Cap Myth

What an eventful offseason we have had! Teams building superstar rosters on top of already high paid stars. But how? That seems to be the question that fans have asked for years now. After the advent of the juggernaut Chiefs offense, questions about the necessity, performance, and effectiveness of the salary cap have risen to new levels.

Comments all around the league from fans have circulated:

“How can [insert team] pay such a for so many talents with only [insert amount] left in cap space?”

”The Salary Cap must just be a sham.”

Is it really a sham like so many people seem to think? No matter how radical it may sound to some, I still thought to myself: “Why don’t I find out for myself?” So that is what I am going to do. Time to dig in to the cap space and all of its ins, outs, and in-betweens.

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𝗖𝗮𝗽 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵

#Shells

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The Salary Cap may be one of the most misunderstood facets of the NFL. In fact before my research, I realized even I misunderstood the salary cap immensely. So let’s start at the beginning and gain an understanding of what the salary cap actually is.

The collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which is the governing document between the NFL and the NFL Players Association, imposes an ceiling on player spending as a whole per team. This is to center the NFL to make it more balanced and fluid. As well as to keep a team from building a completely unfair roster as a result of an unfair financial scenario.

The reason many people believe that the salary cap is a myth is because they think that it is a hard cap. Which would be where teams can’t bend their cap space for even a little while. But, it isn’t a hard cap, it’s called a “soft cap.” This brings up the question, “how is it separate from other sports leagues that also serve under a soft cap?”

That’s a fair question to ask; now let me give you an appropriate response. The NFL uses an amendment to the soft cap system as I’d like to call it: proration. When I first read about this term, proration, I was extremely confused as to what this could mean. As I found out, this was just another way to say that future cap charges exist. The way it exists? Turning cap charges that would normally go against the salary cap for a given year into a g bonus. This is prorated and as a result not against the team’s cap space.

However this proration technique doesn’t make these teams invincible to the cap space prophecy forever. As all side-door techniques do, they tend to be caught up on in the future. This is what I’ve learned for certain.

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A prominent example lies within Carson Wentz’ saga with the Eagles. A once MVP candidate and Super Bowl Champion benched for a 2nd round rookie and drafted-to-be-backup. The Eagles prorated Carson Wentz’s contract following his payday to create more cap space and keep open their Super Bowl window for a little while longer. With Wentz gone, the Eagles find themselves in cap mania as well as a bleak future ahead. All because they decided to try to outmaneuver the cap space for immediate fruition.

Now that you’ve seen a horrible example of how to manipulate cap towards an advantage, let’s look at an example of how an elite team has actually outmaneuvered it in a less-than greedy way: the 49ers. Garoppolo's departure will cost the 49ers less than $3 million in dead money, a small amount compared to Wentz's $34 million as aforementioned. With the Niners expected to draft a QB of the future, this past gesture could be incredibly helpful to their future.

A team can prove its cap expertise by putting itself in a position to have complete roster flexibility, never attempting to prorate, and putting itself in a position for long term success. That seems to be the exact mantra of John Lynch and the 49ers front office. Now they’ll be ready to build long term and stay effective at the same time despite being just a year removed from a super bowl appearance similar to how the Eagles were.

Frontloading cap space to compete instead of backloading it is only half the story, the other half is actually succeeding with it. This is not to say backloading never works however.

This year, cap space became a large enough issue to where many teams that have been prorating for years felt its' effects like the Steelers, Saints, Eagles, Rams, etc with their former or current quarterbacks that got paid in recent seasons.

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I introduced the topic of the salary cap by identifying the Chiefs as the team that has helped bring about the argument that the salary cap is a myth. If you have been truly paying attention to the blog you should understand now that the salary cap being a myth is dead wrong. But you may still ask, “How are the Chiefs still g players considered to be high-priced...especially with the monstrous Mahomes contract weighing on their already limited space?”

This is a valid question as I am yet to actually give any attention to it. Now here’s my answer:

The simple answer would be to just state that the Chiefs have back-loaded Mahomes’ contract along with multiple others. But as I’ve already stated before, backloading doesn’t necessarily always work out too well. So does that mean the Chiefs will be insufferable with their financial situation in a couple seasons?

That question remains to be answered. The tactics of proration only recently came to light. I wish I was a “cap guru” as many like to say in order to answer that question, but it can’t be answered yet. Only time will tell how the Chiefs respond to the cap crisis they will likely face in a couple of years.

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What remains steady and true is that the concept of cap management will always stay nuanced in its own right. To fans questioning the cap space, it’s important to realize that predicting or suggesting a team’s moves using their current cap space...will only get more and more difficult over the coming years. More teams will either begin prorating their large deals on their superstar players or will instead build only for the future only to prorate that space in the future like a time loop.

The whole idea that the salary cap is a myth comes from the bounds of obscurity. The people that make these claims misunderstand the complexities that come with attempting to manipulate the cap space for periods of time. I used to steadily look at the cap space for my favorite team — the Arizona Cardinals — to make predictions on what we should do.

But what I have come to realize after my research is that most teams in the league have almost completely changed the realities of what fans understand as to being cap space. As fans, we can use the cap space for certain scenarios; we can get a vague assumption about what a team can or can’t do. Apart from that however, salary cap management can be compared to what I can only describe as a vast universe full of information, connections, and concepts.

Kind of like the human brain itself, funny enough, this is the same human brain that allows some people to come to the conclusion that the salary cap is a myth in the NFL.

How interesting that I have come full circle.

I hope you, the reader, has enjoyed this piece and learned new information that you feel has given you a better understanding of the league as a whole. That’s what this research I’ve composed into writing did for me.

, the salary cap isn’t a myth, just an intricate facet of an even larger system.