Free Agent Minimum Salary

[Sarah]

I don't notice it this year. I mean right now I am over the cap and because of the injuries 2 spot on my roster needs to be filled. Unfortunately I can't sign any players from the poll for minimum pay checks. How am I gonna filled up the spot where I need players? Trades? It's past 6 weeks already so I am out of luck.

What does ESPN NFL want me to do, let the hookers *ehem* I meant cheerleaders play those empty spots?

Thanks.

[zmlbc]

Cut somebody who's Salary is greater than his Cap Penalty...should free up a little space.

[Sarah]

I have no idea about NFL cap thing, but I thought that if you cut somebody, it will still count on against you. Also what do you mean when you said cut "somebody who's salary is greater than his cap"?

Thanks!!

[Kelvarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sarah

I have no idea about NFL cap thing, but I thought that if you cut somebody, it will still count on against you. Also what do you mean when you said cut "somebody who's salary is greater than his cap"? Thanks!!

If you go into the Contracts screen, then you can see a players contract and the penalty you would pay if you cut/trade a player.

He is saying cut a guy with a high salary, but low penalty and it will free up some space. If you cut a guy, you don't have to pay his remaining salary, but you do have to pay the remainder of his signing bonus the second you cut/trade him.

[jetsrusher]

I am no expert in this, so those of you who know more than me, feel free to jump in with the right answers....

To answer your original question, unfortunately I haven't found a way to fix this. You are stuck in a Catch-22 situation, and will have to restart your franchise. This first happened to me after two seasons, and I was really [****}ed off when I had to re-start. Since then I have learned to be really careful with trades and contracts.

The NFL Salary Cap is a number somewhere between 75 and 85 million that is the cap for that teams total payroll for a season. (I am not sure why there is variation- I think it has to do with certain types of contracts, or maybe they get more room if their season was bad.)

The salary cap is a YEARLY payroll. In other words, you sign a guy to a five year, $10m balanced contract, and you pay him $2m each season. Your cap-room (how much you have left before you are over the limit goes down $2m for each of those years. That part is pretty straightforward. You can change the structure of the contracts so that you have more or less cap room in other seasons depending on where you need the room. (Usually you need it this season!)

A players penalty comes about because he was given a signing bonus in his contract. A normal NFL contract does not pay a player if he is cut, retires, etc. They MUST play to get their money. A signing bonus is used by the player to get a certain portion of his contract in guaranteed money. The same $10m contract with a 20% signing bonus would guarantee the player $2m of his $10m. (NOT $12m; the bonus is a percentage of the total contract, not an addition to it.) Whether you cut him, trade him, he gets injured or quits the league to go smoke pot at Burning Man, he gets $2m of your franchise's salary cap dollars. The bonus is paid to the player in yearly installments over the course of the contract, and applies to your salary cap accordingly. In the previous example, the player will get $400,000 per year guaranteed for all five years, $1.6m for each year that he plays, and his salary will be listed as $1.6. (On this point I am a little shaky--check it out for yourself; it might list it as $2m, since technically his bonus is part of his salary.)

The penalty is the amount of signing bonus you still owe a player for the rest of his contract (you agreed to pay it no matter what). Say your guy plays for 2 years, and you decide to trade him in the third season. You still owe him $400,000 for each of the remaining three years on his contract (the new team will assume the responsibility for the rest of his salary.) This total is known as his "penalty," because the money is applied against your salary cap in a lump sum in the CURRENT season. In other words, if you trade him, after the difference in salary between the two players is figured and applied one way or the other to your total payroll, you cap-room is then reduced by his penalty, in this case $1.2m.

This means that there are certain players that you are just stuck with because their penalty is too high. (My favorite team is the Jets, and we are stuck with Curtis Martin, who is both too expensive and has too high of a penalty to ever get rid of. He will drag the team down for the next three or four seasons until his penalty is paid down enough that we can afford to cut him and find a rookie or a free-agent that can get more than 2.8 yards per carry. But I digress.) It also means that you must be extremely careful with your trades and free agents when you are approaching your cap limit. I advise you to save your franchise regularly during the off-season so that in case you mis-calculate the effect of a particular transaction, you can go back to where you were. Some might consider this cheating, but I justify it to myself by thinking that they should have given us a readout on how a particular transaction will affect the cap.

Hope this helps.

[zmlbc]

Actually, you're close but the signing bonus is paid entirely up front when the player signs the contract (hence, "signing" bonus)...However, for cap purposes the NFL allows teams to only count a fraction of that bonus against the salary cap each year over the length of the contract. So if Player X signs a 5 year contract with a $10 million signing bonus, he gets all $10 million the day he signs but his team only counts $2 million/year against the cap over 5 years...

Now if Player X leaves the team before those 5 years are up, then the remainder of the signing bonus that has yet to be counted against the cap gets accellerated and all counts in the current year...ie, if he's cut with 3 years left on the contract, then there's still $6 million in money that was paid to Player X but hasn't been counted against the cap yet, so the team takes a $6 million cap penalty.

Which is basically what you said, jetsrusher, except all the money is paid up front...the player doesn't get a bonus check for being cut.