A few Panthers Tidbits from KFFL (Foster thing looks bad)

You are so not wrong.

Since I am clearly a novice especially when it comes to contracts please bear with me here. I understand the base salary breakdown but when does the 9 mil and 4 mil count against our cap?
Using your hypothetical, wouldn’t the 4 mil count against this year and the remaining 9 count against next years cap?

 

Nope. The reason the signing bonus is used is b/c the NFL allows it to be evenly pro-rated over the contract length.

So - hypothetically - a $10 million bonus on a 5 year deal would count $2 million per year on the cap.

Get it?

Whatever the salary is each year also counts.

 

What I don't get is the clause that states " the deal will not be void out if he meets certain incentives after 4 years". What the hell does that mean? If he is no good we can exit the deal after 4 years?

 

Kinda the opposite. As in, if certain incentives were met, we don't have to pay him more.

 

I getting farther away from clarity here. I know this will probably pain you but look back over this thread --

Earlier in the thread there is a quote that PantherMills posted - “He [Peppers] will receive $13 million in guaranteed signing bonuses spread out over TWO seasons”

To that meatpile replied - “I think he means that the bonus will be paid over two seasons”

magnus then stated - “for cap concerns the bonus is spread out. For Julius, he gets a big check this year and a big one next year, I believe.”

I posted that I assumed the entire bonus would have to be paid in 2002 and 2003 (over and above Peppers’ yearly salary) based on the above

To which meatpile replies - “This is hypothetical, but if the bonus was split in two payments of say $9 million and $4 million, it would look like this on the salary cap:
$1.285 million the first year, $1.952 million the next 6.”

By now I am thoroughly confused and posted again . . . it was a meek cry for help

Then meatpile again - “The reason the signing bonus is used is b/c the NFL allows it to be EVENLY pro-rated over the contract length. So - hypothetically - a $10 million bonus on a 5 year deal would count $2 million per year on the cap. Whatever the salary is each year also counts.”

Now I’m about to scream for help . . .

>>>Whatever the salary is each year also counts<<<
Does anyone here know what Peppers BASE salaries will be over each of the 7 years? I haven’t seen any specific numbers yet and that would probably go along way towards clearing this up.

 

Okay, what if he does not meet certain incentives? No deal? That's the way it reads.

 

Canteen -

The salary is unknown at this point.

Back to the signing bonus AND how it's used to help salary caps.

Players are paid by their contracts in 2 basic ways:

Bonus
Salary

The bonus, for the purpose of this example, is given all at once. The salary is paid every year.

The bonus, however, is not counted against the salary cap all at once, but rather is pro-rated over the length of the contract.

So - Let's say a player gets a 5 year $19 million contract. He gets $7.5 million in bonus money. The other $11.5 million will come as salary, spread evenly throughout the course of the contract, at $2.3 million per year.

So, if the bonus is prorated over 5 years against the cap, and the salary each year is $2.3 mill, the cap hit each year is the salary plus ($7.5 million bonus divided by 5 years) $1.5 million in prorated bonus, or $3.8 million.

So the first year of the hypothetical contract the player is paid $9.8 million ($7.5 in bonus plus the $2.3 salary), but counts only $3.8 million against the cap. The rest of the bonus money is slowly absorbed by the team. This is extremely useful in signing big money guys when you're cap strapped.

The bad side of this is when a player is a bust, and you want to cut him. If you cut a player, all the remaining years of the bonus money pro-ration are added up and absorbed by the team immediately. This is how you get dead money. This is the real problem with throwing all that money at Chuck Smith. This is why it made no sense to cut Giblet (until 2003, when the salary saved will be greater than the dead money hit).

Back to Peppers:

To which meatpile replies - “This is hypothetical, but if the bonus was split in two payments of say $9 million and $4 million, it would look like this on the salary cap:
$1.285 million the first year, $1.952 million the next 6.”

Get it? Use the formula desribed in painstaking detail above. The $9 million, against the cap, gets divided by 7. The $4 million by 6.

 

If he doesn't play well, we can cut him any time, as with any other player.

 

Thanks Meat--that last was very well explained. I was getting confused over why the first year cap hit from the bonus was different than the other years, but that explained it nicely.

 

But it reads after 4years, if he doesn't meet the incentives then there is no deal for the last three years of his contract and we could exit his contract with no monetary obligation. I know a player can be cut during his contract but you still have to pay him.

I'm not trying to be hardheaded. It just seems like confusing jargon to me.