Rookie Contracts

[Defensewins]

Originally Posted by Ramseyfan

As to the Rookie Contracts Cap, the NFL gives each team a certain amount of cap room every year to sign their rookies and does not count such rookie year deals in the team's salary cap. Thus, Taylor Jacobs' salary was not counted against the Skins cap last year, but it will this year.
It is determined by the number of picks you have and how high those picks are.
Here's a decent article from last year about how it all goes down.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/columns/pasqu...n/1547910.html

Ramseyfan
If I read your post correctly, I am pretty sure you are mistaken about the rookie pool not counting against our salary cap this year. If you read the 4th paragraph of the article you provided it says:
"The rookie pool is, essentially, a cap within a cap. A team's rookie pool allocation is part of, not an addition to, the league's $75.1 million spending limit."
The Redskins cut center Larry Moore to create cap space to sign our rookies.

In another article: http://www.vertgame.com/rookie_pool.html
it is explained a little better:
" Within the regular NFL salary cap is a second, or sub-cap, for signing rookies (including draft picks), which takes into account the number and placement in the draft order of each team's picks. Each team gets a certain share of a predetermined total amount of money (the "rookie pool") to spend on rookies. Since this money is counted against the overall cap, it's actually a cap within the cap.

The NFL created this gimmick to artificially keep rookie salaries from dramatically increasing and to give NFL teams leverage against rookies and their agents in negotiations.
Now any NFL team can say to a rookie and their agent "Sorry I cannot offer you anymore money in our negotiations because I have a cap on how I can spend on my draft picks."