Cap Screwed?

[Other Guy]

I always try to sign the longest (logical) contract possible. The salary portion of the contract is backloaded, but the signing bonus is equal each year. This makes cutting/ trading much easier. Because you've pushed most of the salary to the back end, you can dump it all, while only having to pay the last few small installments of the bonus in penalties.

Rookie signings: Some may call this franchise cheese, but anyway.........We all know you can find studs/steals in the later rounds of the draft. When I have rookies asking for small or $0 bonus, I ALWAYS sign them to a 7 year contract. This way, if a guy is a stud in the 5th round, and he progresses to a 95, you have him for 7 years probably making ~300k/yr. If the guy is terrible, you can cut him anway with little or no cap hit.

[tackle74]

I got in a similar situation in my Raider's Franchise. I traded JaMarcus, Tommy Kelly & Javon Walker could not stand those huge salaries for the crap they play like in real life. I then resigned Seymour and in Season 4 boom could not keep the team going. Heck could not even sign my #1 draft pick. Restarted and traded them away season one instead of season 3 and did not resign Seymour and had 1 tight year, then boom 60 Million+ on Cap Season four. I say Dump your crap early with the Raiders and have 1 lean year. Draft well and boom you still have many good young players to build around.