Redskins just got hosed: $36 mil of capspace gone

[TGW]

According to Schefter...

OJ Atogwe is the first victim....

[Rafael122]

At fist I was pissed, then I relaxed a little. It's bull of course because it was an uncapped year, NFL approves all contracts and restructures. Now they deemed it illegal? Huh?

However, this team hasn't had any cap space in recent years and always found a way to get players here. So instead of 40 million in cap room, they ave $20 mil, still more than enough.

[LyricalRico]

Wait...what? Links please.

(Also, I'll pretty up the thread title a bit. Family friendly and all that.)

[Rafael122]

It's all over ESPN. Apparently the way we did Hall and Haynesworth contracts was the reason for the punishment,moving a lot of their money in 1 year instead of spreading it out.

This team needs a top notch wide receiver, possibly a corner, two safeties, arguably a center/right guard/right tackle. A backup QB.

[LyricalRico]

Okay found a link: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/76773 ... -cap-space

All I can say is...what the heck?!?! How can you say "there is no cap" and then say a team has to be punished for circumventing said non-existent cap? And the fact that the money goes to the other teams makes it even more shady IMO.

This really hurts, and actually makes the RG3 pricetag seem higher now that we can't fill as many holes through free agency as was initially thought. At this point, they should just take the entire hit this season and get it over with. Let RG3 take his lumps with an only slightly improved team and then spend your money next spring.

Man, this hurts...

[Rafael122]

Check this out:

http://cpnd.us/pcinoz/Salaries_Contracts.htm

Basically the only player who would be asked to restructure would be Trent Williams. He's making an $11 million base salary for this season.

Hall has a base salary of $6 million. Two guys who would be candidates for restructuring.

[LyricalRico]

Still trying to wrap my head around this. Let me see if I have this right:

1. NFL owners and players know in advance that if they don't agree to a new CBA, there will be a season in which there is no salary cap.
2. NFL owners and players can't reach an agreement on a new CBA in time, so they proceed with the uncapped year.
3. During a year without a salary cap, Dallas and Washington spend more money than other teams, as they 100% have the right to do within the rules.
4. NFL owners now retroactively think that they had an unfair advantage and thus will punish them.

Do I have that right? This is ABSOLUTELY collusion! Both now and back in 2010 if there was some type of "handshake" deal between all owners to keep spending withing a certain range (even though there was no enforceable cap). And normally I would expect the NFLPA to fight this but apparently this was all agreed to as part of the new CBA.

I would expect something like this from Stern and the NBA. But the NFL? Un-freaking-believable.

[Rafael122]

Yeah. Cowboys and Skins are getting punished for being smarter than the rest of the front offices in the league. It's crap.

[Ruzious]

It does sound like a bogus decision by the NFL. From the tone of George Allen's comments, the Skins are not going to accept it without a fight. But ultimately, I can't see them winning, because the players' union signed off on the NFL's decision. Effectively, it's part of the CBA, somehow.

[LyricalRico]

A number of people who called 980 to talk about this yesterday evening said something interesting: In the uncapped year, not only was there no spending cap but there was also no spending floor. So teams could spend as much or as little as they wanted. Apparently some of the smaller market teams may not have spent up to the traditional salary floor, likely to save money in preparation for losing games due to the lockout. So why aren't they going after them?

And the fact that the players agreed to this is also an issue for me. It's not that the Skins simply lose cap space. They still have to spend the money, it just gets divided up between the other teams rather than going to the players. Why wasn't this fought during the lockout negotiations, or at least leaked so make the owners look bad? Yet another thing the players gave up that they probably didn't have to.

I'm also wondering how much advance notice the Skins had on this. What's unclear is whether or not what was decided in the new CBA was specifically directed to DAL/WAS, or if it just gave the NFL the power to go after teams retroactively. Did the Skins know it would be this big of a hit all of this time, or are they just getting this the same time we are?

[Nivek]

The more I learn about this, the more it fries me. It was an UNCAPPED year. Everything they did complied completely with the CBA at that time. The league is retroactively punishing them for following the letter of the agreement that the league made with the players.

All morning, I've been half of the mind that the Skins should hit the nuclear option. By that I mean, file a lawsuit seeking an injunction that prevents the opening of free agency until the Skins' appeal of the league's punishment has been heard. Then, holler about collusion -- the league directive to teams could be viewed by courts as means to keep player salaries down in a manner that violates the terms of that CBA. And argue that punishing the Skins for abiding by the terms of the CBA is unfair and illegal.

The latest announcement -- that the league is going to force the Skins and Cowboys to take half the hit this season -- has pushed me over the edge. Go nuclear.

[Rafael122]

Only worry is that they could go back and reject that trade for RG 3 as some sort of punishment as well. If they do it, do it after 4.

[Ruzious]

Here's a link to a great article about it http://www.hogshaven.com/2012/3/12/2866 ... e-redskins . As Rico alluded to - it was an unfloored year - and at least 5 teams didn't reach the floor that would have been there. Ya can't have it both ways - or at least you shouldn't be able to. If the Skins are punished for not treating it like a capped year, how do you justify not punishing the teams who didn't reach the floor? Unfortunately, the "union"'s capitulation probably crushes the Skins' case, imo.

2010 was both an uncapped year and an unfloored year, meaning that unlike 2009 when teams had to pay their players at least $109 million in the aggregate, teams could pay their players way less. At least five cheapskate teams plummeted through the 2009 floor in 2010, paying their players less than $90 million altogether. But this behavior, which hurts the players and sends a clear message that these teams do not want to win but rather want to make more money for their owners, does not pose an unacceptable risk to competitive balance?

[Nivek]

What I don't get is why the players union would go along with this. They should tell the league to go F themselves and be glad the players don't press the collusion issue. The league's directive acted as a draft on salaries during that uncapped season -- in direct contradiction to what had been negotiated in the CBA. Giving an extra $1.6 million to the other teams is weak as hell -- many teams probably won't even use it. And the cap penalty hurts players by hobbling two of the league's biggest spenders.

If the players sued the owners for colluding to keep salaries down, they might win.

[Rafael122]

PA went with it b/c they wanted to raise the team salary cap to $120 mil, when the league wanted to go DOWN to $116 million. Plus DeMaurice Smith is up for re-election.

[Nivek]

Pursuing a collusion charge might be more lucrative. When baseball owners colluded, they settled for $280 million. That's approximately $583 million in 2012 dollars. Baseball's collusion was for 3 years, but if you divide that $583 million in 3, you're at $194 million. Getting an extra $4 million in cap space would mean $128 million.

[LyricalRico]

But a person familiar with the case said while “there was no cap violation,” contracts by the team “were structured in a manner designed to secure an unfair competitive advantage” when the salary cap returned. That person said there was no basis for the league to disapprove the contracts at the time, during the uncapped year, but the league felt there was a basis to act now.

This season’s salary cap will be $120.6 million per team, a figure that includes a redistribution to other teams — except the Oakland Raiders and New Orleans Saints — of the deductions from the Redskins and Cowboys.

“All the clubs were warned not to do anything to create a competitive advantage when the salary cap came back, and that’s what [the Redskins] did,” said one of the people familiar with the matter. “They were very obvious about it. A lot of people were very angry about it. The ramifications could have been far worse for them. They could have lost draft picks. Some people recommended that to the commissioner.”

According to that person, the Redskins reworked some player contracts to pay them large sums during the uncapped 2010 season and save money against the cap in subsequent years. The person said the Redskins, in large part because of those maneuvers, had a player payroll far in excess of other teams’ payrolls.

Officials of the league and the NFL Players Association agreed to the reduction in the salary cap for the two teams in deliberations over the past week, said one person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The union agreed to the resolution reluctantly, the person said. Union officials believe that neither team did anything wrong or attempted to circumvent the salary cap. But the union acquiesced to the decision because the league would have lowered the salary cap for all 32 teams if it did not.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/foo ... _blog.html

The most coherent explanation I've seen so far, but it's still bogus no matter how you say it. Problem is that I don't know how much legal recourse they have since this money grab was negotiated as part of the new CBA.

[Nivek]

It's a BS explanation because "unfair competitive advantage" could mean anything. That said, the Skins spent a TON in the uncapped season. Payroll list from PFT:

Code: Select all

TEAM     $$$
WAS      $178.2
DAL      $166.5
NO       $145.0
MIN      $143.4
SEA      $138.8
NYJ      $135.7
GB       $135.3
OAK      $135.2
IND      $133.1
CHI      $131.9
PHI      $131.0
NE       $128.8
NYG      $128.6
SF       $125.9
MIA      $123.8
HOU      $123.1
DET      $122.9
PIT      $122.9
CLE      $122.8
BAL      $122.3
ATL      $118.5
TEN      $118.0
CAR      $110.9
STL      $109.1
SD       $108.0
BUF      $105.3
DEN      $102.3
CIN      $100.8
ARZ      $97.8
JAC      $89.5
KC       $84.5
TB       $80.8



The previous season, the cap was $128 million and the salary floor was $112.1 million. So, the year the Skins created an "unfair" competitive advantage by shedding salary and frontloading contracts, 10 teams failed to reach the salary floor from the previous season. Why wouldn't saving money be deemed an "unfair" advantage?

This is so frigging ridiculous.

[Severn Hoos]

So wait - Skins spend $178.2M and Cowboys spend $166.5M - or in other words, Skins spent 7% more than the Cowboys. (If you prefer, they exceeded the theoretical cap by $50M, and the 'boys exceeded by $38.5M - or an extra 37%.) For that, their punishment is almost FOUR TIMES as severe? Huh?

[Nivek]

Wikipedia puts the cap in 2009 (the year before the uncapped season) at $123 million, not $128 million (which PFT reported). During the previous CBA, the salary cap rose by about $7 million per season. So, hypothetically, the cap in the uncapped year (if there'd been a cap) would have been $130 million. 11 teams exceeded that $130 million figure.

Why aren't they all getting dinged?

And again, why aren't teams that fell short of the salary floor getting dinged as well?