The salary cap, uncapped

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2:10Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Something a little bit different for you guys today. This is something I had circled really since the start of the offseason. It was just an idea to potentially do a basic salary cap explainer slash FAQ from you guys. there are so many salary cap terms that we throw around pretty freely that I don't think a lot of people have a solid understanding of. And I'm including myself in that bucket. This is a very dense, very opaque world that has a lot of influence and a lot of importance. And I wanted to try to shine a light on some of this stuff and some of the terms that we use.

2:45Robert Mays: So to help me do that, I welcome Joel Corey from CBS Sports. Joel's a former NFL agent, somebody who does a lot of really great work on the salary cap. And I wanted to incorporate a lot of the things you guys told me last night on Twitter, on Blue Sky, about what you wanted to know about the salary cap. What were your main questions? So we dug into a ton of stuff on this show. We talked about extensions and how they play into remaining money and how you tear up a contract with Derek Singley and Josh Allen. We talked about the idea of void years. We talked about the idea of option bonuses and how teams use proration in order to work around the salary cap.

3:22Robert Mays: We talked about what numbers Joel looks at as a former agent when he's trying to understand what really matters in a contract. We talk about some of the downsides to teams operating like the Eagles and pushing out all of this bonus money through proration and whether or not that bill ultimately comes due and what that may look like. So I tried to do as much as I could to hit a lot of the questions and a lot of the topics that you guys were interested in. I'm really hoping you come away from this conversation with a better understanding of some of this stuff. I do think it's really important. And I do think that stuff like this makes us all a little bit smarter when it comes to identifying and understanding some of this stuff.

3:59Robert Mays: So I hope you guys enjoy the conversation with Joel. Let's get to it right now.

4:08Robert Mays: I'm very excited today to be joined by a former NFL agent and current CBS sports contributor, somebody who understands the cap contracts, how the financial elements of the NFL work as well as anybody. Joel Corey, thank you so much for coming back to the show. Oh, thanks for having me again. I wanted to do this, you know, when we were kind of planning out our off season, March, when we were thinking about what we want May, June, July to look like before we get back into training camp. This show and an idea like this was at the top of the list for me as I was thinking about how we're going to sketch things out.

4:41Robert Mays: I don't think we've ever done something really like this. You know, we've touched on more specific elements of the financial world of the NFL. I remember doing a show last off season about how the Eagles were doing certain things, how teams were manipulating the salary cap, who's good at that, who's bad at that. But I don't think we've ever done something that's quite as nuts and bolts as I want this to be. And we were just talking before we started recording. And when I was laying out the topics I wanted to hit today, part of me was it was such a wide range of stuff that I wanted to solicit thoughts from listeners because at the end of the day, that's what this is for.

5:15Robert Mays: This is hopefully for our listeners to get a better understanding of these terms and how some of these terms that they're hearing consistently are shaping the way that the NFL world works. So I appreciate everybody who shared their thoughts. A lot of that helped build the roadmap here. So, Joel, there's going to be some of this stuff that you're going to be like a five-year-old would ask this question. And there's going to be some of this stuff that I think is a little bit higher level. but hopefully we have a good enough mix here to allow people to get a better understanding of a lot of these terms and ideas that we use pretty freely when discussing contracts and the salary cap in the NFL.

5:51Yeah, I'm sure some of the stuff I'm going to be like, okay, that was pretty elementary, but some of the stuff I'm sure is going to be, hmm, that's interesting that someone would even think about asking that.

6:04Robert Mays: I want to start with your background because there are moments, and for whatever reason, and this one is sticking with me from this offseason. And it was when Derek Stingley signed his deal. And obviously you see the initial numbers, and I think it's$30 million a year. And we know this as NFL fans. Any kind of educated NFL fan understands. There are the numbers that are reported, and then there are the real numbers. There are the numbers that actually matter when it comes to the value of that contract, the quality of that contract, and how teams have to build and plan around it. So when you are sitting there on Twitter and you see a contract come along, What are the numbers that matter to you and what are you really waiting for so you can actually have a full understanding and a full scope of what that contract looks like?

6:48Well, the first thing is with these insiders who are getting the deals and breaking them. The last thing I want to hear is the deal is worth up to X amount because that's the maximum value of the deal. And that tells me absolutely nothing. What I need to know is what the base value of the contract is, and then I want to look at how it's structured. Now, there was one in, I think it was, 2022 free agency. The numbers definitely weren't, well, actually not free agency, it was a franchise tag and trade, but the numbers definitely weren't what they were reporting. Devontae Adams,$140 million over five years.

7:33Now, when you started looking at the details of the contract, it was$67.5 million over the first three years. Year four, which was 2025, and year five, which was 2026, each had$36.25 million in those years. That automatically told me there's no way in hell he's ever going to play either of these years. It was released after three years. That was so the agent could say, I have the highest paid wide receiver. When I was an agent, I didn't care about stuff like that. I cared about the substance of the deal. So I just would have taken the 67.5 over three years and been done with it. Sometimes it's the player ego for them to say that.

8:21Once you get past the years where there isn't any more guaranteed money, you basically have team options. So ideally, you don't give any more years than there are guarantees in those years because you have to play well to continue making those years. And if you are going to have money in those years, ideally, if you have enough leverage, you stick a pretty significant March roster bonus in their third, fifth day of the league year. So they have to make a decision on you sooner rather than later. So if they're going to pay you, say,$7.5 million on the third day of the league year, they're probably going to keep you for the rest of the year.

9:06So there are a lot of things structurally. But, yeah, everyone looks at the average per year. I look at it as a baseline initially, but then I want to see how it's broken down year to year. I want to see how it's backloaded or if it's frontloaded. I want to look at how much money is fully guaranteed at signing. I don't really care whether it's signing bonus or not, just as long as it's secure at signing. Then I want to look at what's practically guaranteed. Sometimes you'll have an injury guarantee in a later year if it converts to being fully guaranteed. And the three types of guarantees are skill, injury, and salary cap.

9:42What you want from the player standpoint is, let's say you have a 2027 injury guarantee. You want the injury, the money in 2027 that's guaranteed by injury to convert to being a full guarantee early in the 2026 league year. You don't want it coming up in 2027. So if it's fully guaranteed a year early, you're basically know you're going to be there for that year. So there are little nuances in how you structure contracts And I'm looking at to see whether I like the deal From an agent player standpoint or not

10:22Robert Mays: Explain a little bit more about injury guarantees And the idea of injury guarantees Because that's something that we hear all the time Even somebody in my seat when you're trying to figure out Alright, what's guaranteed, what's not And oftentimes it's I think whether you can move on From a player after the season And I think there's some complications when it comes to injury guarantees So just for people who don't have as much familiarity with that term, how would you just quickly describe what injury guarantees are? I'll give you an example of one where it got somebody cut. Daniel Jones last year when he was benched, the reason they benched him and same with Russell Wilson late in the 2023 season.

11:00Robert Mays: Derek Carr too, right? That last year with the Raiders. Derek Carr year with the Raiders. What they didn't want is for, they had injury guarantees the next year. And then for some of these guys, skill and cap guarantees kicked in at a later date. But it was guaranteed for injury signing. What they didn't want is for him not to be able to pass a physical when the league year began because then they're stuck with that money. So Russell Wilson, they benched him because he already had his 2024 salary guaranteed. But his 2025 salary was guaranteed for injury. and the skill and cap guarantees were going to kick in like the fifth day of the 2024 league year.

11:39So they're like, we're putting you on ice. We don't want something happening where you have some, like, say you tear your ACL. You're stuck. So you don't want to have a situation like that. You don't see a whole lot of situations where the injury guarantee does come into play. I do remember one a few years ago with Cam Chancellor. They did an extension for him, and he had that career neck injury. He had the following year guaranteed for injury. They were stuck because the neck injury, there's no way he's going to pass the physical. So they just let the year become fully guaranteed because they were going to be stuck with them anyway.

12:18But you typically don't see a player get injured to the point where an injury guarantee comes into play. But teams will err on the side of caution. We don't want this guy doing anything. so we're going to make sure that we're not on the hook because he's injured and can't pass a physical when the time comes.

12:39Robert Mays: When it comes to the numbers on the deal, I think those early three-year kind of cash flows have become really important for people to look at because that's when we're talking about real money. Some of these things are theoretical. That's real money. And so I'm sure that's something you pay attention to as an agent. And then what the new money is. There have been a couple moments, and again, I keep coming back to the Stingley deal just because I think that was something where I was looking at the financial machinations of it. And I can't remember who it was that reported this, but they were saying, well, you know, he really has one year deal, one year left before the fifth year option.

13:09Robert Mays: So if you look at the average of those years, he's only making like blank. And I was like, well, why are we, I was like, why are we not reporting the new money numbers for this? And we are reporting it for other people. So, and the single one is interesting because if you look at it, he, he was making 11 million in 2025 this year and 17.6 in 2026. Now he's making 12 million this year and 27 million next year. So when you're looking at that and you're trying to square an extension that raises the number in a couple of years that were already on there, plus the extension, like how do you make sense of how those two sets of numbers start blending together when we're looking at some of these extensions?

13:52Okay, anytime you have, I'd not say anytime, but most times you have years left on your contract the negotiation is how much new money over how many new years that some of it's going to get allocated back to your current years now stingley you've confused the cap number with the cash because the cash was a little over 5.4 million this year they were factoring in they were going to pick up the fifth year option with the pro bowl so it's going to be 17.59 million so they were going to pick that up. He had basically 23 million in cash left over the two years. Gotcha. When you look at it, there really is 90 million of new money over the three new years.

14:34He actually has a tremendous cash flow because when you start looking at how much new money he has through the first new year, which is 2027, he's got like 51 % of his new money through the first new year. Now, that's front-loaded. He's got 75 % of the new money through the second new year. Now, what's considered a neutral deal, in my opinion, is if you have a three-year extension, then you're neutral, not front-loaded or back-loaded. if you have 33.3 % of your new money after the first new year, then 66.7 % of your new money after the second new year. So structurally, he is fine. Now, his situation is similar to what Chris McCaffrey's was in 2020.

15:27That deal got done so early with the Panthers that they didn't exercise a fifth-year option because it was like early April. But you knew you were going to exercise the fifth year option. So you factor that in the equation. So when you were figuring out his 16 million in change of new money over the four new, the 60, like 64 million in change of new money over the four new years, averaging a shade over 16 million, you had to factor that into the equation. That's why typically when you have an extension, it's the new money over the new years. One of the craziest instances was Aaron Donald, I think in 2022.

16:08He had three years left on his contract for$55 million because he did a six-year extension, which was really too long, and the market had changed. They didn't ask for any new years. I thought they would ask for one or two new years. They just added$40 million to the deal. They basically ripped it up, renegotiated it. That rarely happens. So that's probably more of an outlier than what is the norm. If you look at Max Crosby this year, he had two years remaining on the contract he signed, I think it was 2021 or whatever year that was. It's a three-year extension for$106.5 million. That's how much new money they added.

16:47And there's three new years. That's why it's$35.5 million per year. They've allocated some of that money over the two remaining years. You're trying to get as much money as possible early, even in those situations, as opposed to a straight deal when you're on a franchise tag or a free agent deal.

17:05Robert Mays: So when a team is kind of reallocating some of that 90 million to earlier years, and if you look at the cap hits for the Derek Singley contract, it is interesting. You're right. It's a very smooth contract. It's not backloaded where you have these big numbers at the end. His cap hits starting in 2026 are 27 million, 25 and a half, 26.5, and then 27.5. What is the benefit or the drawback to front-loading a contract like that? Because it does seem like we don't see a ton of that. Maybe I'm just not noticing if it's happening more than often. It's unusual because this cash flow is excellent. Anytime you do a deal earlier, the team can have a better idea how they're going to plan cap-wise.

17:47They want it to keep its cap numbers relatively flat. They're not going to spike. And the fact that he got a three-year extension with two years left is phenomenal. The year before, you had Patrick Sertan II, who did reset the quarterback market at$24 million per year. He did a four-year extension. I didn't see that market going to$30 million. J.C. Horn got to$25 million, which I wasn't expecting. But then Sertan, he did a good job in terms of where the market was when he signed. no one was contemplating he was going to be named defensive player of the year because the Broncos got what you always try to do.

18:28The moral of the story is the earlier you extend the contract for a great player, a good to great player, the cheaper it's going to be for you. Just imagine if they made him play out the fourth year. He's heading into the fifth year option as the reigning defensive player of the year.

18:45Robert Mays: After Stingley gets$30 million a year. Yeah, or maybe Stingley's not even won. And even in the market or not, what do you think he's going to get? Now, the guy who's probably popping bottles right now, although he had a down year by his standards in 2024, is Sauce Garmer. High end contracts are made to be surpassed. So anytime a deal is done in the marketplace and from the agent standpoint, you have to expect that if you put a number out there, that someone's going to top it. He's going to be looking at Stingley as a salary floor. You saw that with the edge rusher market. The ink was barely dry on Max Crosby's contract before Miles Garrett got to 40 million per year.

19:28Robert Mays: So the point about the Aaron Donald deal and ripping it up and not actually doing an extension, putting new years on it, takes me to a question we actually got from a listener named Christian. And he was talking about Josh Allen. And he asked, what is the benefit of ripping up a contract and starting fresh versus adding new years to it with an extension? How would the dead money and structure from the old contract be accounted for with the new contract, or does it even have to be? Oh, you're not starting fresh. The bonus proration, which was already in existence, remains. For 2025, Josh Allen already had$28.7 million of combined bonus proration between his renegotiation signing bonus from when he did the extension.

20:12The restructures. So that stays on the books. they didn't get a huge amount of cap relief from his deal. I think his cap number was like 44-7, and now it's like 36-6 because he got like a$56 million signing bonus, and they lowered his base salary to league minimum. He had four years left on his deal. Now, part of the problem is his own doing. He signed a six-year extension. He came in 2021. This was after Patrick Mahomes did the lifetime contract. which they're going to have to keep in your chest because I've never seen anyone do a 10-year extension with two years left on your rookie contract.

20:54And that thing became outdated a lot quicker than I ever thought it would. So he signs for$43 million a year, gives up six years. Typically at that time, quarterbacks were signing for four new years. like Carson Wentz and Jared Goff, those extensions of the rookie contracts after three years were four-year extensions. Russell Wilson signed a four-year extension in Seattle. Aaron Rodgers signed a four-year extension with Green Bay before he did the last one for$50 million a year. So him going to six years was a little surprising. Deshaun Watson's Texans deal was a four-year extension. So he signs for six years at$43.5 million per year.

21:41The market dramatically changed. So he's named NFL MVP. So you got a problem. He's way underpaid. He didn't do what I thought he would do. If you're going to rip it up, you're the reigning MVP. He was focused on what is my cash over the next two, three, four years, and was looking at who was making the most cash over those years, which was Dak Prescott or either Patrick Mahomes, depending upon how many years you're looking at. Yeah, so he's got$220 million over the next four years. Over the six years, he should have the highest average salary of anybody, which would put him ahead of Dak Prescott, but he didn't do that.

22:26He's now under contract for six years. The market is going to change again, and at some point he's going to be underpaid. But I I do remember him saying when he signed his contract and as an agent, it's your job to execute your client's wishes. He didn't need to be the highest paid player. He just wanted to be paid well and leave money for the team to bring other talent around. That's all well and good, but that usually doesn't work out. I remember Derek Carr when he got that big deal with the Raiders at$25 million per year several years ago. He was the highest paid player in the league. Yeah, he was.

23:06Highest paid player in the league. He specifically said, I'm leaving money on the table so we can re-sign for real money.

23:16Robert Mays: After getting the biggest deal in league history. I'm leaving money on the table. Got traded to the Bears. I was going to ask you about that. I'm glad you brought up the point that as an agent, your job is not necessarily to get the biggest number possible. And I think that speaks to kind of an interesting push and pull. I know you've talked about this in the past, the idea of how players could potentially exert every ounce of leverage they have in order to drive up contracts, not only at their position, but the idea of fully guaranteed contracts overall. And what it would take to do that is a quarterback of the highest quality, taking something the distance, having two franchise tags and really exerting every ounce of leverage they have.

23:58Robert Mays: essentially is something that's akin to what happened with Dak Prescott, but for one of the two, three best quarterbacks in the league. But for Josh Allen, if you're already an obscenely rich man and you don't really want to create bad blood with the franchise, you know you're going to play for for the next 10 years, and they're offering you$220 million over four years, I'm sure you're saying to Patrick Collins, Pat, I'll just take the money. I don't need this. And that part of it, I think, probably goes underrepresented and under talked about when we figure out and try to discern why these things have the end points they do sometimes?

24:34Yeah. Sometimes you look at a deal and you go, how did that happen? Then you can kind of deduce that must've been player driven, not agent driven. I'll give an example of a specific agent that what happened wasn't what he wanted. A lot of people think Tom Brady always took home count discounts. He didn't start doing that until he was like 33, 34 years old. His contract in 2010, making the highest paid player in the league at$18 million per year. And then like three, four years later is when he started giving the huge hometown discounts. Do you think Don Yee wanted to give those hometown discounts?

25:10I'd say no. That was Tom Brady wanting him to do that. So those are his marching orders. Don Yee also represents Jimmy Garoppolo. So what happened with Jimmy Garoppolo after he got traded and his rookie contract expired? The 49ers briefly made Jimmy Garoppolo the highest paid player in the league. So that kind of tells me if it's left to Don E's own devices, he has wide latitude to do what he wants. He's going to make his players the highest paid player in the league. But Tom Brady got to the point where he's like, well, I'm trying to win more rings and I'll leave money on the table. Now, this is where this becomes a problem.

25:53The Patriots are going to go to other players and go, Tom Brady didn't need every last dollar. Why do you? So that's really the conundrum. So buying into that whole Patriot thing, they were definitely using that to their advantage. Tom didn't need to set the market. Now, I think it's unreasonable to ask somebody coming off of a rookie contract when they've never made real NFL money. It's real money by real life standards for the average person. But if you've never made significant NFL money, no one should be asking someone on their first veteran contract to do something like that. We just saw Aaron Rodgers play for below market.

26:41You can say he's diminished, but there's no way he's worth$13 million per year.

26:45Robert Mays: Yeah, it's Daniel Jones money. Yeah, exactly. This is a guy that took every last dollar with Green Bay. You saw Drew Brees drove a hard bargain with the Saints until those last two contracts when he left money on the table so they could try to win another Super Bowl, which they didn't. But when you get later in your career, that's when it's going to make more sense. The last thing I'll ask you before we take a quick break, another listener was asking, you mentioned this with Josh Allen, how his deal actually didn't provide that much cap relief for the bills after signing that extension. But we hear a lot about how certain contract extensions do provide cap relief.

27:24Robert Mays: So how exactly do extensions done in the middle of a contract provide a team immediate cap relief? Well, you really get it more if you have a guy who's in the last year of his contract and you haven't restructured the contract a ton of times, because if you've restructured multiple times, not only do you have the original proration, but you have proration from a first restructure, maybe a second restructure. So that's going to limit the amount of cap space you can create. So let's say you've got a pretty big base salary in the last year, they maybe restructured it once. Let's say I have a$20 million base salary.

28:03You can create your own cap room. Doesn't matter what the team's cap situation is. You can drop your base salary down to lead minimum. And let's say you do a four-year extension. You can pro-rate a signing bonus over the life of a contract up to a maximum of five years. So let's say you get a$30 million signing bonus. Then that$30 million signing bonus is counting 30 divided by five is 6 million per year over the existing year and the four new years. So you've got a$6 million signing bonus. Say you drop your base salary down to league minimum salary and say there's maybe 5 million existing per ration.

28:41So now you've got a cap number of like 13 million as opposed to a cap number of like 25 million.

28:49Robert Mays: So what happens to that$12 million? Is it just reallocated into the rest of the contract over the course of that extension? um yeah well you're gonna have a signing bonus which gets prorated and you're chopping down the base salary so you're gonna have some new money in the existing year but that's how you lower the cap number because you're gonna take the base salary it's gonna drop down and that money's gonna get prorated so proration i do want to i define before we keep going here just because i do think it's important another listener asked you know when we're looking at a cap number in a given year.

29:25Robert Mays: And let's say a player is slated to make$30 million against the cap. That player is not getting$30 million in cash that year for the most part. And explaining the differences and why that's the case, a lot of that cap number is defined and kind of dictated by what the proration looks like. And so it's not as simple. And we had other people ask about this. In a previous era of the NFL, when there were less restructures, less option bonuses, for the most part, at a simple level, a player's cap number was probably the combination of his salary cap or her signing bonus proration plus whatever his base salary was that year.

30:00Robert Mays: Now you look at some of these deals, there's like seven different things that you have to add up in order to get to a player's salary cap number. Just anecdotally, do you feel like that figure is a little bit harder to figure out now because of all of the levers that teams are pulling in figuring out ways to manipulate the cap? Yeah, well, I'll use kind of Dak Prescott as an example. When he signed after his first franchise tag in 2021, the Cowboys planned on restructuring that contract. They restructured it, I think, four times before he did his deal, right before the regular season started last year.

30:39So you've got tons of different sets of proration right there, even though they gave him a record signing bonus of like$78 million. I think they picked up like$20 million in cap space, but it was only that much because of all the different sets of proration. Now, there were a couple of teams that prior to the pandemic and prior to a change in philosophy, the Raiders in Tampa Bay did pay-as-you-go contracts where your cap and cap numbers were the same. where they didn't give any signing bonuses. They had guarantees in the first two years of the contract. They didn't restructure contracts. So once the guarantees were done, you didn't have any dead money when you released the player.

31:31Now, all that went out the window for Tampa Bay for one good reason. When you sign a quarterback in his 40s, you don't care about long-range planning. Everything is today, short term. And then they started restructuring every contract known to mankind after they won that first Super Bowl, trying to keep the team together. So it all went out the window. Reggie McKenzie did a great job as general manager in terms of cleaning up the Raiders salary cap, which was a mess before he got there. It was like a two-year job to clean it up. And he started the pay-as-you-go concept. And then when John Gruden came in as head coach, the whole philosophy switched and they started restructuring contracts left and right.

32:17And I don't necessarily think they've recovered from the great work Reggie McKenzie did in cleaning up the salary cap.

32:24Robert Mays: I want to hit on the idea of cash-rich ownership and just the idea of cash flow and how that affects the way the team's operators should. But before we do that, I actually want to just kind of dig down here and identify and define some key terms that people were curious about. So let's take a quick break, and then I want to come back and talk about some of those pretty simple but important ideas. Football season has arrived, and with the U.S. Bank's Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase, including at the stadium or at home watching on a brand new TV.

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34:51Robert Mays: So the first thing, literally the first, like several comments at the bottom of my solicitation for ideas and questions last night were all about void years and just the idea of void years. And so I want to just on a pretty basic level, talk about this. I want to ask you when you first started them seeing them being used at the first time, but also when they started becoming a little bit more prevalent. And I want to talk about the benefits and the drawbacks to using these things, because as it becomes more popular, because teams that are successful, some of them are using them more often, we haven't really seen the landmines as often, I think, compared to the benefits.

35:32Robert Mays: And I want to explore both sets of that, when teams are benefited by them and when teams are bitten by them. So just on a very simple level, before we even get into that, what are void years. Okay, voiding years are fake dummy contract years, which teams typically put in a contract so they can prorate a signing or option bonus over more years. Let's say you have a straight two-year deal. You can only prorate a signing bonus over those two years. Now, let's say you tack on three dummy voiding years when you sign the guy to a two-year deal. He's still going to be up after two years, but say you had a$10 million signing bonus on a straight two-year deal.

36:14You prorate that$5 million each of those years. Now, if you've got the three dummy voiding years there, you'll have a lower cap number in the actual years while the player is there, assuming you don't extend them or convert the voiding dummy years into real years for a contract extension. You're prorating the$10 million,$2 million per year for those two real years plus the three voiding dummy years. Now, the problem with that is if the player's contract actually expires, you're going to have a$6 million cap hit in that first dummy voting year. So that's going to be dead money at that particular time.

36:51Now, an extreme case of that was when Tampa Bay started changing their philosophy. They extended Tom Brady, started adding dummy voting years to his contract, then restructured it another time. And after he retired, they had$35 million of dead money, which is a salary cap charge for a player no longer on the roster, from his boy dummy years. The Vikings last year with Kirk Cousins had$28.25 million of dead money because he did an extension in 2022 where they tacked on a couple of dummy boarding years to get the cap number as low as possible. and then they did a restructure the following year tacked on a couple of other dummy boarding years when they were creating cap space and after his contract expired that left him with 28.25 million dollars of a cap hit and dead money for the 2024 league year.

37:51Robert Mays: Stevie Ray a listener asked a question that I think is a good question but it has a simple answer and he said why add so many void years to the end of a contract if it's all going to accelerate onto the first year after the deal anyway. And I think the answer, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, let's say you have an option bonus in the last real year of a contract and you have four dummy years onto it. Now you're taking on 25 % of that option bonus rather than 50 % of that option bonus. So if you're trying to create the smallest cap number possible, having a several void years so you can do option bonuses later into the deal does benefit you from a cap perspective.

38:29Robert Mays: Would you say that's correct? Yeah, that's correct. Or when you do the deal, you just tack on a bunch of voiding dummy years in there. That's what Dallas or Dak Prescott anticipating that they're going to restructure the contract. Or restructuring it. That's a good point. Because then you can do it over those five years after you do the restructure if you convert it into another signing bonus. It's not just option bonuses. Instead of being able to restructure over four years, you have the voiding years, dummy years built in. You can automatically prorate over five. you better make sure you're doing it with the right guys.

39:01Because if you do it with the wrong guy who falls off a cliff, you've got a problem, you're going to have a ton of dead money. I remember Philadelphia picked the wrong guy to do an option bonus contract with. And this was before they started going to the extreme like with Jalen Hurts. Carson Wentz. They immediately realized their credit. They made a mistake. He had a huge option bonus in the second year. but when they released in between a signing bonus and option bonus at the time it was a record of like 33.8 million dollars in debt money that's no longer the record um the broncos now own it for a single year and combined debt money with russell wilson they used it's only 50 because

39:47Robert Mays: they used the june 1st it should have been 85 the future years so the future years wouldn't accelerate into 2024. So it was split 53 million in 2024. They've got a$32 million cap charge in 2025. That's 85 of total dead money. So 33 doesn't seem so bad compared to what have you had to reframe the way that you think about dead money and how teams plan for it and work around it? Because I remember even as recently as I think it was probably right around when that Wentz deal happened. And anecdotally, I think the examples that come to mind for me, the Antonio Brown contract and what the Steelers were willing to eat, the Carson Wentz deal, Brandon Cooks, that Brandon Cooks trade, they ate a ton of dead money the Rams did.

40:37Who hasn't traded Brandon Cooks?

40:38Robert Mays: Yeah, when the Rams traded Brandon Cooks, they took on a big dead money. And I think it'll take on a lot. I think it was right around that time that I started kind of telling myself, like your old way of thinking about this, where a team won't do this because they won't eat that level of dead money. You've got to update your frames of reference here because teams are willing to do it. So have you had to go through a similar process? And how do you think that lack of fear of dead money has kind of shifted the way that teams are willing to operate these days? Yeah. Some teams aren't afraid of dead money anymore.

41:12It used to be you tried to avoid dead money at all costs. But now teams are expecting we're going to have a certain amount of dead money. As long as the cap keeps going up a pretty decent percentage each year, then you're going to be more comfortable carrying it. Now, getting back to something I didn't answer for what you asked earlier, one of the reasons you started seeing an increase of voting dummy years related to the loss of revenue with the pandemic. The salary cap dropped from$198.2 million in 2020 to$182.5 million in 2021. Teams typically do cap planning and three-year snapshots. Although they will forecast conservatively, they were anticipating an increase from$198.2 in 2020, not expecting it to backslide like$17 million.

42:04So teams which never put any voting dummy years in their contracts like the Steelers had to that year. And that taught me that if you really want to create cap room, you can from what the Saints did. The Saints are very aggressive in how they push salary cap obligations from today into tomorrow. They had to get rid of about$100 million of cap commitments to be in compliance when the 2021 league year started. So I'm like, man, this is going to be tough. They even did that and found enough room to put a franchise tag on Marcus Williams. So if you want to push cap obligations out to the morrow and use 14 dummy years to do it, you can't.

42:51Now it's starting to bother the Saints because it's an aging roster. They have to keep the structure in these contracts. Teams will typically do that more when they think they have a window or opportunity to win. Saints haven't done much winning in recent years. So it's kind of a mess where they probably need to just blow it up for a year or two and start over. if Tyler Shuck is the quarterback of the future that buys them some time because he's a second round pick and that's a very cheap contract to have your quarterback for the future for

43:30Robert Mays: at least the next three years do you think it's inevitable if you operate that way that eventually at some point down the road it's going to be messy for you and we've seen it happen with the Saints. And I think the question that people have about the Eagles is, is it possible to do this and to get away scot-free at the end of the day? Or whether it's five, six, seven years from now, whatever the day is, there will eventually have to be some sort of reckoning. How would you answer that? Well, the thing is nobody would be looking what the Eagles are doing if they weren't winning. If you don't win and do that, you have major problems.

44:08They're winning, so everyone's looking that is a potential way to manage the cap. Now, you better pick the right players where you're going to do what they're doing with the multiple option bonuses and contracts. Now, like with Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown, Saquon Barkley, et cetera. You pick the wrong guys, then you're going to have some major problems. Now, fortunately, they're picking what seem to be safe guys. Super Bowl MVP, you're probably going to have to extend him at some point. So you keep playing that game with him. So that works out. They also carry a pretty decent amount of dead money in the process.

44:47So they keep cap numbers low during the current years, which allows them to carry more dead money than you would otherwise. So it kind of works in concert.

44:59Robert Mays: A.J. Brown, looking at his contract, I think he's actually a really good example here. And the money in proration that eventually starts to add up over the course of those void years, looking at AJ Brown's deal. He has a$53 million cap hit in 2023 when he's not on the team. That's the void year. So if you're the Eagles and you know, that's coming at the end of the line, how do you avoid that? Like, how do you work around it? What's the best possible outcome for the Eagles and that sort of number? I believe Jalen Hurts used to have a monster one too, but I think they tweaked it somehow where now it's a little bit lower.

45:33Robert Mays: So that potential landmine that's waiting for the Eagles in 2030. What is the best possible outcome for them with A.J. Brown's deal? Well, I'm assuming this is his last real contract. They did something unusual. They had three years left. They extended him with three years. I think they kind of had to out of necessity for one reason. Devonta Smith, they made him at the time, I think he was the highest second wide receiver at the same amount of money A.J. Brown was making. So you can't have your one and your two, although year one has multiple years left on his contract, have the same average per year.

46:07So they extended him. Now, the Eagles have been known to manipulate the cap in a way where one of the things I think ownership will try to take away or get the union agreed to is when you're using a post-U1 designation, if you make some sort of adjustment to a contract before the end of the regular season, then you can still use a post-U1 designation. You can turn a fake dummy year into a real year and do that, which is what they've done a couple of times. If they're still allowed to do that, I suspect at the time when the time comes, they'll take his cap hit over two years by turning that first dummy voting year into a real year and then have a mechanism where they know they aren't going to keep them around and then use the post-U1 designation and split it over two years.

46:58Robert Mays: That makes sense. I think that's part of the point I want to drive home for folks It's like the money has to get paid at some point. Like you can prorate it to hell and back, but eventually you have to pay it. I think it's just a matter of trying to figure out ways to make that payment as painless or as pain-free as possible at the end of the day. And doing that way where that 53 gets turned into 21 one year, 33 the next, that's still a lot of money. But when the cap is, I don't know, what's the cap going to be in 2030? $380 million? dollars, 20 million. Yeah. It's like so much. It's not that big of a deal.

47:37Robert Mays: And so I do think that's important. I want to just talk very quickly as it relates to the Eagles, but also a lot of other teams. What is the relationship is how, as you would describe it between void years and cash spending for teams. So the way that I see it and the way I think that teams have taken advantage of this is if you have a lot of void years, if you have a lot of proration, if you're keeping these cap numbers low, you can spend a lot more cash than the salary cap would indicate that you can. And it seems like that is a competitive advantage that teams like the Eagles are tapping into and other teams are as well, but not everybody is.

48:10Well, there are two budgets for each team. There's a cash budget and a cap and a cap and the salary cap. So if you're a cash rich team, then you're in a better position to spend. Now, when you're doing what the Eagles do, with avoiding dummy years, then you're going to have low cap numbers throughout. So I'm not necessarily sure there's a relation to their cash spending, but you are in one sense able to spend more cash because you're not going to have huge cap numbers. So I guess you could say because our cap numbers are low, then we can be incentivized to go out and spend particularly for winning.

48:44Now, one thing people are talking about maybe getting rid of the avoiding dummy years, that's Roger Goodell was talking about, I think another issue you may want to look at from a team standpoint is the change which took place for the 2011 CBA. Prior to that, in the 2006 CBA and previous CBAs, you couldn't just affirmatively carry over unused cap room from one year to the next. So the league-wide cap number is$279.2 million. Most teams aren't working off of$279.2 million. The Buffalo Bills have the lowest, what's called an adjusted salary cap, because you have your room that you carry over. They had about 1.6 million they carried over from 2024.

49:29But they also had a ton of not likely to be earned incentives that people achieved. So that you take your likely to be earned incentives that weren't achieved and your not likelies that were. And there's a year in reconciliation. They lost a lot of cap space that way because they do a lot of incentives and contracts. Their adjusted salary cap, the lowest in the league for 2025, is$273.17 million. That is under the league-wide cap. Now, the other end of the spectrum is the San Francisco 49ers. They carried over$50 million of cap space from 2024. They actually got a credit from the incentive reconciliation.

50:15So they have the highest adjusted salary cap at a shade over$341 million. Now, the average adjusted salary cap, if you just take every team and average it out, is about$292 million. So the league-wide cap is$279.2 million, but teams really are working on average with$292 million in cap space. if you want to curb spending you can't carry over cap room because that's going to take out a ton basically i think that's what about 30 million dollars of cap space this year collectively

50:48Robert Mays: if you did that what what do you think is why do you think that's a bad thing for the league do you do because that doesn't players it's great for players but if ownership is talking about we want to curb spending we want to talk about ways to prevent the cap from being manipulated That's one. I'm just saying if you're looking at ways to put the breaks on things, that's one way you can do it. The voiding dummy years have been around forever. They originally were in rookie contracts, pre-rookie wage scale dating back to the late 90s with first round picks. The way the rookie contracts worked back then, each team had a rookie pool number.

51:29You didn't know what the specific amount assigned to each pick was. It was a zero-sum game. So if you were a late-round pick, you wanted to get done before the first-round pick because once they ran out of money, you were SOL. So teams started cheating the rookie pool, so to speak, by doing small first-year cap numbers with a signing bonus and small base salary. The second year, they'd have an option bonus and then stick a couple of voiding years, which would void based on minimal play time. That was the first time I ever saw avoiding dummy years. No, avoiding years, not avoiding dummy years. You started seeing option bonuses come into play with veteran contracts, maybe early to mid 2000s.

52:17And then they kind of fell out of favor and started coming back in the last few years. But now the avoiding dummy years are something I think teams like the Saints and the Raiders, was when Al Davis was still alive right around 2007, 8, 9. That's when those first started coming into existence. The voiding years, the years was automatically void on a specific date. So that's maybe a past 10, 12 year phenomenon.

52:49Robert Mays: I'd be really curious to like inject some truth serum into some of these cap guys and be like, all right, what was the moment where you realized, aha, we can do this? Like, was it because of the pandemic? Was it somebody going back through some old contracts and finding that? That would be a fun fact-finding mission to actually understand the genesis of how it got reintroduced into the league today when it was the vestige of a previous era. Because you didn't see option bonuses for a while. I remember Joe Flacco, when he signed his big deal after he played out of his mind for four games in the playoffs, he had a signing bonus and two option bonuses.

53:23I was like, wow, I haven't seen that too often. Now, two option bonuses, it's like that's rather routine. The Eagles took it to an extreme with Jalen Hurts. I'd never seen a contract where you had five option bonuses. In a sense, what they're doing is because they took it to the maximum extreme is everything in the option bonus is only salary left is minimum base salary. So they're basically doing pre-restructures each year. Now, you never saw more than two option bonuses until then. And then you've had some teams which have started to mimic that. Some Niners contracts have more than two option bonuses.

54:05The Eagles are doing it as a matter of course. The Jaguars with Trevor Lawrence, they used the multiple option bonus concept. But it's something which just started. And the Jalen Hurts contract is the one where you started seeing it on steroids.

54:21Robert Mays: And the benefits of that, obviously. let's say you're treating the option bonus essentially as you would have treated a base salary. Why is it better to have an option bonus in year three that you can convert to a signing bonus and prorate that versus just prorating a big base salary? Why is that more advantageous for teams? Well, you're really doing the same thing. The option bonus, you're just doing it sooner rather than later because the way it actually works is the base salary is what it is. The presumption is you're going to exercise the option. So you do have the proration already built in.

54:58You may or may not exercise the option. If you don't, then it gets tricky with how you manage, how it ultimately ends up counting on the cap. But you could just have high base salaries and then convert it as the year comes up because the end result is you're going to have a ton of proration either way. One thing that teams did start doing maybe 12, 13 years ago for these salary conversions is building in the right to automatically convert salary. Back in the mid-90s, you would have to go to an agent and tell them you want to actually do a salary conversion when they're trying to get under the cap.

55:44And as an agent, My basic principle was I'm not going to do anything was going to put my player in a worse position. Now, the way that these automatic conversions are written in the addendums of contracts is you don't get if say it was all base salary, you still get the money that's converted into signing bonus paid in the same way it would have been if it was still base salary. Now, before they had automatic conversion rights, you had leverage. You could go, all right, you want to do this. You need my help to do this. Then I want some of this converted money now. Give me half of it. Give me all of it, a quarter of it during the offseason.

56:26The way they're awarded now, it's still paid like it was base salary. And I remember I did a salary conversion. I'm going to name the team for a specific player two years in a row. The third year they came back to me, I told the cap guy, You got to give me something besides an accelerated signing bonus payment. I want a little more money. Just a nominal amount is a give-fave gesture for me doing you a favor. I got cursed out over that.

56:55Robert Mays: Well, it's also, it feels like there's a slight downside to that because if the proration starts to build up, isn't there incentive for a team to move on from that player when they might not have before? I'm like, we're starting to have all this proration stack up. but it could also be now the teams aren't as afraid of dead money you're right but back then it could work both ways if you have so much dead money that man he's too hard to get rid of might as well just keep him it's the same as if he's not on the roster right but that's interesting start looking at it is he worth this much in salary and that'll make the determination just as much if not more is how much proration is there going to be He's like, well, he's not playing up to a level of someone who's going to make$20 million or$25 million this year.

57:44We need to ask him to take a pay cut. So that becomes a whole different dynamic, which gets factored into that equation.

57:51Robert Mays: The last thing I'll ask you about the option bonuses, the Trevor Lawrence contract is one I was going to bring up, because like you mentioned, he has four option bonuses and they are healthy option bonuses. It's$35 million every single year. And you look at it, and again, it's similar to what base salaries would be for the most part when you think about the scope of the guarantees. So the option bonus is guaranteed in 25 and 26 fully. The option bonus in 2027, which is year three of the extension, is$29 million of that is guaranteed at signing. So in a hypothetical world, let's say Trevor Lawrence got cut.

58:23See how the reporting of that is a little bit wrong. Okay, interesting. So he's making$41 in base salary that year, and then it's going to reduce once they exercise the option. Now,$29 is fully guaranteed at signing. The remaining$12 million becomes fully guaranteed a year early. So all$41 is guaranteed in 2026. So if they were going to release them in 2027, they're probably going to exercise the option to do it and cut them with a post-G1 designation because they're on the hook for that money anyway. And if they did it that way, I think they'd have$34.5 million as a cap hit in 2027. And then because all the bonus preparation that's already in the deal, there'd be 43 in 2028.

59:16So the way that contract is structured, they're basically stuck with him. When they did that deal, they were making a commitment to him that he's going to be there for at least three, four years. Whether he deserves that or not, that's up for you to decide. But they went all in on Trevor Lawrence.

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1:02:13Robert Mays: The last question I have for you when it comes to proration. I'm curious, what do you think are the right or wrong ways to use the benefits of proration on a new deal? And this is a loaded question because I'm pointing you in a specific direction. The Bengals not lowering the cap hits on the two receivers they signed this year and not using that proration to their advantage. How much of an issue do you actually think that is when teams aren't willing to pull those levers that are available to them and pull the same levers that most other teams are willing to use? Well, that's more the old way of looking at it where being able to get something from an old way, huh?

1:02:50Go figure. But anyway, you give yourselves a little more flexibility if you don't really like dead money, which maybe they don't. So I don't think they're a team that restructures a lot of contracts anyway. They're not. They like to not have dead money, so you're willing to have higher cap numbers. It's going to limit how much you can improve your team because the more cap space you have to work with, if you have lower cap numbers in the current years, then theoretically you should be able to go out to acquire more talent. Now, the Bengals finally did something which got them into the 21st century.

1:03:29outside of Joe Burrow they hadn't guaranteed money outside of signing bonus but veteran contracts they made an exception with the two receivers so that's a little bit of progress for the Bengals the Steelers were in that same boat until T.J. Watt in 2021 they started making exceptions with Mika Fitzpatrick and then with D.K. Metcalf the Packers are still behind the Bengals in this regard the only players that have ever gotten guarantees out of signing bonus are Aaron Rodgers on multiple contracts and Jordan Love. Everybody else, only guaranteed money is signing bonus. They'll have unsecured roster bonuses in year two and maybe year three, but they're unsecured.

1:04:12So you can still get cut. That was Nick Perry several years ago, had a pretty big roster bonus in the third year of his contract. They cut him before it was due.

1:04:22Robert Mays: Taking this a little bit wider, I'm curious how much you think the cash fluidity of ownership should factor into the ability to kind of spend and manipulate the cap these days. Because the way that I look at it, when you didn't have minority ownership stakes or you couldn't tap into private equity money, if you had a family business where you just didn't have the cash on hand, I could understand being a little bit more frugal and a little bit more cautious in some of the financial decisions you were willing to make. Now, it seems to me, at least from the outside looking in, that most organizations, if they wanted to, could be operating from a place where they could throw some of this money around.

1:05:04Robert Mays: Do you think that this is a pushback, similar to what we were talking about before, that the spending has gotten a little bit out of control and some teams are just trying to draw a line in the sand? Or do you feel like if teams wanted to, they could kind of get into an arms race with everyone else because of some of the outside money that is now available to them? Well, if you wanted to, you probably could with the outside money get into an arms race. But I hope the NFL doesn't start looking at another league, which is trying to curtail spending the NBA in what they're doing, where you've got a luxury tax and then that money gets more onerous, the more you spend and now start having a tax apron, a second tax apron, which has adverse cap consequences.

1:05:56So if they really wanted to start curtailing spending, they would start looking in that direction and try to sell the union on it. Obviously, Anytime owners, billionaires want something, they can get it from the standpoint that they will lock players out. Billionaires can outweigh millionaires. So we'll see how serious Roger Goodell and ownership is about trying to extract some of these concessions they're talking about, which would make it harder for you to, quote unquote, manipulate the cap.

1:06:38Robert Mays: I'm wondering from a multi-year standpoint as teams think about their cash spending is it a situation where teams that spend a lot of cash maybe over a two or three year period try to offset it by scaling back maybe as they enter into a different portion of their franchise I'm thinking about two different teams here like you look at the cash spending for a team like the Niners over the past few years before this offseason and especially before they started signing a couple of those extensions and then you look at the cash spending of a team like the Bills last year when they pruned a little bit compared to some of the two, three years previous.

1:07:11Robert Mays: When you look at that, do you think that teams are trying to say, all right, if we've been really aggressive for a two or three year period, at some point we have to pull it back? Or do you think that other teams are trying to be a little bit more consistent in how much they're spending cash-wise year over year? Well, the minimum spending requirements are in three-year snapshots. The first one was 2021 through 2023. We just started. The second period is 2024 through 2026. You don't have to spend a specific amount any particular year. You just have to spend 90 % of the cap in cash by cap, not your adjusted cap, but the league-wide cap.

1:07:47So they already catch a little break that way. The Niners don't have to spend 90 % of their adjusted caps, just the league-wide cap. So I remember a couple of years ago, the Bears didn't really spend a lot for two years and they were tracking to be under the 90 percent spending amount and then spent a lot of money and got over. We've never had a team which didn't hit the 90 percent spending minimum. There's also another spending minimum league wide over these periods. It's 95 percent of the cap and cash. So we've never had that come into play as well. but you do see teams have peaks and valleys through the three-year periods.

1:08:29Cowboys have gone through a year or two where they're not spending and then all of a sudden they spend a lot of money with extensions because they're not a big team in free agency and they end up being fine in terms of spending although Jerry is one of your cash rich owners so if he really wanted to he could spend like he's the New York Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers.

1:08:50Robert Mays: Yeah he chooses not to do that, which that's an entirely different conversation. I'm curious how often it's a function of ownership and how often it's a function of trying to set yourself up for the best multi-year plan, right? So the Bears are a very good example of this. If you look at the cash spending when Ryan Poles took over, they were spending no cash whatsoever. They were very, very frugal. And I think in part because they had been a little bit more aggressive in the previous regime. The same thing goes for the first year or two even of the Terry Fontenot era with the Falcons. If you look at their cash spending in year one with him compared to what they had done in the last couple of years of the Matt Ryan, Julio Jones era, they definitely scaled it back.

1:09:29Robert Mays: And I'm curious whether that's a directive from ownership where they come in and say, listen, we've pushed the pedal to the limit over the last couple of years. I need you to pull back a little bit and save this year. Or is that do you think the front office personnel saying, hey, I'll spend a little bit less now. I want to be able to spend a little bit more in a couple of years. That's probably more of a directive from ownership, but sometimes it kind of works out that way. If you're very aggressive in free agency one year, you typically aren't going to be very aggressive the next year. And let's say you're good players that you're going to extend.

1:10:05They've already been extended, so you're not going to have the same huge cash outlay that you would than if you had guys that were your core players and needed to be extended. So some of it can kind of be circumstance, some of it can kind of be designed, but that's definitely ownership factoring into the equation for the cash budget.

1:10:26Robert Mays: I have two more questions for you. The first, kind of getting back to how we were treating option bonuses in void years. Talk to me a little bit about the idea of insurance. When, how long has it been around? And when did it start becoming a little bit more popular with some of these teams, the Eagles, others that have been pretty aggressive in how often they're trying to use it? I think the first contract I can recall with insurance was the first time the Niners reworked Alex Smith's rookie contract. And the insurance, that's maybe 2007 or something, eight around that time. But his insurance clause was different than it was today.

1:11:09He had to buy a policy and name the club as the beneficiary. Now, the team buys insurance, so it's totally changed. And I remember maybe the first one in the more conventional way was an Eli Manning one in like 2009 or 10. The thing is, you don't get a dollar for dollar break for cap relief if someone gets hurt for a significant amount of time. First of all, it works like your car insurance would. There's a deductible in terms of the number of games, whether it's three, four, five games you have to miss before it starts kicking in. And let's use Deshaun Watson. You're really getting the break on the bonus proration in your current year, and then you may get a break in the future years for as well, but they're not going to get 46 million of cap relief.

1:12:10I'd be surprised if it is over 10 or 11.

1:12:15Robert Mays: The last thing I want to ask you about, and this is something that I even struggle with when I'm trying to figure out how easy it's going to be to trade a player, what the circumstances are when you're trying to trade a player. I think a good example of this is Jalen Ramsey right now, and just trying to figure out how hard it is to trade that contract. So if you look at it, you know, I think typically when we, before we had a lot of these option bonuses, you look at the base salary and that maybe combined with the roster bonus is what a new team would be on the hook for if they were trading for a player.

1:12:44Robert Mays: Well, Jalen Ramsey has a minimum base salary this year, but he has a$20 million option bonus that needs to be picked up in week one. So the base salary might as well be$21 million. So when teams are trying to make these trades, what cap charges and financial considerations factor into these deals and which side of the trade has to take on that money? And how do those conversations typically go? His is more complicated from the standpoint that he's not he may not be worth the remaining years in his contract. So you probably have to renegotiate the contract as well. But these extended windows for option bonuses are new.

1:13:28I think the first time I really noticed one was Aaron Rodgers with the last Packer deal where they had the long windows just in case he decided to retire because he was starting to become Brett Favre in that regard. Am I going to play or not going to play? So you start to see those a little bit more nowadays, because if you had the regular window first 10 days of the league year, then. You'd be very easy to trade to someone else because they don't be taking on salary, but you're essentially taking on all 21 million. Now, how it's going to impact Miami is the The presumption is you will exercise the option.

1:14:08So they are going to have the cap hit based on the option bonus. So it was like 3.796 million. They'll get a credit back at the end of the year, just like the Niners are Debo Samuel. Debo Samuel, all that money went to the commanders, like the 16 million in salary. They're going to get credit back for the bonus per race you're relating to the option bonus for 2025. So they're still taking on all that salary. It's just that I suspect to get him traded someplace, he's going to have to take a pay cut or rework his contract in the process because I think he's making 21 this year, 21 next year, 21-7 in 2027, then 24 in 2028.

1:14:54That's a lot of money overall in a contract to take on. So a team is probably going to want to rework that contract. They may want the Dolphins to eat some salary on the way out the door as well. They're already eating$4 million because he had a March roster bonus, so that's already factored in the equation. One thing you can do if a team is tight on cap room is have the original team convert salary into signing bonus to lower what the acquiring team is taking on. The most extreme example of that was the Rams when they won the Super Bowl. Von Miller had about$8 million of salary left at the trading deadline, and they converted seven and some change into signing bonus.

1:15:42So all the Rams had to take on was minimum base salary for those weeks. So when you do that Typically the Old team is going to get The team getting rid of the players is going to get more draft compensation In return because they're Essentially buying draft picks

1:15:58Robert Mays: Yeah that's the if you look at it the price for Von Miller I can't remember exactly what it was but it was It was like a two and a three Yeah Which was a lot for a half season rental That's a ton for a half season rental and I think that's Something that I was going to bring up with you as well We don't have time to really dig into it but I think people don't often pay enough attention to how much the requiring team is taking on salary wise when you're thinking about the draft capital involved in a trade. So you get a second and a third for eight weeks of Von Miller because you're paying no base salary.

1:16:30Robert Mays: And then my favorite example recently, because I think it was really jarring because you look at some of the other prices for wide receiver trades at the time, Amari Cooper goes to the Browns for a fifth round pick. And it's because they were taking on all 20 million of that salary. So there's a sliding scale with how much you're having to pay and what sort of draft capital having to give up. They influence each other in a pretty direct way. Oh, no doubt about that. But this year, the trading deadline, pay attention to guys who are rumored to be traded. And you'll see, well, that team doesn't have enough cap space to acquire him.

1:17:05Then it's going to be, well, if he's going to go here, then the team is potentially trading him. has to eat money on the way out the door. Well, this team could take on the full cap hit. Then where is he going to go? So that will really come into play as we get close to the trade deadline.

1:17:23Robert Mays: Is that just teams can handle it however they see fit? Like there's no set of rules governing how much or how little the acquiring or trading team has to pay. Like you just have to settle on whatever sort of conclusion and arrangement works for both parties. Yeah, that becomes negotiation between those two teams. You can't include cash in a trade. So this is the workaround. It's essentially cash, but it's technically not classified as cash. Yeah. And like this, the best example of this right now is like what's happening with Kirk Cousins, right? Like if Kirk Cousins were to get traded, I assume that whoever was trading for him isn't going to want to take on that entire contract.

1:17:59Robert Mays: They're going to have a conversation about the Falcons about, we'll take them, but you got to give us$10 million essentially. Yeah. He's making his base at$27.5 million. First, who has$27.5 million to acquire him? Two, he's got to waive his no trade clause. And three, I'm not taking him on for$27.5 million if I can. So how much? I'm willing to take on$12 million. You've got to eat$15.5 million. Falcons don't want to do that, so it's a hard deal to do. Now, I put some blame on Cousins for his own situation. Do you think, how do you think Aaron Rodgers would have reacted if they drafted Michael Pinnicks right after he signed there, given how he acted with Jordan Love?

1:18:43Aaron Rodgers, they would have made sure there's no way Aaron Rodgers would be on that roster today because they would not want him coming to the locker room and infecting the whole building, given the stink he raised after Jordan Love was drafted. So he would be starting as a quarterback someplace else if Kirk Cousins adopted an Aaron Rodgers attitude. But that's just not his nature.

1:19:10Robert Mays: I've said this since it happened. It's like if Kirk wanted to be a problem, this would have come to a different conclusion, most likely. But he's just not wired that way. Like he's just too nice of a guy to work his way out of there. All right. Morris has said that. He said, yeah, I don't know what he said to Arthur Blank. But obviously it wasn't the right thing because if he was like, you don't want me in this locker room or something to that effect, then he wouldn't be there. I had clients who had to act in an uncharacteristic way to achieve a desired result that were nice guys, but they knew they had to do what they had to do to get a specific result.

1:19:53And they had no problem doing that. He's just not wired that way.

1:19:57Robert Mays: When I was looking at it, the reason that I thought they might trade him from a cap perspective, there's no benefit, right? They're going to have to take on 40 million as a cap hit if he's on the team or if he's not on the team. And I think in a lot of ways on a practical level, that's a reason to keep him because it's like we might as well. He's the best backup in the league now. My thought was, is the owner going to want to write a 20 million dollar check for a player who is not going to be their quarterback? And if he's willing to do that, then I think you do have a good argument for just keeping him in the building because there's not a lot of financial downside.

1:20:30But everybody loves the backup quarterback. So let's say Michael Penix gets off to a slow start. Now you got a quarterback controversy. Is that really the best? He's going to be the model guy and help Michael Penix. But do you really want, hypothetically, an 0-3 Falcons team where he's got three touchdowns and seven interceptions? All of a sudden, the fans are like, Kirk doesn't look that bad. And now you've kind of undermined the confidence of, because of circumstances, what's supposed to be your franchise quarterback.

1:21:07Robert Mays: This is a lot of belief in a young quarterback being able to handle whatever that dynamic is going to feel like. It'd be fun to watch that play out. Joel Corey, sincerely appreciate the time. You know, we hit void years. We hit option bonuses. We hit dummy years. We hit so many ways that the cap operates and the way that teams try to maneuver around it. And then I hope people come away from this with a better understanding of a lot of this stuff. So thank you very, very much for your time. Sure, thanks for having me. All right, guys, that's all we got. Really appreciate Joel's time. Really appreciate you joining all of us.

1:21:38Robert Mays: We will be back tomorrow with me and Derek doing our next lingering question show, potentially our last lingering question show. We have a fun few and a fun collection of them to get to tomorrow. So please be on the lookout for that. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.

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