Ocho Cinco In B&G

[Bill B]

Originally Posted by sandtrapjack

Lemme see if I can help....

The "Dead Money" I mentioned is the remaining portion of his pro-rated signing bonus.

If Johnson stays under contrat with the Bengals, he would get his signing bounus in (lack for better words) yearly installments. He gets a portion of that signing bonus each year.

Now if a player is traded BEFORE his contract expires, then the remaining amount of the signing bonus gets piled into one lump-sum and counts AGAINST the teams salary cap.

So if Johnson is traded, then you have FOUR YEARS of the remaining signing bonus that is (remaining signing bonus installment) X 4 yrs = 8.8 mill that instantly counts against the teams cap.

So as Bill B mentioned, by trading Johnson, the Bengals would incur and instantaneous 8.8 hit against thier cap with no player to show for it.

Hence the term "Dead Money"

Sure any team can propose a trade that would acquire Johnson, but are the Bengals going to allow it and voluntarily place themselves 8.8 million in the hole on the cap?

Now if Johnson was entering the FINAL year of his contract, that dead money hit is almost nil and a trade would be feasible for Cincy.

But with 4 years remaining on his current contract, and 8 Mill in dead money, I just do nor forsee the Bengals entertaining trade offers.

Thanks for the clarification Sandtrap. I think that trades are a lot harder than people think and just because an agent like Drew Rosenhaus is working vigourously for his client does not mean it will happen - the salary cap has really made it difficult to trade players who still have a lot of bonus money to burn off.

I go back to the Portis for Champ Bailey trade as a reason that makes people (including writers) think you can just trade for players easily. That deal was a big headline because it was players in their prime and rarely does a team trade a player who performs well in his prime - but if you really look at that deal and the numbers you can see why it was much more doable compared to a Chad Johnson trade. Portis had a very low rookie contract that did not have a big cap implication and Champ was entering the final years of his contract and there was not as big a cap hit to occur by trading him. Portis wanted big money and the Skins were willing to give it to him. Denver wanted an elite CB and Washignton did not want to give in to Champ's massive contract demands so everything aligned and worked out.

Personally, I look at CJ's age and contract demands and I would not go in that direction. Why not let the scouting department work its magic - they seem to have done a pretty good job on picks/undrafted FA's from looking at the Redskins draft history - Cooley, Landry, Sean Taylor, Samuels, McIntosh, Heyer, Lorenzo Alexander, Anthony Montgomery.