Falcons: Jason La Canfora On Brent Grimes

[dmo_dlo]

(02-20-2012 09:14 PM)Beef Wrote:  Well that's just not true.

Why do you think we were waiting to see what would happen with Mike Vick's Philly contract to see if we would get cap relief? Because up front money we paid him he didn't actually earn. He still owes the Falcons around $17M. We're listed as a creditor on his bankruptcy. And whenever he actually pays Blank some money back, we will get corresponding relief to our cap numbers.

It's not "dead money". Again, guaranteed money does not equal bonus money. You still have to EARN your guaranteed money.

Why do you think Ricky Williams had to pay so much money back when he quit? It was "guaranteed money" and was paid to him up front and then pro-rated over the life of his contract. But when he quit, he had to pay back the pro-rated amount for the years he didn't play and that money was washed from the cap numbers.

Those are (Williams and Vick) exceptions that involved criminal charges or violation of league conduct policies. And even in those exceptional cases, the league will evaluate each on a case by case basis. So unless Turner finds a sudden urge for weed or interstate gambling we won't be able to recoup any of the 15M we paid him or take that off our cap. Even a player's failure to complete his contract due to early retirement won't get a team off the cap hook for money already paid.

This is from Wikipedia on salary cap:
In transitions, if a player retires, is traded, or is cut before June 1, all remaining bonus is applied to the salary cap for the current season. If the payroll change occurs after June 1, the current season's bonus proration is unchanged, and the next year's cap must absorb the entire remaining bonus.

Or here: http://www.howstuffworks.com/question644.htm
Because the bonus is guaranteed to the player, if the player is released, traded or waived, all of the bonus money that was being prorated throughout the length of the contract is accelerated to the present year.

[skn]

(02-20-2012 07:45 PM)Beef Wrote:  And this works conversely too. If the player we trade Turner for received guaranteed money up front for any remaining years on his contract, we would have to pay that money back to the trading team to wipe it off their cap numbers and add them to our cap numbers. At least that's if it's negotiated that way, which normally it is.

The way you're phrasing this, you're making it sound like these guys can get double-pay and that's just not the case. There's a reason they are able to spread out guaranteed money to the cap over the life of a contract. It's because it's NOT a signing bonus. They're getting paid up front pro-rated salary for future contract years because it's technically "guaranteed".

A signing bonus is considered the "guaranteed" portion of the player's total salary. Other incentives are also considered "guaranteed" money. Of course anything can happen during negotiations. A team could agree to pay any unpaid bonuses.

Quote:In order to convince a player to sign a cap friendly contract, the team will fork over a large signing bonus. The signing bonus is guaranteed, so that money is the player's to keep if the team decides to release him later.

If a player is waived on or before June 1, the remaining signing bonus that has not been included in salary “accelerates” and is included in that year’s team salary. Acceleration also occurs when a player is traded or waived and picked up by another team. The new team is not responsible for any of the original signing bonus. The team that waived or traded the player is responsible for the accelerated signing bonus.

www.askthecommish.com

[Jesus]

So Grimey had 1 pic and dropped at least 3 other easy ones, that I can think of, but he will terrorize Ryan? Brees isn't scared of him.

Also Turner isn't going anywhere. Hes the best tailback the franchise ever had. Its amazing how so many of you want to throw him out for no reason.

The fact is you don't win super bowls with $120 million tied up in the CB position.

[Beef]

Look, you guys can quote wikipedia and askthecommish.com all you like, but I'm telling you this doesn't work like you think it does.

I have several professional athletes (football and baseball) as clients and I manage their money and know pretty well when and how they really get paid. These guys DO NOT get paid if they don't actually do the job and they don't get paid double if they get traded in the middle of a contract and received up-front money. Not unless they are injured as a result of their sport or they are released/cut by their team.

Voluntary retirement (ie. quiting) is not an excuse to STEAL money. Peyton Manning cannot sign a 5 year $100M contract with $40M guaranteed and then just retire next year and get to keep the entire $40M. And Indy is not STILL going to take an $8M cap hit for the next 4 years or a $32M accelerated cap hit in the single year after he quits. If you think that's really how it works then you're just ignorant.

And trades are no different.

Example: Turner signs a 6 year $30M contract in 2008 and gets $15M up front. So he gets $15M in 2008, then $3M/year between 2009-2013. And in every year Falcons show a $5M cap hit (again this is just an example so using even numbers per year just to illustrate). Now at the end of 2011, Turner is traded, so the Falcons save $6M ($3M x2 for 2012 & 2013). However, Turner has already been paid $2.5M for 2012 and $2.5M for 2013 back in 2008. Money which he has not actually earned yet. And this is where the trading team "buys" those remaining 2 years from the Falcons. Have you never heard of a team "buying out" a contract in a trade for goodness sakes? Have you never considered what that actually means?

So Turner gets traded to, I don't know... Arizona, and he signs a new 4 year deal for $20M ($5M/year). He IS NOT going to show as having made $7.5M in 2012 and $7.5M in 2013, which is "technically" what it would be since he got paid that $5M in 2008 according to your contentions. Arizona is not going to show a $5M cap hit in 2012 and 2013 AND Falcons show a $5M cap hit in 2012. Turner is NOT going to get paid twice for 2012 and 2013 by both the Falcons($2.5M x2) and Arizona($5M x2).

If that were the case, every player under contract who's received up front money would be clammering to get traded every year so they could double-down. But we all know that's not the case. There is NO incentive like that for players to want to get traded.

I've built comprehensive financial plans for guys like Turner. We've never sat around the table cheering about how happy we were that we got paid by two different teams for the same year. It just doesn't happen like that. I can't say it enough to make you understand if you don't by now. NFL players do not get paid by two teams at the same time, except in crazy circumstances where the trade deal is actually worked out that way (ie. no buy out).

[dmo_dlo]

Nobody is saying that the player is being paid twice. Turner has already been paid the $15M in bonus. We're not paying him 2.5 per year, that money is already paid. If we trade him and the new team signs him to a new contract that includes a new signing bonus, he WON'T pay back any of the $15M that we paid him in 2008 but we will take the accelerated cap hit for the remaining prorated bonus.

Again:
In transitions, if a player retires, is traded, or is cut before June 1, all remaining bonus is applied to the salary cap for the current season. If the payroll change occurs after June 1, the current season's bonus proration is unchanged, and the next year's cap must absorb the entire remaining bonus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_cap#...in_the_NFL

A thorough review of Manning situation:
http://www.stampedeblue.com/2012/2/12/27...salary-cap

[Beef]

Yes, you are saying he's getting paid twice. You're saying the trading team would pay him $5M for 2012 and 2013 and the Falcons are also paying him $2.5M for 2012 and 2013 (which was actually given to him up front already in 2008).

Of the $15M he received up front, $2.5M is technically for 2012 and $2.5M is for 2013. That's why it's called "up front" money and the cap hit is able to be spread out across the entire life of the contract.

So by your rationale, we'd supposedly have paid him $5M for time he didn't actually earn. And then for that same time frame, the trading team is also paying him. Which as I've said isn't how it works.

And I didn't say he would have to pay it back to the Falcons. The trading team would. Turner would still get the same pay he was supposed to get. But instead of getting $5M from his new team in 2012 and 2013, he's only going to get $2.5M both years, because he already got the other $5M in 2008 from us and the trading team reimbursed us (bought out) the remainder of his guaranteed contract.

Like I said, quote wiki junk all you like. You're not applying it properly to this situation. We may "technically" take the cap hit for Turner on paper, but we're also getting a cap relief deduction for the same amount from the trading team buyout. So they cancel eachother out.

Use your head for a second. Again, if every player who ever received up front money got to always keep all that money no matter what, they woul always be clambering to be traded so they could double up. And that's simply not the case.

[dmo_dlo]

Just because you think what you say makes sense doesn't make it right. In this case you're simply wrong. If Turner is traded to another team, that team won't assume any signing bonus that Atlanta agreed to with Turner, but they can give him a new bonus. Yes, a player who has just had a big contract will benefit from being traded early into that contract but teams will never do that. This is why the case of Routt was so surprising.

You don't like wikipedia, fine. What comes below is from the text of the 2011 CBA (http://images.nflplayers.com/mediaResour...hable.pdf) . Will you accept that?

Article 13, Section 6, Part b, item ii (Acceleration), line item 1:

For any player removed from the Team's roster, or whose Contract is assigned to another Club via waivers or trade, on or before June 1 in any League Year prior to the Final League Year, or at any time during the Final League Year, any unamor­tized signing bonus amounts will be included in Team Salary for such League Year [...]

And Article 13, section 6, part b, item ii, line item 4:

In the event that a player who has had a signing bonus allocated over the years of his Player Contract is traded, or whose Contract is assigned to another team pursuant to the NFL's waiver procedure, the Team Salary of the player's new team will not include any portion of the signing bonus.

[Beef]

Again, you're only getting one side of the coin. First of all, a "signing BONUS" does not always mean the same thing as up front salary. The term "bonus" gets used too much to describe extra money paid the first year. Sometimes a true bonus is actually paid, and sometimes it's just an "advance" on future earning years. But they very much are two different things.

Second, you are showing that the current team is taking the cap hit as I said it technically does look that way on paper, but you are ignoring the money that might be getting received from the trading team if a buyout is part of the trade. And this received money is like a credit towards caP space, which essentially cancels out the debit.

You yourself said you don't "think" teams ever get cap relief. Well they most certainly can and do all the time.

Anyways, I'm done debating with you. You clearly think you know something because you can quote material on one side of the truth and misinterpret it as the full answer when it's not. Me, who has actually sat down with players and their agents and accountants discussing how it actually works, well I clearly can't know what I'm talking about.

[dmo_dlo]

Well, there is nothing wrong with being wrong but there is certainly something wrong in being stubborn in a debate to the point of defying facts.

I quoted web links to support my argument, you called them junk. I thought you had a point because wikipedia and the like can be unreliable. So I brought you verbatim sections of the CBA (i.e. the highest authority on the subject) which are related to signing bonus and its acceleration. You say it's only one side of the story. Fine, you bring the other side from the CBA that supports your argument. The problem is that you can't because there isn't such a thing. You're simply wrong but your ego doesn't let you see that.

And for the record, can you show me where I said teams can't ever get cap relief?

[Beef]

Quote:I don't think that's the way it works Beef.

NFL will not allow cap money to be transferred as part of a trade or in any other way. Once you pay a player any money, it has to come off your cap, and only your cap. You can't transfer or trade that. The only option you have in the case of upfront (so called bonus) money is to spread it over all or some years of the contract. But once the player is not with you anymore, for whatever reason (trade or release), the money that was spread becomes an instant, accelerated cap hit. These are NFL rules (different than NBA for example). If dead money was transferrable then it would become a trading commodity by itself but it's not in NFL. At least that's my understanding.

You clearly state in this paragraph that once a team pays a player any money, it comes off their cap and then you call it "dead money". And you said "I don't think..." and "At least that's my understanding."

So which is it? Dead money that HAS to come off the teams cap or can they get cap relief? Calling it dead money sure doesn't sound like you understand the concept of getting cap relief via contract buyouts.

Are you trying to tell me that there's no language in the CBA about cap relief or contract buyouts? Really??? And no, I'm not going to waste my time finding it to quote it for you since I am 1000% certain it does exist. I've sat across from an actual client who has had his contract purchased in a trade and saw what it did and didn't do to his money. And no, we didn't end up with extra cash to work into his investment portfolio over what he was already expected to make.

If your understanding (or lack there of) was actually how it worked, then like I said, players who received upfront money would be begging for trades at the beginning or middle of their contracts all the time.

If Peyton Mannings situation was simply about Indy eating his guaranteed money and avoiding the remaining bonuses and remaining salary due each year, then why would they be trying to trade him instead of just releasing him as the default option? If there's ZERO benefit to trading him, then WHY would the word "trade" even enter the picture? According to your rationale, Indy gains nothing by trading him and they've already lost everything they've paid him. So if that's the case, then just release him and use the money they'll save on an FA.

Oh, you know why? Because there IS a benefit to trading him. And gee wiz, I wonder what that could be. How about cap relief from the money the other team would pay in the contract buyout. The problem is, and the reason that it's so hard to trade him, is that no other team wants to pay the enormous buyout cost from all the upfront money Indy already paid. Well, that and because his capabilities and value are completely unknown anymore.