How Does the NFL Salary Cap Work?

Before we get in the mechanics of the NFL Salary cap, a few things about NFL contracts must be made clear.

The most important of these is that NFL contracts are not guaranteed. A NFL team can cut a player during his contract and the remainder of that contract does not count against the cap.

There is one notable exception to this rule. Let’s say a player signs a four-year deal, with a $20 million signing bonus. Under NFL rules that 20 million dollars would be prorated against the cap over the life on the contract.

Meaning, the $20 million bonus counts for $5 million per year against the cap for the life on the contract. If the player is cut before the end of the deal, say in year three, then the team is penalized the remaining amount of the signing bonus on that year’s cap.

In this case, cutting the player would count $10 million against the team cap for that year.

In essence the NFL salary cap, as negotiated by the players Union in the current collective bargaining agreement, is 62.24 percent of all football related revenue divided by 32 teams. For the 2009 season, that figure is $128 million.

It is important to note that there is also a minimum salary level for NFL franchises. This number is 75% of the salary cap. This means that each NFL team in 2009 must have at least 96 million dollars in salaries.

Now the NFL has given three tools to its franchises to help retain their free agent players. The first of these is the Exclusive Franchise tag. Each season each NFL team has one Franchise tag to use to retain one of its free agents to be.

Once the exclusive franchise tag is applied to a player that player is given a guaranteed one year contract worth the average of the five largest NFL contracts at that player’s position. If the Exclusive tag is placed the player may not negotiate with other teams.

If the team applies the non-exclusive franchise tag then the player is free to negotiate with other teams, but is original team is compensated with two first round draft picks if the player signs elsewhere. These exceptions are used quite often to keep big name players on their current teams.

The other exception the NFL gives its team as part of their salary cap rules is the Transition layer tag.

If a team applies this tag to a free agent to be they are assured the right to match any offer made to the player by the other NFL teams. Once the original team matches this offer, the player must sign with it.

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The History of the USFL

The USFL, or United States Football League, was an American professional football league that competed for three seasons. While it lost $163 million in that time, it is considered to be the strongest rival league to the NFL dominance of American football since the old AFL.

In the end, this is a story about a league that had a plan, failed to follow that plan, and let arrogance, new brash millionaire owners, weak central leadership, and the NFL itself beat it into submission.

The USFL was the dream of a New Orleans antiques dealer David Dixon. Dixon had been instrumental of bringing the Saints into the NFL in 1965, but saw football as not only a fall sport but a sport fro spring and summer as well.

Dixon spent the next 15 years studying the latest two challenges to the NFL dominance; the AFL and the World Football League. In 1980, he hired a hired a marketing agency to do a study on the feasibility of a spring and summer professional football league.

The results found that such a league was viable and Dixon moved to the next step of building a new league.

Dixon signed up 12 cities, nine of which already had a NFL franchise, for the opening USFL season of 1983. He quickly reached a TV deal with ABC sports and the then fledgling ESPN. The TV rights were sold off for $13 million in 1983, $16 million in 1984 and 1985. Each year ABC was paying $9 million of the total rate. In accordance with this, ESPN President Chet Simmons was hired to be the Commissioner of the new league.

From the jump the USFL had a number of issues among stadiums and ownerships groups most located in the state of California. Since California, and Los Angeles in particular, was deemed important enough that the league had to cut several deals to maintain its presence in the Golden state.

That first year the USFL did pretty well in drawing fans in, with 12 teams operating they were able to lure 2.7 million fans out to spring and summer football. Their games averaged 25,031 fans each and were led by the Denver Gold who were able to draw in over 40 thousand fans per home game.

The new leagues now faced a decision, should it continue with the Dixon plan that called for the expansion to 16 teams in its second season, a salary cap of $1.8 million, a regional draft that would keep local players with established fan bases more loyal to the USFL, or pursue a league filled with stars that could more directly compete with the NFL.

New ownership blood, most notably Donald trump in New Jersey, Eddie Einhorn in Chicago, and J William Oldenburg convinced the league that pursing starts and spending money was the way to insure success. In many ways, once the Generals were sold to Trump, the die was cast on the survival of the league.

After another season of big losses by many of the teams, Trump and Einhorn convinced the other USFL owners that moving to a fall schedule to more directly compete with the NFL would lead to a merger of the two leagues and the USFL teams would be worth $70 million each, the going rate for a NFL franchise.

Since loses were mounting many team were folding, and the decision by the league to move to a fall schedule was causing teams to move out of NFL dominated markets the league, after another season of loses in the millions came up with a hail mary play to save the league.

They decided to sue the NFL for violating the Sherman anti trust act claiming the NFL had an unlawful monopoly on TV contracts for American style football. They alleged that the NFL had a monopoly on TV broadcasting rights and in some cases access to stadium facilities.

The USFL also claimed that the NFL had bullied CBS, NBC, and ABC to not allow fall USFL games onto their air. They also claimed that he NFL had conspired to ruin the Oakland Invaders and the New Jersey Generals.

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Will Detroit Lions Be Blitz-Happy?

New Lions Defensive Coordinator, Gunther Cunningham, is set to have the Lions blitz on 40 percent of the team’s defensive plays in the coming season. This is very troubling for any number of reasons.

The first being if the Lions are going to blitz this much, it seems that opposing Offensive Coordinators will have an easy time picking apart the weak Lions secondary. More than that though, the Lions are not good enough to blitz this much.

Think about it, who is going to blitz? Is Cunningham going to use one of his linebackers to blitz? The Linebacker corps may be the only strength on this defense and Cunningham is going to use one of them to go all blitz happy. Does that make any sense?

Call Cunningham a Defensive genius if you want, but this guy hasn’t been good since a guy named Clinton was our President. Since 2004 he has been the head of a no name defense in KC and has done nothing with it.

Last year with his blitz happy scheme the Chiefs managed only 10 sacks for the year. Along the way giving up 393 yards per game, and 27.5 points per game.

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The Questions I Would Ask Jeff Backus

Since Jeff attended the University of Michigan and was one of the first players drafted by disgraced Lions GM Matt Millen, I would think Jeff would have a particularly interesting insight on the state of the Lions over the entire Millen regime that culminated in last year futile 0-16 final record.

 

I would ask Jeff how much loyalty he felt personally for Millen. I would like his insight into the mood of the locker room when the club has a particularly bad draft?

 

To dig a little deeper I would like to know how the team welcomes these new players to the team, after the press has labeled them a bad pick. In particular, I would like to know how WR Mike Williams was welcomed to this team.

 

On a different note I would ask Backus how a few bad drafts in a row affect the morale of the club, or the morale of the offensive players.

 

On a more personal note I would like to ask Backus how he feels when all the fans and the press constantly say the Lions offensive line needs to be upgraded. It would be interesting to understand how stories like this affect the player, his attitude, and his demeanor on the field.

 

Last year, we saw center Dominick Raiola frustrations with the fans and press boil over into a pretty ugly incident where Raiola invited fans to his house to fight. I would ask Jeff if he ever let his frustrations with the press get that far.

 

I would also ask him about his legacy as a matt Millen draft pick. While it is wide-spread knowledge Millen failed to improve this club via the draft, but that fact that Backus came from arguably his best NFL draft.

 

In 2001 The Lions drafted Backus, Center Dominic Raiola from Nebraska, DT Shaun Rogers of Texas, WR Scott Anderson of Grambling State, and QB Mike McMahon of Rutgers.

 

All of these players made a contribution to the Lions and three of them are still starters in this league today. I would ask Jeff if he feels any pride coming from that draft class.

 

I would also like to ask Jeff how the team motivates itself after such a horrific season in 2008. How do you trick yourself into thinking this year is going to be better, how does a NFL player put tin the work involved to compete in the NFL coming off a terrible season?

 

It can’t just be about the money, I see guys who want to win in Detroit every single day. I see guys in other sports taking less money in the prime of the careers just for a chance to win, so I would want to find out how Backus keeps himself motivated to do his job.

 

The last thing I would ask Jeff would be has he ever seriously considered leaving the Lions? I would ask him to gauge how he answered that particular question. If he said no not ever, I would think he was being less than truthful.

 

This has been a bad team for his entire career, and without getting into the specifics of what team for what money I would like to know how close he came to signing his name on a contract for a different team.

Detroit Lions Fans Have Seen This Song and Dance Before

Every couple of years the Detroit Lions hire a new coaching staff and they predictably come out and say which NFL system they are going to adopt.

 

The 2009 version is an emphasis on a power running game, with a defensive built to catered to the current talent.

 

Gone are the Tampa Two defense and the so called West Coast offense. Two systems that never caught on in Detroit one because they did not have the personnel to use these systems and two by the time the Lions got around to using them they were yesterday’s news.

 

This is the problem with a franchise that keeps changing their coaching staff. Each new staff has to implement their system with players acquired by a different staff for a different system.

 

For 2009, enter Head Coach Jim Schwartz and Defense Coordinator Gunther Cunningham. These are the two men charged with fixing the Lions on the field performance, and these are the reasons Lions fans have no faith in what they are doing.

 

Schwartz has never been a head coach in the NFL before. In the last 10 seasons the Lions have hired two other rookie NFL coaches (Marty Mornhinweg and Rob Marinelli). Both of these men failed miserably and Lions fans remember it well.

 

Mr. Cunningham comes to Detroit via the Kansas City Chiefs. There he was the defense coordinator for a defense almost as inept as the Lions. Cunningham’s defense in 2008 gave up 393 yards per game, which was less than a first down better than the 2008 Lions defense. This is not a man the Lions fans care to respect.

 

More than playbooks, schemes, and systems the Lions fans want to win. The unfortunate part of that is it is going to take some patience on their part before this team is ready to win.

 

Lions fans do not want to hear this and the terrible economy of Detroit is going to make them think twice before spending top dollar to see the same old Lions once again.

 

For 2009 to be successful the Lions as an organization must work not for wins, loses or a playoff berth, but to earn back the respect of their own fans.

 

In a very real sense, the coaches can throw out the playbook and simply put on a good show that will get the fan base engaged again. If they fail to do so, and suffer another embarrassing season the future of this franchise could be in doubt.

The 2009 Detroit Lions Still Have a Few Holes to Fill

To be fair, a team coming off a 0-16 season is unprecedented, as unprecedented as a NFL team going 0-16 in the first place. At this point we have no idea if the Lions could catch lightning in the bottle and rebuild themselves like the Miami Dolphins did last season.

 

After having a pretty successful draft, at first glance, and a very successful free agent signing period, it looks like the 2009 Detroit Lions will have much of the same problems as the 2008 version did.

 

The most blatant holes in this roster fall on the defensive side of the ball. In 2008, the Lions ranked last in overall defense. They gave up over 400 yards, and over 32 points per game. No offense ever created could overcome those numbers.

 

Through free agency, the Lions added veteran linebackers Julian Peterson and Larry Foote. These additions should bring down the amount of rush yards this defense gives up a game, 172 in 2008, but holes in the secondary will ensure the Lions’ opponents are not slowed down too much.

 

While the Lions did add stud Safety Louis Delmas via the draft, one DB cannot cover the entire field, and there is a huge gap between his talent and the talent of the other DBs.

 

The rest of the players on the depth chart at safety are little more then a collection of holdovers from 2008. Daniel Bullocks, Kalvin Pearson, Gerald Alexander, Stuart Schweigert, Dowayne Davis, and Lamarcus Hicks couldn’t stop opposing teams in 2008 and there is little to suggest they will in 2009.

 

At the cornerback position, there is good depth with Eric King, Travis Fisher, and Keith Smith to accompany likely starters Philip Buchannon and Anthony Henry. However, there is no start, there is no lockdown DB on this entire problem. Only time will tell if that will become an issue.

 

On the offensive side, the biggest questions seems to be at running back and offensive line. The Lions have three high round draft picks on that line; Gosder Cherilus, Jeff Backus, and Dominic Raiola. It is time for these three picks to gel together and offer quality pass protection and running lanes for the Lions’ ground attack.

 

There seems to be some evidence that this may happen from Sporting News, who ranked Raiola as the eighth best center in the league this season. While he lacks overall size, he is smart and highly competitive. If he can keep his emotions in check, and not threaten to fight his own fans anymore, maybe he could finally live up to his potential.

 

If the O-Line can succeed, the Lions can shift their attention to the other offensive issue of running back.

 

Kevin Smith will have the preseason and the first few games of the 2009 season to prove that he can be an NFL feature back. If his offensive line steps up he might be able to prove that, but maybe he is simply not good enough.

 

Really this issue boils down to this; will the Lions need one complementary back for 2010 and beyond or a new feature back and a complementary back heading into the next offseason?

 

If the Lions can further address these issues before the start of the season, there will be more hope for a five win or more season. CB Adam Jones is still on the market, but his off the field troubles may not be what a rebuilding team needs.

 

What Can We Reasonably Expect of the 2009 Detroit Lions?

This is a team coming off an 0-16 2008 campaign, and is mired in a seven year funk, compiling an overall record of 28-84. Lions fans call those years the Matt Millen era, and thankfully it has finally come to an end.

 

This team will need an extensive rebuild effort before it can become a NFL playoff contender.

 

For a team that went 0-16, the 2009 schedule isn’t all that forgiving. The Lions will face both teams that made it to the 2009 Super Bowl, Pittsburgh and Arizona, and will face two west coast road games, Seattle and San Francisco. All of this On top of their battles within their own division, with teams who have significantly improved themselves.

 

Over the last seven years the Lions averaged four wins and 12 losses per season. The outlook for the 2009 season doesn’t appear to be any better. Right now it looks like the Lions have four decent chances at victories: Washington in week three, St. Louis Rams in week seven, Cleveland in week 10, and at the Cincinnati Bengals in week 12.

 

If Brett Farve doesn’t come back, again, to the Minnesota Vikings we could count either one of the Vikings games as potential wins. However the Lions have been notoriously bad on the road so let us just count the Vikings home game in week two.

 

Doing a little math we come to see that the Lions are a 4-12 or a 5-11 team going into the 2009 season. However considering this team just went winless for, for the first time in NFL history, four or five wins is a massive improvement.

 

2009 for the Lions will be a season of rebuilding, and of finding out what talent they have as well as what talent they need to take the next step towards a winning season in 2010.

 

A list of what the Lions should look to accomplish in 2009:

 

1)  They must get number one draft pick, Matthew Stafford, adjusted to the speed of the NFL game. This means Stafford must play at some point.

2)  Adjust their pass blocking schemes so that they are not putting Stafford at significant risk when he does play.

3)  Address the future of RB Kevin Smith. The Lions must determine if Smith can be a featured NFL back or if he needs a complimentary back.

4)  Hope that free agent LB additions, Julian Peterson and Larry Foote, can help change the mindset of the entire defense.

5)  The front office must come up with a plan to rebuild the offensive and defensive lines.

 

If the Lions, as an organization, can win four or five games while accomplish several of these five goals; the club will be in a far better position heading into 2010.

 

While it is sad to say that the Lions will suffer their eight losing season in a row, the patient fan with the long view will see that they may be ready to start turning the corner back to respectability.  

2009 Draft May Be Unpopular with Fans, but the Lions Are Better

Lions general manager Martin Mayhew has repeatedly said that the goal for the 2009 draft, as he saw it, was to increase to overall talent level of his team. After day one with picks of Georgia QB Matt Stafford, Oklahoma State TE Brandon Pettigrew, and Western Michigan DB Lewis Delmas, no one can argue that the talent level at these three positions has been raised.

 

These three players were ranked by the Sporting News as the #1 or #2 players at their positions. The Lions have picked up many good pieces, but none of the glue that will hold them all together.

 

This is why their fans will undoubtedly rate this draft very low. They wanted this team to build from the inside out by drafting a few impact offensive and defensive linemen and maybe a linebacker who could serve as the face of the new Lions defense.

 

To really understand the Lions front office strategy one must first realize that one draft or even one offseason was not going to fix this team. This is a long term rebuilding project. By getting the top prospects at a few positions in this draft, next season the Lions will be able to go and attract top-tier free agents and make draft selections to get the glue that will hold all of these pieces together.

 

The problem with that strategy is this, the Lions have been so bad for so long the fan base may not be willing to give the team the time it needs to right that ship. On top of that Michigan is leading the country in unemployment rate already, and come April 30^th Chrysler may be forced into bankruptcy. Furthermore, it may not be long before GM is forced into bankruptcy and they have already decided to shut all of their factories for 9 weeks this summer.

 

All of that means that the unemployment rate among the Lions fan base is going to skyrocket, come the 2009 home opener there may not be 60,000 fans willing to pay to watch the Lions play. There is also a good chance that there will not be 60,000 fans who can afford to see the Lions play.

 

For a team that just signed a rookie QB to the largest NFL rookie contract ever, that is not good news. This team already is losing money and the move to get Stafford may force them into a bankruptcy of their own. However with a patient draft day plan that Lions may have bankrupted all of their good will with their own fans.

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