Day: November 30, 2004

scrawled out on a piece on a notepad while I waiting for a crashed computer to finishing checking it’s disk. Not supposed to make sense; just a eureka moment of figuring out the hows and whys of things that were probably either obvious or boring minuta.

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$15 million guaranteed signing bonus
$42.86 in salary for a one year deal (bonus can only be 35% of total payment – Madden)
$57.857 total

$7.5/2 year
$21.42 in salary each year
$28.93 total for each year

$5/3 year
$14.26 in salary each year
$19.26 total for each year

$3.75/4 year
$10.71 in salary each year
$14.46 total for each year

$3/5 year
$8.57 in salary each year
$11.57 total for each year

$2.5/6 year
$7.14 in salary each year
$9.64 total for each year

$2.1/7 year
$6.1 in salary each year
$8.2 total for each year

If you cut after two years, you save $36mil compared to a one year deal, and have more cap room to begin with.

far more likely they say

“We’ll give you $15 over the first two years, with X% signing bonus and the rest in nonguaranteed making the roster money. After that, we’ll try and keep you on (but we’ll probably cut you.)”, so the actual bonus is lesser and the resulting salary is even lower, creating more cap room. Press should only report bonus + next 3 year salary, the rest is accounting fun. Wish I knew of a football contract history page to establish it at three years rather than just guess.

Madden should probably have players going more ape over guaranteed money (which I’m spelling wrong and should spell check before pushing post – oh well), but even low levels of cap penalities can kill you, so ballon signing bonus paymens would mean a good fifth or sixth level of Salary Cap Heck. Maybe they need more free agents willing to take league minimuns? No 60+ guy will agree to that – maybe lower class free agency is the bigger problem.