past season was pretty good.  We were 16th in the NFL in terms of having the most cap space available as of Sept. of 2005 (NFL Salary Cap 2005)  However, I think I speak for most fans when I say that the cap is not that important, winning is.  To the extent a healthy cap is related to winning, it is important but it is not an end in of itself.

 

The more talent you have, the higher your cap but the reward is more wins, at least in theory.  The less talent you have, the more cap space you should have unless you "overpaid" for players.  The best judges of talent will have lots of wins and a low cap number and the worst would have few wins and a high cap number.

One way to measure this, by no means scientific, is to simply divide each team's payroll by the number of wins.  The result is how much each win cost the team in terms of paychecks.  Those teams with the lowest cost per win (CPW) figure are the ones whose management presumably made the best decisions in terms of payroll, cap management and talent.  Just for fun, I did just that:

 

Using CPW as our measure of GM performance, TD doesn't rate very highly.

The Bills, at 16. 4 million bucks per win, rank 24th in the league.  Only Houston (38.8), New Orleans (26.6), Titans (21.1), SF (20.5), Green Bay (20.4) and Detroit (16.7) rank worse in terms of what they paid to get the few wins they were able to eke out in 2005. 

 

The teams with the best CPW are Indy (5.7), Seattle (6.3), Denver (6.4) and Cinn, tied with Denver (7.2).

 

Miami spent 9.1 million dollars per win, which is 7.3 million dollars less per win than we spent.

 

TD did a good job keeping us under the cap if you elimenate actually winning games as part of the criteria of judging whether a GM has done a good job managing the cap.  Anyone can create cap space by dropping good players and signing lousy ones at a discount.

560115[/snapback]

This is a glowing endorsement of the "skill players alone don't win games, playoffs and championships." If you don't have the right people in the trenches you will get an average team at best, and the worst...well look at Buffalo, Houston, SF, NO and GB...all teams with sub par OLs.

[obie_wan]

A lot of the good he generated was wasted with extending Drew when he shouldn't have. Drew had already he was not the future.

 

He could have cut ties with Drew with no cost.

 

Instead he paid out $8.75 in new cash which resulted in $5 mil dead money when he cut Drew ONE year later.

[colin]

A lot of the good he generated was wasted with extending Drew when he shouldn't have. Drew had already he was not the future.

 

He could have cut ties with Drew with no cost.

 

Instead he paid out $8.75 in new cash which resulted in $5 mil dead money when he cut Drew ONE year later.

560167[/snapback]

 

that and the lack of systematic effort to bolster our lines when they looked soft in areas (while he was willing to throw picks at WR, RB, and QB) was his biggest player blunder.

 

his coaching selections were the big f up tho

[Mickey]

I don't think that cap space as of the beginning of the year is indicative of how well you handle the cap.

What I would consider to be well managed is not mortgaging the future at the expense of the present and not having dead cap space (which is in essense paying for past performance in the present).  That is the fiscally responsible approach that allows you to (theoretically) be competitive at all times.

The other approach is to borrow to enhance performance.  This is what Butler did.  It allows you to (theoretically) field a better team now at the expense of sometime in the future.

Managing the cap well allows you the flexibility to affordably borrow if the need arises (i.e. like signing Milloy or a Corey Simon when many/most teams couldn't feasible come up w/ the space.)

 

I haven't seen the cap #s that you use for your calculations, but since there's both a min & a max allowed cap dictated by the CBA, I suspect that the $/win is largely a function of # of wins.

560151[/snapback]

Certainly, but # of wins is largely a result of the talent your GM has been able to put on the roster using, more or less, the same cash resources as all the other teams. Put lousy talent on the team and you should have a pretty low payroll but, of course, your team will stink up the field.

 

There will almost always be a number of teams willing to spend tommorow's cap space today to put together a top notch roster and make a championship run. In theory, if all you are going to do is play it safe and take the fiscally responsible approach, aren't you going to lose out just about every year to the teams that borrowed to enhance performance? Yeah, they will have to pay for the party eventually but at least they had a party. The fiscally responsible team will just keep losing out to whatever teams that year went for broke.

 

Those are just theories and we have all seen teams with high priced FA's stink up the field and teams with low payrolls play well.

 

I just think that there are two sides to being a good GM. Job one is getting enough talent on the roster to win games and championships. Job two is to do job one as cheap as possible by managing the cap. TD didn't do job one and given the product on the field, it wasn't really all that cheap.

[Kultarr]

I seem to recall Donahoe extending the contracts of and paying roster bonuses to guys he would cut weeks/months later. Kind of bizarre for a proclaimed cap guru, if you ask me.

 

Donahoe's really genius was his chutzpah in making the "Big Move." Draft day deal for Bledsoe got the Bills national ooohs and ahhhs. The McGahee pick. The trade for JP Losman. Picking up Lawyer Milloy. Some of the name free agents he brought in. He was great at getting the Bills name in the media in the off-season. Too bad that it usually fell apart when they started the season.

[GG]

Too bad this analysis has absolutely zero validity from a financial and statistical standpoint, other than to generate predictable posts that Wilson is a cheapskate and TD didn't manage the cap properly.

 

You can't infer wins on salary spending in the NFL, because (drumroll, please....)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there is a cap.

 

 

Maybe the analysis can work in baseball, where there isn't a cap, and you can gauge the number of wins King George buys, relative to KC. But in the NFL, most teams' "salaries" are packed tightly around the cap, meaning you'll get a vastly different result when you divide a fixed numerator by a wide ranging denominator.

[firstngoal]

I think TD's genius is how he worked the Peerless deal to get McGahee.  Too bad he couldn't pull off the same magic with Bledsoe.

560118[/snapback]

 

I'll add one more, how he fleeced the Titans for a third round pick in the April Draft (which is a top 3 in that round) for a troubled re-tread in Travis Henry.

[Kelly the Dog]

That's just a bad anaolgy, IMO. You cannot judge one year on the cap. GM's don't make all decisions based on what years the cap will be high or low, just some decisions. Next year and last year, one would likely have all different kinds of conclusions about the positioning of TD's Bills vs. other teams. When you sign each player, you have to deal with his agent and how many years he will sgn for and what kinds of bonuses he will or will not acheive and what years he will have high or low cap numbers but a GM cannot always structure contracts so all years will come out looking even, especially because a ton of contracts have a ton of incentive clauses that throw original numbers way off from paid off numbers.

[turftoe]

I'll add one more, how he fleeced the Titans for a third round pick in the April Draft (which is a top 3 in that round) for a troubled re-tread in Travis Henry.

560350[/snapback]

 

Not to be picky, but, the Titan's pick will actually be the 6th pick of round 3. I agree, however, that Donahoe did well to get this pick.

[clumping platelets]

[JAMIEBUF12]

did tom wear it forwards or backwards?

[Bill from NYC]

Yeah, our cap number for this past season was pretty good.  We were 16th in the NFL in terms of having the most cap space available as of Sept. of 2005 (NFL Salary Cap 2005)  However, I think I speak for most fans when I say that the cap is not that important, winning is.  To the extent a healthy cap is related to winning, it is important but it is not an end in of itself.

 

The more talent you have, the higher your cap but the reward is more wins, at least in theory.  The less talent you have, the more cap space you should have unless you "overpaid" for players.  The best judges of talent will have lots of wins and a low cap number and the worst would have few wins and a high cap number.

One way to measure this, by no means scientific, is to simply divide each team's payroll by the number of wins.  The result is how much each win cost the team in terms of paychecks.  Those teams with the lowest cost per win (CPW) figure are the ones whose management presumably made the best decisions in terms of payroll, cap management and talent.  Just for fun, I did just that:

 

Using CPW as our measure of GM performance, TD doesn't rate very highly.

The Bills, at 16. 4 million bucks per win, rank 24th in the league.  Only Houston (38.8), New Orleans (26.6), Titans (21.1), SF (20.5), Green Bay (20.4) and Detroit (16.7) rank worse in terms of what they paid to get the few wins they were able to eke out in 2005. 

 

The teams with the best CPW are Indy (5.7), Seattle (6.3), Denver (6.4) and Cinn, tied with Denver (7.2).

 

Miami spent 9.1 million dollars per win, which is 7.3 million dollars less per win than we spent.

 

TD did a good job keeping us under the cap if you elimenate actually winning games as part of the criteria of judging whether a GM has done a good job managing the cap.  Anyone can create cap space by dropping good players and signing lousy ones at a discount.

560115[/snapback]

 

The chart in the link only tells a fraction of the story.

 

Look at the jests if you will. They spent 1.25 million more than the Bills in 05. This in itself in meaningless imo, because the truth is that they are said to be approx. 30 million over the cap in 06. Their DE, Abraham is a ufa. They will probably lose him and if they do, his salary doesn't even come off of their 06 cap because he is not under contract.

 

Curtis Martin is old. So are most of their blockers and it is conceivable that some of them will have to be cut. In summary, the jests are in danger of losing some of the few good players that they have because of cap irresponsibility.

 

TD had his major faults, but cap management was not one of them. The Bills have enough space in 06 to improve their football team. They can offer a player such as Steve Hutchinson more money to sign than can a club such as the jests.

 

Would I prefer wins to cap space? Obviously yes, but some teams have neither.