Salary Cap Status Update

[CrazyCanuck]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Yeah I found the roster bonus structure pretty odd myself. Perhaps the team put $11 million in the form of roster bonus because putting too much of a signing bonus up front would have put the team over the 2007 cap? I can't remember what the numbers were.

I have a feeling it was set up that way to account for the Deion rule. This rule basically says you can only have so much signing bonus as a percentage of the total contract value, limiting the amount of money you can push to the future. Perhaps by setting the $11M as a roster bonus, they can restructure it without violating the Deion rule.

Originally Posted by Schneed10

That's definitely not a nitpick, that'd make a difference in the numbers. I tried to account for that, but maybe I have to go back and check. Looking at Griffin, he's got a base salary of $4.2 million in 2008. Figure you take $3.5 million of that and spread it over the life of the deal (4 years including '08) as signing bonus, so the hit on the bonus is $875K. Then layer back in the $700K in base salary. So $875 + $700K comes to approximately $1.6 million. So the hit on his salary drops from $4.2 million to $1.6 million, which is a savings of $2.8 million. So I guess I accounted for it in his case, but I'll go back and check the other guys though to be sure I did that right for all of them.

The numbers above are right on, maybe you just forgot on a couple guys. Either way it's a negligible difference and doesn't affect the discussion.

EDIT: "So the hit on his salary drops from $4.2 million to $1.6 million, which is a savings of $2.8 million." It's actually a savings of $2.6 million.