Quote:
Originally Posted by Daseal
While I DO NOT think the Redskins did anything wrong, they did create a competitive advantage for themselves. In theory, the cap should allow all teams to be competitive for a short time, then they will lose some players and have to retool due to the cap. It may not have given us an immediate advantage, but it most certainly gave us the possibility of being more competitive in the future.
The Redskins hamstrung themselves with contracts and used the uncapped year to alleviate that strain. That is where the competitive balance comes into play. The reason why it isn't an issue for many of those other teams, is they didn't have to drastically drop cap space to get where they were -- we did. The salary cap it an attempt to keep players moving and force teams to be careful with their money, we violated 'the spirit' of that philosophy.
That said -- the Redskins did nothing wrong and it was a very, very smart move. Even if the penalty stands, which I severely doubt it will -- it gave us a significant amount of manuverability. I see no real difference between restructuring deals and tossing huge salaries for new FAs into that single year -- the end result is the same, keeping your future cap number down while paying some high-priced players.
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I agree except that that "philosophy" was thrown out the window when they opted out and couldn't reach an agreement with the NFLPA before an uncapped year ensued.
Obviously they couldn't reach an agreement because the players were operating under the false premise that an uncapped year caused problems for the owners. The owners through evil-genius alleviated that leverage via collusion.