"Contracts which reduce the player's salary once the regular season starts"...

[aston217]

I often see this message while I'm renegotiating:


Contracts which reduce the player's salary once the regular season has begun may not fit under the cap even if the cap cost of the proposal is less than the cap value available.


What does it mean? I looked at the Player Guide, and found nothing to expand on this.

In addition, for the recent example I'm thinking of, the reduced salary had exactly the effect on the player I anticipated, despite the Time of Renegotiation being Post-Week 17.

His new cap cost was as advertised. Slightly higher thanks to the bonus, but his salary count was lowered.

Under what circumstances would that not happen, and this message actually comes into play? Will a player's cap cost EVER be anything other than "New Cap Cost (as indicated on Renegotiation screen)" - "Old Cap Cost"? [Assuming he's one of the top 53 in both cases]

[MIJB#19]

You're missing the fact that the player's salary is paid out over the 17 regular season weeks.

What does that mean? Le'ts assume we have a player with a 1.7M salary and a 300K bonus. This gives a cap hit of 2.0M.
Now, we've played 8 weeks (entering week 9) and you decide to reneg down to a 850K (half the salary) salary and giving our player a 500K bonus per year extra, attemping to save 350K. Of the 1.7M salary, 800K has already been paid, so the real reduction just works for the 900K yet to be paid. And with the salary reduction (50%), that means you'll be paying him 450K and also 'saving' 450K.

With the 500K bonus extra, depsite that we shaved off 850K in base salary, we didn't save any cap space and actually will be paying 50K more than before the reneg.

[aston217]

Well, by that logic, after week 17, he will have been paid 1.7M in salary. So any renegotiations would add $x to his bonus, without reducing his salary at all.

That is more or less how I expected it to work, too. But as an example, here's a guy I renegotiated in the WC stage, post-Week 17:

Old Bonus 1.72, Old Salary 3.4.
New Bonus 3.3 (that's combined, the old + current slice of the new deal's bonus), New Salary 2.8.

I pay 1.58mm more in bonus, but shave 0.6mm in salary. The old salary should at this point be completely paid out, though, so I haven't achieved any real savings in salary. Yet his cap cost is now listed as $6.1mm, indicating a salary savings, and the current Room Under Cap number is consistent with it (it uses 6.1mm to calculate his cap contribution).

One thing I did wonder is if the game means that the listed Room-Under-Cap number is rendered inaccurate by in-season renegotiations. The game's other logic seems not to think so, though: I have 4.29mm in Room currently. I can offer a player an additional $4.29mm in bonus without the game shooting me a warning that I don't have enough cap room.

Although the game gives me a very weird number. If I offer that $4.29mm extra bonus, no complaints. If I offer $4.30mm, it tells me that my offer is a full $4.30mm over the salary cap. It seems like that's an issue with the error message spitting the wrong number back out.

I'll know more maybe, if/when this next renegotiation goes through.

[aston217]

Okay, I can confirm that salary behavior is not as billed.

I re-signed a guard I traded for this season. At the time, he had a 1-year deal with roughly $9.83mm in salary, and $0 bonus. This is during the Conference Championship stage.

As mentioned above, I had $4.29mm in cap space. I gave him a two-year deal with $4.29mm bonus in each year, and $3.8mm salary in each year. In theory, because his $9.83mm salary has been fully paid, this will take me down to $0 cap room.

Instead, after he signed the extension, I now have $6.03mm of cap space. The amount of cap space I gained was this player's [Pre-Deal Cap Cost] - [Current Deal Cap Cost], a difference of $1.7mm or thereabouts.

So my cap was deducted down to $0 from the bonus, but I freed up $6 million from salary reductions. Retroactively reducing his "pro-rated weekly salary" despite the 17 weeks of the season being over. Strange, huh?

I remember another user mentioning something about this in a past contract thread now that I think about it, and now I can confirm. This has resulted in me having $6mm more in cap space than the game seems to think I should be having.

[Yoda]

Yes, this is the way the game works. I had a huge discussion in the rnfl about it years ago. Everyone in the league telling me no, that isn't how it works, and that I was wrong.

As long as you can get the signing to go through, you will free up cap space.

[MIJB#19]

fwiw, I'm not sure how the salary is spread over the 17 regular season weeks, or over the 17 weeks + any number of the 4 weeks of playoffs, or devided over the 16 weeks where your team plays a game (heck, diving through 16 is a lot easier than 17, making calculations a lot easier).

I am sure that the math I showed above is how the game should do it. But in the past I've seen strange stuff as well, getting a 'you have only x room of space' and after the cap space filling reneg getting a reduction instead.