Redskins, Cowboys could go “nuclear” over cap mess

[skinsguy]

Originally Posted by GoSkins!

They were not creating a competitive advantage anyway. They were fixing previous mistakes. To create a competitive advantage they would have to gain more cap space room than the rest of the teams in the league.

The way things were at the start of free agency:

Jacksonville Jaguars $45 million
Kansas City Chiefs $62.995 million
Tampa Bay Buccaneers, $60.496 million.
Cincinnati Bengals $60 million
Denver Broncos $50.735 million
San Francisco 49ers $39.33 million
Atlanta Falcons $30.6 million
New England Patriots $20 million

So, the Redskins had ~$36million in cap room and a history of using all their cap space without producing playoff teams. Seems to me that the league would need to show a definitive statistical link between spending and playoff wins to even begin to make the competitive advantage argument. Then, they are still be left with the fact that the moves the skins and cowboys made didn't put them ahead of the other teams in the league with regards to cap space anyway.

EXACTLY!!!! Great post! How can the league say the Redskins and Cowboys were trying to create a competitive advantage over other teams when there are quite a few other teams in the league that have much bigger cap space?

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

EXACTLY!!!! Great post! How can the league say the Redskins and Cowboys were trying to create a competitive advantage over other teams when there are quite a few other teams in the league that have much bigger cap space?

Makes it seem like it goes back to divisional in fighting, all though I can't see 29 teams siding with the current SB winner

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Makes it seem like it goes back to divisional in fighting, all though I can't see 29 teams siding with the current SB winner

I can see all owners taking the free cap space and I can see all owners "uniting" in the face of potential legal battles. Just like all owners voted yes on the previous CBA when a bunch of them hated it or suspected it wasn't a good deal. Shocker, it sucked for them and they had to opt out leading to this mess. 29 owners voting "yay" means nothing from an ethical standpoint. 29 "yay and here's why"s with an eloquent and well thought out rationale might be useful. Other than that it was a rubber stamp.

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Makes it seem like it goes back to divisional in fighting, all though I can't see 29 teams siding with the current SB winner

I can if it gave them another 1.6 mill to spend. whether they use it or not is moot. I still am of the opinion that the reason most voted not to give back the CAP space is because the teams spent the extra 1.6 mill for themselves already and they can't give it back. The "Nay" vote is a formatlity.

[Daseal]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

EXACTLY!!!! Great post! How can the league say the Redskins and Cowboys were trying to create a competitive advantage over other teams when there are quite a few other teams in the league that have much bigger cap space?

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.

[FRPLG]

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.

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.

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by GoSkins!

They were not creating a competitive advantage anyway. They were fixing previous mistakes. To create a competitive advantage they would have to gain more cap space room than the rest of the teams in the league.

The way things were at the start of free agency:

Jacksonville Jaguars $45 million
Kansas City Chiefs $62.995 million
Tampa Bay Buccaneers, $60.496 million.
Cincinnati Bengals $60 million
Denver Broncos $50.735 million
San Francisco 49ers $39.33 million
Atlanta Falcons $30.6 million
New England Patriots $20 million

So, the Redskins had ~$36million in cap room and a history of using all their cap space without producing playoff teams. Seems to me that the league would need to show a definitive statistical link between spending and playoff wins to even begin to make the competitive advantage argument. Then, they are still be left with the fact that the moves the skins and cowboys made didn't put them ahead of the other teams in the league with regards to cap space anyway.

They can make whatever argument they want. They don't have to prove a competitive advantage. They had no ADVANTAGE. Every other team had the opportunity to do the same if they pleased. They all agreed to not do it. Their loss.

If 9 of my closest friends and I are offered a pile of money to split evenly amongst ourselves and 8 decide they don't want to take it then they can't change their mind and come back in 2 years and file a lawsuit claiming I stole their money. I mean they can but they'd most likely get thrown out of court. Now can the NFL and it's owners do the similar? Perhaps procedurally they can. But that doesn't make it right.

[tryfuhl]

Seeing as they argue that it hurts the future aka the current cap and cba... is there any language in the current cba agreed upon by both sides as pertaining to the matter? If there was I'd think that we would have heard about it by now.

[HoopheadVII]

Originally Posted by tryfuhl

Seeing as they argue that it hurts the future aka the current cap and cba... is there any language in the current cba agreed upon by both sides as pertaining to the matter? If there was I'd think that we would have heard about it by now.

There is plenty of language in the previous CBA (google 2006 NFL CBA) about what could and couldn't be done re: salary cap treatment in an uncapped year, including:

- In contracts signed in an uncapped year, salary (excluding signing bonus) couldn't decrease more than 30% from the uncapped year to future capped years.

- In contracts signed in a capped year prior to an upcoming uncapped year, any bonuses loaded into the uncapped year would be treated as signing bonus and the cap hit would be spread across the whole contract.

Snyder and Jones will argue that there are specific rules to cover specific situations, there was no rule to cover this specific situation, and the League approved the contracts at the time.

The League will argue that there was a clear agreement not to unduly shift salary cap hit into an uncapped year, they attempted to address this as best they could in the CBA, but either couldn't catch everything or couldn't negotiate that rule in advance. And, they didn't address this in 2011 because there were more pressing issues to address - like starting the season.

I think the 'Skins got screwed here, but the more I read of the CBA, the previous CBA, and the NFL bylaws, the more I think they should start trying to get along with the other owners.

[skinsguy]

Collusion's a threat to the NFL:
Collusion’s a threat to NFL - BostonHerald.com

"If the owners were found to have colluded during the uncapped year the penalty could be the most feared one in jurisprudence: treble damages. If this mess ends up in court and that $46 million is trebled, that’s a $138 million hit to the owners, similar to the one baseball owners took for colluding to suppress salaries between 1985-87. Major League Baseball forked over $280 million to the union."

[SBXVII]

Oh and why would the league need to sit down with the NFLPA and bribe, strong arm, or whatever you want to call it, them into not filing a suit if the owners did nothing wrong? If they didn't break any laws then there would be no need to even get them involved. Simply punish the two teams and be done with it.

[HoopheadVII]

Originally Posted by SBXVII

Oh and why would the league need to sit down with the NFLPA and bribe, strong arm, or whatever you want to call it, them into not filing a suit if the owners did nothing wrong? If they didn't break any laws then there would be no need to even get them involved. Simply punish the two teams and be done with it.

If the Commissioner took away draft picks, as he has the authority to do, the NFLPA wouldn't be involved at all, there would be no arbitration, everything would be neat and tidy, and the Skins wouldn't be getting RG3.

Everything got messy because the Commissioner, apparently pushed by multiple owners, wanted to impose a different, lighter, and possibly fairer penalty on the Skins.

They had to get the NFLPA involved because he wanted to touch salary cap space.

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by HoopheadVII

If the Commissioner took away draft picks, as he has the authority to do, the NFLPA wouldn't be involved at all, there would be no arbitration, everything would be neat and tidy, and the Skins wouldn't be getting RG3.

Everything got messy because the Commissioner, apparently pushed by multiple owners, wanted to impose a different, lighter, and possibly fairer penalty on the Skins.

They had to get the NFLPA involved because he wanted to touch salary cap space.

I guess it depends on what side of the fence your on. Personally I didn't expect to get RG3. I had figured we were out of the running because he would not be there at #6. So using that money on FA's and a 2nd round QB is what I suspected anyway. My first round pick was going to be a WR. But we picked those up in FA.

But no matter what I still have issues with the fact the league approved these deals when they could have said no back in 2010. I have issues with what on the surface looks like a conflict of interest with Mara heading up the whole CAPGATE issue. I don't care that there were 24+ other votes. He's in our division, he got 1.6 mill out of the deal, he hindered our FA ability by 18 mill, and he gained an advantage through all that by keeping our two teams from picking up better talent.

[biffle]

I think the league will have trouble with this "It's not collusion because it's about competitive balance, it's not about player salaries" line.

Q: What competitive advantage did the Redskins and Cowboys gain?
A: Extra cap room.
Q: How would they take advantage of this advantage?
A: By spending it on player salaries.

I may not be the brightest knife in the shed, but I think I may have spotted a flaw in the argument.

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by biffle

I think the league will have trouble with this "It's not collusion because it's about competitive balance, it's not about player salaries" line.

Q: What competitive advantage did the Redskins and Cowboys gain?
A: Extra cap room.
Q: How would they take advantage of this advantage?
A: By spending it on player salaries.

I may not be the brightest knife in the shed, but I think I may have spotted a flaw in the argument.

I'd imagine the arguement is going to be that by freeing up all that space we in the future would be able to sign all the top talent in FA and no one else would be able to. However what was presented to me that I didn't know was all the CAP room the other teams had which really makes the arguement a moot point since they had just as much if not more CAP space to pick up all the top FA's.