These couple of issues can be extremely important to the Jets ability to clear cap room, so I'm asking some of the people in the know: 1) is the dead money from the 2010 season going to count in 2011? 2) the benefits (for off-season workouts) will it be paid? if so will it count towards the 2011 cap?
Good questions. I've seen no indication to suggest dead money will not be counted. I could be wrong, but expect it to count. Off season workout bonuses are gone. There were no off season workouts.
1) I still don't know 2) Given that workout/roster bonuses would be pain in the 2011 league year, they will count against the 2011 cap. At least one reason they haven't been paid yet is because the League Year has not yet started.
The cap minimum crap will drive up the costs of Free Agents, so the extra $6 million isn't really much.
I believe the extra 6mil will go a long way towards signing our own FAs, which is my main concern, with the limited pre-season every player that knows your system will be beneficial, I also don't believe there is going a wild free-spending Free Agency (except for the top 10-20% of the FAs), the rest are going to try to settle into a comfortable situation ASAP during the FRENZY....
Good Cap News http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/jets/ By Rich Cimini Just in case you're wondering what the Jets were doing Friday during this prolonged labor mess, GM Mike Tannenbaum and his staff attended the four-hour seminar for league executives in Atlanta. A total of about 150 execs were present at the session, designed to familiarize teams with the new rules of the proposed CBA -- the CBA that was supposed to be fully ratified by now. Tannenbaum was joined by right-hand man Ari Nissim, the team's director of football administration, and others in the FA department. This sort of thing falls into Tannenbaum's wheelhouse; he cut his teeth in the NFL as a capologist. He will need to be on his game when free agency starts because the Jets have a lot of players to sign and not a lot of cap room. The cap is set at $120.4 million. According to ESPN's John Clayton, the Jets project $1.2 million over the cap. But, wait, there is some flexibility. Teams can use $3.5 million in what would otherwise be performance-based pay to fund veterans' salaries. In addition, they can also "borrow" $3 million from a future cap. So, in essence, they're really gaining an extra $6.5 million in cap space. Plus, there's a $3 million cap exemption that can be applied to one player's cap number. For instance: If the Jets used it on Mark Sanchez ($16.5 million cap figure), his number would drop to $13.5 million. In reality, the proposed CBA has mechanisms that would help teams like the Jets -- teams that, on the surface, are dealing with cap issues. So the Jets will have some breathing room, but it also will take some creativity to make room for two or three (or more?) big-ticket signings/re-signings. Plus, they have a six-player draft class that needs to be signed. No word yet on the rookie salary pool.
I'm 90% sure Cimini is double counting the borrowed cap space and the single player cap exemption money. The Press Release of the CBA that the NFL owners voted on only references a $3.5 performance-pay fund, and $3M cap borrowing mechanism. The cap is effectively 126.875 this way. More significantly perhaps is that there's no mention of a salary floor for 2011. There's an 89% of the salary cap floor that doesn't kick in until 2013 however. The press release could be wrong however of course.
I would hope Sanchez's number would be less than that after reworking his contract to balance out over the years and then hopefully use that exemption on someone else with a large cap number- revis maybe, guess that wouldnt really matter though
