FanPost

Envisioning AR's Contract - Gloom & Doom 1.0

I've been thinking about how to extend AR while keeping three things firmly in mind: keep the cap hit increase for 2018 manageable, preferably about the same as is currently scheduled (otherwise all those articles suggesting we have $17M to $20M in cap space for this off-season would be rendered meaningless); complying with the CBA rules; keep AR happy as he compares our offer to those received by other QBs recently. The trouble is, I am having a devil of a time. Surely Russ Ball knows the cap rules better than I do: I hope he knows some great maneuvers. He'd better.

The trouble I am having is with the Deion Rule [Article 13, Section 6(b)(2)] which deals with contracts that apply to league years beyond the current CBA. Previously teams attempted to circumvent the cap by paying large signing bonuses or roster bonuses into years that might be uncapped. The current CBA provides a mechanism to prevent such shenanigans. The current CBA lasts for three more seasons, 2018, 2019, and 2020. I'd like to prorate AR's signing bonus over the maximum allowed, 5 seasons, which would include 2021 and 2022. The difficulty is that the signing bonus for the first 3 seasons can't be larger in aggregate than the base salaries and roster bonuses for those same seasons (IIRC). So a $100M signing bonus coupled with a $1M base salary in 2018 (so $20M SB proration to manipulate a 2018 cap hit of $21M) doesn't compute too well.

I came up with a 5 yr/$160M ($32.0M AAV), with a $67.5M signing bonus, $77.1 guaranteed at signing, and $110M cash in the first 3 years. Stafford got 5 yrs/$135M ($27M AAV) with $60.5M guaranteed at signing with $87M cash in the first 3 years. Problem is that Cousins will probably exceed Stafford's numbers (depending on the team he selects and their cap situation), and it may be that AR wants to exceed Cousins. Garoppolo's contract is an aberration: few teams can take a $37M cap hit in 2018 including a $28M roster bonus that isn't prorated.

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Needed Increase
Year Base S Bonus Roster Cap Cap Limit in cap
2018 9.00M 13.50M 0.60M 23.10M 12.98%
2019 12.00M 13.50M 3.00M 28.50M 190.00M 6.70%
2020 15.00M 13.50M 3.20M 31.70M 211.34M 11.34%
2021 19.50M 13.50M 3.10M 36.10M 240.67M 13.56%
2022 24.50M 13.50M 2.60M 40.60M 271.11M 12.65%

I am assuming a cap limit of $178M for 2018. A cap hit of $23.10M would be 12.98% of $178M, the project cap limit. For 2019 and beyond, I have calculated what AR's cap hit would be and then listed what the cap would need to be for AR's cap hit to be exactly 15% of cap (which is a higher percentage than GB has been paying AR - it has been 11.7% to 13.2% of cap so far in his career). The next column quantifies by what percentage the cap limit would have to increase to equal the Needed Cap Limit. The increase from $167M (2017) to $178M projected for 2018 is an increase of 6.59%. To keep AR at 15% of cap, the out years require much larger percentage increases, which is ominous. I need to look harder at using option bonuses, perhaps with a 6th and/or 7th year attached. It isn't clear to me how to not rip up AR's contract and simply add 3 years (2020, '21 and '22) when the last two seasons aren't covered by a CBA. In some ways simply giving AR 15% of the cap is a neat solution, but it does decrease our cap space for 2018 by $6.14M, which would be a big hit. One can assume that the union will press to include revenue categories that currently aren't included in the revenue split, and/or for a bigger percentage of what is included, perhaps 60-40%. Quite possible that the cap limit increases by these means.

"Deion Rule." For any multiyear Player Contract that extends into any year beyond the expiration of the express term of this Agreement, if (1) the sum of the player’s Paragraph 5 Salary, roster bonuses that are based upon the player making any of the Club’s roster categories without limitation, and reporting bonuses during all League Years of the contract within the express term of this Agreement (but, if there are fewer than three such remaining League Years, during the first three years of the contract) is in the aggregate less than (2) the portion of the contract’s signing bonus that would be allocated to those years if the signing bonus were prorated equally over the term of the contract, then: the difference between the amounts calculated pursuant to (2) and (1) of this sentence, up to 50% of the portion of the signing bonus that would otherwise be allocated to the years after expiration of the express term of this Agreement (the "Difference"), shall be deducted in equal portions from those years and reallocated in equal portions over the League Years of the contract within the express term of this Agreement (or, if there are fewer than three such League Years, within the first three years of the contract).

Got it? Anyone with any ideas is welcome to comment.

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