[News] A Layman's Introduction To The Salary Cap

[BR News]

Ever wonder how the salary cap operates? This time of year, with cuts, signings and contract restructures abound, we brought in Russell Street Report’s Brian McFarland to translate a lot of complicated language into less complicated language.

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[Chuckx999]

The Ravens are at best a 6 and 10 to 8and 8 team. We are stuck with Flacco and what his cap money is costing the team. There are about 4-5 other players ( TE Watson ) who never played a down of football or just sit on the bench that we can cut and save another 10-12 million.
We just have to hire new scouts so our draft is not as bad as the past 4-5 years and can let players walk because we have another good player to take his place. 10 years ago we had those players, now a lot of our 1st string guys would just be 2nd or 3rd stringers for a lot of teams.
Ozzie has just lost his touch.

[Grapple Raven]

Great explanation Brian to help with understanding a very complex issue.  I am sure a lot of folks will appreciate it!

[Ravenous_Ravens]

Basically as a metaphor, the salary cap is like playing cards. Each year is like a new hand of cards. Of course you can only ever have a max number of cards in your hand to play the round. After the round is over you get the ability to drop the cards you no longer want and restock your hand.

This also helps to explain why teams do not drop all their cards and start with a fresh hand very often. You might not see the cards you want again until several rounds later.

It is obviously more complex that this, but as a simple way to get the just of things, it works well.

[BoominRaven]

Wish we would cut Pitta. Huge cap number and it would keep joe from being captain checkdown quite as much. With pitta on the field he's much faster to just dump it off instead of reading through his progressions

[steelcityraven]

Wish we would cut Pitta. Huge cap number and it would keep joe from being captain checkdown quite as much. With pitta on the field he's much faster to just dump it off instead of reading through his progressions

Agreed- Even if we re-sign him later - I think he needs to be a post June 1 cut. Pitta is not that much better then Watson (I don't think he is better at all) or some of the other young TEs that we have but will make just about more of them all combined.

[jboy]

I don't quite understand how the salary cap works. All I know is we don't have much to work with. And I saw I think on espn.com the other day, the patriots are in the best shape, with about 60 million to spend ! Just doesn't seem fair. Their front office must do a better job of making the hard decisions on cutting guys when they get too old or expensive. And they of course have a top quarterback to pay. Frustrating to know that we might be lucky to get to 8-8. Unless we cast off some expensive often injured veterans and get some youth in here, which means 6-10.

[bioLarzen]

A great and important article.

[bioLarzen]

I don't quite understand how the salary cap works. All I know is we don't have much to work with. And I saw I think on espn.com the other day, the patriots are in the best shape, with about 60 million to spend ! Just doesn't seem fair. Their front office must do a better job of making the hard decisions on cutting guys when they get too old or expensive. And they of course have a top quarterback to pay. Frustrating to know that we might be lucky to get to 8-8. Unless we cast off some expensive often injured veterans and get some youth in here, which means 6-10.

Yep, the Patriots do a great job - but there is one grave pitfall: what is usually done by a complet front office at every other franchise, is largely done by one man in New Ebgland: Bill Belichick. He sets the FA and off season strategy, he has the final word about the draft, he's responsible fo the personnel-related deciosions... Which has been working fine since he's really that great. But, once he decides to retire... which may even be the same season Brady decides to hang'em up... Mr. Kraft will have to build up a front office from scratch...

[rossihunter2]

10 minutes ago, bioLarzen said:

Yep, the Patriots do a great job - but there is one grave pitfall: what is usually done by a complet front office at every other franchise, is largely done by one man in New Ebgland: Bill Belichick. He sets the FA and off season strategy, he has the final word about the draft, he's responsible fo the personnel-related deciosions... Which has been working fine since he's really that great. But, once he decides to retire... which may even be the same season Brady decides to hang'em up... Mr. Kraft will have to build up a front office from scratch...

that will mean that he can hire a gm and have them hire their guy though - it's not like that's a bad way to deal with losing a guy like that because so often pre-established coaches end up with unhappy gms because they feel like they are losing because the coach isnt 'their guy'

[EddiOK]

Excellent summary.

[Halshayeji]

Great article. Thank you for taking the time to put this all together in a way that people can actually understand how the salary cap works. 

[OzzieBisciotti]

I think Ozzie, DaCosta, ans Moriarty need to review this article in closer detail in light of where we've been with our cap for the past several years/ and with flacco contract situation.

[Crusader]

I don't quite understand how the salary cap works. All I know is we don't have much to work with. And I saw I think on espn.com the other day, the patriots are in the best shape, with about 60 million to spend ! Just doesn't seem fair. Their front office must do a better job of making the hard decisions on cutting guys when they get too old or expensive. And they of course have a top quarterback to pay. Frustrating to know that we might be lucky to get to 8-8. Unless we cast off some expensive often injured veterans and get some youth in here, which means 6-10.

I agree. Its nice to know the basics but most fans look at the results and now the facts are Ravens are 29th in the Cap space with a lucky 8-8 record and no "stars". When the last time the crowed were able to yelled a name?

[RavenSwag]

This was a great article

[Bat-mite]

That really cleared up some questions I had. I still don't understand a lot of the fine print, like why is it better to cut someone after June 1st?