Redskins, Cowboys could go “nuclear” over cap mess

[HoopheadVII]

Originally Posted by Monkeydad

OK, I'm getting very frustrated with these cap penalties.

This morning I heard on Yahoo Sports Radio that Jonathan Vilma's lawyer had the Saints restructure his contract for the upcoming season before the known suspension was announced. They reduced his salary and cap number down to the league minimum for the lost 2012 season and paid him a big bonus, so when he would be suspended, he'd lose the least amount of money possible.


Then I open my browser and see this on the news:
Surprising Player Tops NFL Salaries | ThePostGame

Charles Johnson is the highest-paid player in 2011? He was paid $34million of a $72million contract in one season? Sounds exactly like what we were handed a salary cap death sentence for.

I expect the Saints to get punished and piled on for the Vilma contract, but the Panthers will probably be held to a different standard than us and Dallas....just like Chicago, Houston and other teams that did the exact same thing as us.

This selective enforcement is really getting old.

I don't see anything wrong with either of those things.

First, $30m of Johnson's $34m in 2011 was signing bonus. That's prorated over the life of the contract, so his 2011 cap hit is only $9m. ($30m/6yrs + $4m 2011 salary). That's actually less than average.

And as someone else wrote, even if there were a $34m cap hit in 2011, it would still be OK because 2011 is a capped year, and they couldn't gain any competitive advantage in future years by shifting tons of money into an uncapped year.

As for Vilma, nothing wrong with that either. They're moving cap hit into the future (capped) years to do him a favor. They may also be doing it to free up cap space to sign Brees, but there's nothing wrong with moving cap hit from one year's cap to another. Heck, any unused cap space in one year can be rolled over into the next year.

FWIW, that's why the Skins aren't completely destroyed by the $18m penalty - they had around $13m unused cap credit rolled over from last year.