The franchise tag is the tool of a bad franchise. It rarely works out. It usually sullies the relationship.
This is essentially what I’ve said. Those exorbitant cap numbers in the last two years will never be realized.
This is where I'm not sure if you follow the specifics of way the cap works or are glossing over a key point in restructures. If you assume those tweets are accurate or at least similar to what the real contract is, you can't do anything to reduce his cap hit when it hits only $31M. That year in the possible example shown and likely in reality will have a minimal base salary so there is nothing to restructure. Again using those tweets for illustrative purposes, they will restructure his deal once his salary goes up to $51M or cut him and cutting him would have a huge dead money hit. if they restructure both of those $51M salaries you lower his 2028 cap hit from $76M to $56M but you have also made his dead money after the deal ends $98M. As in the contract is up and the player has been paid out his cash and you still have to account for $98M against your cap and since that is all bonus cap hit that was allocated you cannot reduce it and if you sing him to another deal you still can't do anything to reduce it.
There aren't many experts inside the NFL either. Howie has lead the way for over a decade. Banner was using cap tricks with the NLTBE incentives for a decade before that. Banner also re-signed his young keepers early. Howie has essentially combined those tricks with actually taking smart risks and taking advantage of franchises that get into cap trouble to maximize his resources almost every year instead of just being a cheap ass like Banner was.
Easiest to manipulate.
You can do this up to about 55% of the cap figure, (cumulative), so if the cap is $200M you can use about $110M of cap from future years. Beyond that you run into problems of having to retain and extend under-performing players simply because the cap cost of releasing them is too high.
The Eagles are very picky choosy when it comes to who gets a bag and the level of commitment given to that player. They tend to negotiate with guys early in order to make this happen. People thought they were nuts when they renegotiated and paid Mailotta before he ever started a game. Now he’s a relative bargain at 16 million for a plus starting LT.
Tiki Barber was talking about the contract and I thought he summed it up nicely. "When it comes to QB and you find your guy, you pay your guy".
This is true. It was interesting that 3 of the final 4 teams last year had a starting QB on a cheap initial contract. However, those 3 QBs and their teams were all losers who ultimately fared little better than anyone else and the one that won had the highest paid QB in the league. My point is that I don't know what the point is...
Mahomes contract is team friendly and allows for the Chiefs to play games with their cap as well.
All teams are choosy about who gets the long-term guarantees. That isn't the issue. Pushy 'some' money back to give you greater immediate cap access isn't the issue either. Every team does that to some extent, even if they don't want to because the rookie contract signings mandate it. The issue is how much current and previous season money already paid to players hasn't been accounted for by the end of this season. That figure is how much future cap space you're borrowing. As the cap increases the percentage you can overspend increases slightly as it's easier to push 1 big money signing bonus back rather than lots of smaller bonuses. Over time the 'no problem' number has gone up from 50% to around 55%. With the cap at $224.8M you can have a cumulative overspend of $123.6M without any real issue. Teams can push it further but beyond that but it causes problems. As best as I can see here are some of the Eagles player earnings for 2023 and earlier that have been paid but won't be accounted for until 2024 at the earliest:
And by kicking the can down the road with small percentages coming due each year, they actually get more value for the dollars spent relative to a cap position. The $205 million you cite now as 91% of the cap will only account for about 68-70% of that cap in 2026 and even less in 2029.
