Quote:
Originally Posted by HoopheadVII
Saying "violated the spirit of the salary cap" is just stupid language, no matter how you slice it.
Restructuring contracts is fine, as happens every year. What the Redskins did was write the restructured contracts in a way that unduly shifted salary cap hit into the Uncapped Year. Apending the money was OK, the structure of the contracts wasn't.
On Haynesworth, they gave him a $21m signing bonus on a three-year contract - which would normally mean a $7m cap hit in each of 2010, '11, and '12. They added an option for Haynesworth to void the last 2 years if he gave back $26m. Everyone knew Haynesworth would never pay $26m to void the last two years, but since the option was under player control, all of the cap hit would be taken in 2010.
With Hall, they did a deal in 2009 that gave him a $15m bonus that would normally be a signing bonus - counting $3m against the cap every year '09-'13. However, they gave all $15m to him as a roster bonus in 2010 to take all the cap hit in the uncapped year.
There would have been no penalties at all if they had just given normal signing bonuses.
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So, why didn't the league veto the contracts? I have always been under the impression that the league looks at all contracts to make sure they fall within the guidelines of the CBA. If the contracts both teams signed didn't fall into the guidelines as they are trying to say why didn't they veto, not approve, make both teams restructure them again, whatever? Why wait for 2 yrs then decide to punish?