[sportscurmudgeon]

Someone asked why players don't automatically restructure. Here's the problem with doing it every year:

If you contantly put off base salary increases into the future for the sake of a signing bonus in the current year, you wind up in the situation that Chris Samuels is in now. He restructured twice and piled up a huge payday in 2005/6. And now the team wants him to forego that big payday to take a signing bonus and extned further into the future. At some point, it becomes disadvantageous for a player to keep piling up money in a final year or two because he is unlikely ever to see that money because the team will cut him as a "cap casualty". So after a point, the player who restructures is helping to cut his own throat.

As I understand it, this is a big part of Chris Samuels' reluctance to redo his deal. He did it twice before and this is the time when he is supposed to get all the money he deferred for the good of the team in past years. That's what he was told. Now, the team wants him to take less one more time...