Breaking down Nick Foles’ $26.068 million extension

Breaking down Nick Foles’ $26.068 million extension
Posted August 12, 2015 ·

St. Louis Rams quarterback Nick Foles’ two-year contract extension is worth $26.068 million and includes a $3 million signing bonus, according to a source with knowledge of Foles’ deal.

Foles got $13.792 million guaranteed.

In 2015, he’s due a fully guaranteed $1.042 million base salary and has $6.068 million in total compensation with a $4.068 million salary-cap figure.

The deal has no offset language in the first year.

Foles gets a $2 million roster bonus on Sept. 1. That’s guaranteed for skill and injury at signing, guaranteed for salary cap if on the roster on Aug. 15.
Foles has an annual $4.5 million in not likely to be earned incentives based on Pro Bowl; p/t + wins or playoffs or playoff wins; p/t + wins or playoffs or playoff wins and Club/player rankings.
Foles has workout bonuses of $6,240 and $20,000 in 2015.
In 2016, he has a $.175 million base salary and a $8.75 million salary-cap figure. The salary is guaranteed for injury at signing and skill and cap if on the roster the fifth day of the 2016 league year and includes offset language.

He’s due a $6 million roster bonus on the third day of the 2016 league year, guaranteed for skill and injury at signing, guaranteed for cap if on the roster on Aug. 15, 2016 and has no offset language.

In 2017, he has a $13.25 million salary cap figure and a $10.75 million nonguaranteed base salary.

He has a $1.5 million roster bonus due on the third day of the 2017 league year.
Finally found the exact Foles contract. The offset language, for his salary this year, is the key. This means that like Finnegan, the Rams can get some or all of his salary back, even if they cut him. A trade takes them off the hook. The other team honors Foles’ contract.

There is still $1 million of the $3 million signing bonus left on the books. The best the Rams can do is gain $.75 million and that might not come this year. If he is cut, the offset kicks in next year.

It appears the $1 million of the $3 million signing bonus doesn’t have to be booked this year. The Rams can wait until next year if they want. See below.

http://overthecap.com/explaining-the-june-1st-designation/

Explaining the June 1st Designation
Posted on February 21, 2013 by Jason Fitzgerald

One of the questions I get a lot deals with what a “post June 1” cut is and how designating someone a June 1 cut helps my team. So lets talk a bit about that today.

What we are talking about here deals strictly with the acceleration of prorated bonus money onto the current years salary cap. The NFL essentially breaks up its salary cap accounting for bonuses into two periods with June 1 being the trigger date. When a player is removed from a players roster prior to June 1st all his remaining unamortized bonus money immediately accelerates onto the salary cap. To illustrate this we see how the Kansas City Chiefs gave Steve Breaston a $5 million dollar signing bonus in 2011, which was accounted as $1 million in yearly expenses over the course of his 5 year contract. When he was released just the other day he had only completed 2 years of his 5 year contract meaning the Chiefs salary cap had only accounted for $2 million of the $5 million paid in 2011. The balance of $3 million dollars immediately accelerates onto the Chiefs 2013 salary cap.

After June 1 the NFL changes the way the acceleration works. After June 1st only the current years expense remains on the books after the player is released. The balance accelerates onto the following years salary cap. So in Breastons case had the Chiefs waited until June 1st to release him his salary cap charge in 2013 would have been $1 million and in 2014 he still would be on the books at $2 million dollars.

This rule is really another way in which the league holds tremendous power over the players. In some cases the acceleration of bonus money could throw a teams salary cap into chaos, if higher than the players current cap charge as an active player. Since teams need to remain under the cap at all times once the League Year begins the potential of the acceleration onto the current years cap would prevent a players release and allow them to continue earning their salary for the year. Instead they are thrust into a pool of summertime free agents when most teams are strapped for cap space and have made many of the decisions about their roster.

I think where many people get confused, though, is when they hear that “player x” could be designated a June 1 cut and immediately jump to conclusions that it means a spending spree in March. The league allows each team to designate up to two players per year as a June 1 cut for cap purposes prior to June 1. It’s the one concession that was given to the players as it allows a player to be cut in March and have time to explore free agency but have his cap hit spread out over two seasons, thus creating more cap space in the current year. The issue though is the mechanism by which this works.

When you designate someone as a June 1 cut the player and his current contract remain on the books until June 1. Going back to the Breaston example has he been designated a June 1 cut his cap charge today would not be $1 million with $2 million on the books in 2014. His cap charge would be $5 million dollars, the same cap charge as if they never cut him at all. When June 1st hits his cap then moves down to $1 million and the other $2 million accelerate into the 2014 season. By that point in time free agency is finished and the extra cap room does not do the team much good. They would have been in a far better cap position during the important time of free agency by releasing Breaston outright as the Chiefs did.

The real purpose of the June 1 designation option is to benefit teams that have poor salary cap situations and need to either create space for rookie signings over the summer months or to cut players from the roster whose dead money charges are greater than their charge to remain on the team. In recent years this would be teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders who have entered into some overpriced contracts for multiple players leaving them tight against the cap every season. The acceleration from one of these underperforming players would put the team over the cap or close enough to it to make it difficult to sign the draft class. Often waiting until June 1 is not an option because of offseason bonus money that would be due to the player if he is on the roster so the only option is to designate him a June 1 cut. So the rule gives the team the ability to avoid paying the player a bloated salary while also avoiding more cap problems. But by no means is it going to be a way to spend more money in the early stages of free agency and it does nothing to improve a teams cap position in March.

If the Rams had cut Saffold this year. $4M.
If the Rams had not signed Coty this year. $5M.
They still have cap space to play with, $2M.
……..That equals $11M.
Jenkins cap this year is $8M.
They could have kept him if they really wanted to. imo

You can think of it this way, instead of Quinn signing for 4yrs for $57M, he would have needed to signed for 4yrs for ~$69M to get the franchise number of %10.1.

You can look up the deals for Watt and Vernon and figure Quinn gets 10% less than their deals, over the same years.
Watt 6yrs for $100,000,000 = $90M over 6 yrs for Quinn. 2016 – 2021

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Agamemnon.

So far, all the contracts I have looked at compare closely to this chart. Flacco and Suh are the only two differences that I found. Flacco got 14.0% compared to the chart value of 12.8% for QBs. Suh got 11.1% compared to ? DT = 8.7%? DE = 10.1%? He is a DT, but he impacts game as much as a DE. The highest number for a defensive player is DE, so I will that, 10.1% for ‘best defensive player’.

Cox, a top DT, got 9.0%. And he got 4 years guaranteed. Only elite players get more than 2 years of real guarantees, according into Andrew Brandt.

JJ Watt got 9.2%
Olivier Vernon got 9.4%
Rogers got 13.2%
Wilson got 12.7%

It will be interesting to see what Luck gets, in the next big QB contract.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Agamemnon.

THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS WITH ANDREW BRANDT

RTAB #5: Howie Roseman
Eagles EVP/GM Howie Roseman explains his entry into the football business, the inherent bias against non “football guys”, and his philosophies on an active Eagles offseason (including dramatic moves at the quarterback position)

This is the podcast referred to in the previous post.

Howie Roseman Opens up, Sort of, on Andrew Brandt’s Podcast

Howie Roseman Opens up, Sort of, on Andrew Brandt’s Podcast

Kyle Scott – June 21, 2016

Howie Roseman was a guest on sports business and Villanova guy and his neighbor Andrew Brandt’s podcast. It wasn’t exactly the insightful, introspective interview we’ve come to expect from podcasts, but Roseman opened up at least a bit to his buddy Brandt.

Most notable – to me – was Roseman explaining why Doug Pederson was the right man for the job, in which he basically confirmed that Doug was the most nepotistic hire possible:

“When we went into the coaching search, we had to find the coach who was best for the Eagles. Maybe not the best coach for other teams who were looking for a head coach. Maybe not the best coach for what the media thought was the best coach. But what was the best coach for the Eagles. And what were we looking for? We were looking for a leader. We were looking for someone who had a clear plan. We were looking for someone who understood this market, and the people in this market, and someone who understood how it worked like when we were having incredible success. And so, Coach Pederson had all of those qualities.”

Translation: We didn’t hire the most qualified guy, we hired the guy whom Mr. Lurie will feel most comfortable. After the surly Chip Kelly, and to an extent, Andy Reid, we needed someone who would not further irritate fans after tough losses, mostly for marketing and sports talk radio purposes. We needed a more pleasant man with whom we were comfortable, who was, uh, here-ish when things were good, even though the league has changed three times since then, because Mr. Lurie tasted change and he didn’t like it. There is one way to do things and one way only, and that is to recreate the Andy Reid era, and short of tampering and paying him a comical sum of money to come back, at risk of looking like the absolute biggest laughingstock in the league, we decided to hire his right-hand man, Dopey Doug Pederson.

Not to beat a dead horse, but is my problem with the hire. Maybe Doug turns out to be a good coach, maybe he doesn’t. But the Eagles’ reasons for hiring him were all wrong. They hired a person with whom they were comfortable, whom they could control, who wouldn’t rankle. That’s exactly not the recipe for success. Reinstating Roseman was the same thing. 17 years. He’s been here 17 years, ever since he nagged Joe Banner for a job after the staffs at the University of Florida – “Unfortunately Steve Spurrier had other ideas” – and Jets laughed him away. That’s the 2016 Eagles– they’ve gone from the most progressive football team in perhaps the world, to being run by certified company men Roseman and Pederson. It’s hard to, like, buy-in to all of that right now.

More: Roseman was pretty tight-lipped about the hot-button topics– Bradford, free agency, etc. He danced around questions about the Bradford situation, saying only that drafting eventual replacements happens at every position, and gave no timetable for when he would like Wentz to become the starter. He also ticked off the merits of his free agent signings and was never pressed on whether or not he was spending too much.

Still, it was a good 20-minute or so interview and well worth your time, considering the alternative today might be the sort of absurd opinions you’ll see in our next post…

the Eagles rewarded him by offering a contract with a total value north of $100 million (although as readers of this space know, that number is meaningless);

Not really. Here is why. If you do the math on the contract vs the salary cap, you get a good fit for the historical data. Data that seems to hold true for all contracts in all years. You need to evaluate the contract as a percent of the salary cap over the length of the contract. This means you take expected changes in the year to year cap and average them out. Divided by the number of new years. You use the total new years and the total new money, that way you can ignore the timing of the payouts. Even if some money was put into a current year, it is still new money that is for a new contract for new years.

Fletcher Cox signed a 6 year, $102,600,000 contract with the Philadelphia Eagles

That equals 17.1M/yr

SC for 2017 =166
SC for 2018 =178
SC for 2019 =190
SC for 2020 =200
SC for 2021 =200+
SC for 2022 =200++
——————————————
Total = 1124++ million divided by 6 yrs equals 187.3++

Average yearly salary [17.1m] / [187.3M] = % of cap which equals 9.3% of the cap.

Refer to the chart for DE/DT, cause Cox was a 3 – 4 defense end and he will now be a 4 – 3 defensive end.

A franchise DE gets 10.1%, a DT gets 8.7%. I would figure Cox would get something between those two figure. If he is being paid as the best defensive player on the team, I would us the 10.1% that a top DE would get.

the highest cap hit is 2019 22M on cap of 190M that equalls 11.9%

let’s do 4 years, cause maybe this is in reality a 4 year contract, cause of the the money is guaranteed.

4yrs for 69.6 M 102.6 – 33 = 69.6

the cap in those 4 years equals 734M or 183.5M/yr

17.4m / yr ave. cap = 183.5 % of cap = 9.5%

That is really close to the 9.3% figure I got before. The thing about this contract is that virtually 4 years are guaranteed.

bnw wrote:

Wroten? He was gone years ago.

He was on the practice squad last year, then they recently brought him back. Now he is gone again.

zn wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:

8 players at 59.5%. The next 45 players fit in 40.5% of the cap.

Yes that’s exactly the kind of thing that interests me.

So, around the league, what are the rules that hold up when it comes to this?

Is it usually 8-10 players with the top contracts? Or do you break it down differently?

That break down seems to be an sort of upper boundary for how many premium players you can afford to have on a roster. As far as what is usual, I think that can quite different. As far as what is ideal, I am not sure there is an ideal. Like, there is more than one way to skin a quadruped. Since football is more of a team game, than basketball of baseball there has to be more one good way to make a team. I prefer the concept of having the most strengths of whatever variety.

The most common or average makeup among 5 top regular playoff teams was 14 players at 53% of the cap. But, I believe that can vary among each team from year to year.(do you have a good cheap QB?) The ideal make up has to take into account what talent you have and want to keep. So, I think more important than an ideal salary cap model roster, you need a good steady supply of cheap talent each year. Then make the best of what you have. The same way you would make a roster for how many players you keep at each position.

If you what to make keeping a star QB and a star DT as the major part of your roster, then 8-10 at 60% might be the best way to go. If you wanted something else or didn’t have those players, you would probably want a different model. Just for instance, you might what to keep the offensive line together as a unit or you might want a certain number of quality CBs on your team.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Agamemnon.

zn wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:

Do you think there is a team out there that uses 60% of the cap for 8-10 players?

Well you;re being more exact than I am. I was always just working with a general idea. I just want to do quick hit observations without tons of calculation. To me major contracts are 6 M or more, and I just noticed that most teams spend anywhere from 50-60% of the cap on those players. I didn’t do anything remotely like the research you did. I just wing it. (And I respect your research, it’s very interesting and smart stuff.)

Seattle I know has (appx.) 58.7% of the cap tied up with 10 players. (90.3+ M out of 153.9 M.)

I’m not sure…are we still discussing whether to keep Donald? To me a defense with Donald and then maybe 1 or 2 fewer top contract players is going to be better than a defense with 1 or 2 more top players and no Donald.

It just may be rare for a team to have both (1)a franchise qb who has (or will have) a starting qb level 2nd contract, and (2) an elite, defense-altering DT.

So to me, it’s not as crucial to have a lot of top players dominating the cap (like Seattle does). If having both Goff and Donald edges a player or 2 out of the top tier contracts so they have 1 or 2 fewer, I think it will still be a better team than the one that doesn’t have the qb plus Donald.

…

You were discussing Donald/Goff as a specific. I was more discussing Donald/Salary Cap as a general thing. You included roster building as a specific. I never did more than a general, figuring good cap would help good roster.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Agamemnon.

Est. Cap Space (Top 51): $2,927,740

8 players at 59.5%. The next 45 players fit in 40.5% of the cap. Pitt will have find a bit of cap space for IR and the PQ and going to 53 players. $2.9M isn’t enough. imo

Pitt also used 24% of their cap on 2 players. They used 39% of their cap on 4 players.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/pittsburgh-steelers/cap/

They have 27 players making minimum wage and the will still need to adjust their cap space a bit.

This is what I did above. I just did it for all the teams, but stopped after doing 2 and 4 players. I then did an average and looked to see which teams spent the most for the fewest players. Your answer has to be here somewhere? right? 😉

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Agamemnon.

zn wrote:

As far as following it. It isn’t that kind of information. I put it out there and you make of it what you will. I am making observations more than finding a perfect model

It’s not a matter of whether it’s a perfect model or not. I just see numbers and I have no idea what the numbers mean. It wasn’t an advanced question on my part, it’s a basic question. So it’s like you wrote “2 + x = Y” and I asked “what do the symbols + and = mean?”

It is a list of all the teams in the nlf. It has two parts. One column is how much of the cap is dedicated to 2 players and the other is how much of the cap is dedicated to 4 players.

I added each column and divided by 32 to find an average of how much cap space was given to the top 2 players and the top 4 players per team.

The average was 18.5% for the top 2 players and 29.5% for the top 4 players.

Now I know which teams are the closest and farthest from the average. Which teams put a lot of money into 2 players, 4 players and which teams put the least money in only 2 or 4 players.

Pitt did both. They used 24% of their cap on 2 players. They used 39% of their cap on 4 players. 100 – 39 = 61. I also know that Pitt used 61% of their cap to pay the remaining 49 players of 53. *note: I ignore the other expenses IR, etc.

The average salary of their lowest 49 players = 61/49 = 1.2% of the cap for each of the 49. 1.2% of the cap is $1.9M/player.

This years cap of 155M divided by 53 players = $2.9M/player. or in percents = 1.9% of the cap/player.

I like to use %s cause that doesn’t change although the money each year does, the relative value of each player doesn’t change.