The best salary cap breakdown I read comes from a guy on Reddit each year. This is the start of his offseason breakdown. This should be mandatory reading for everyone in this thread.
Just were are you getting the "other 28 players they will need to sign" from? The cap only counts against the top 51 contracts on the team and the Dolphins already have over 40 guys signed for next season. Also have you looked at the AJ extension? 3 years, 36M yet this is his cap hits... 2023 - 4.9 2024 - 4.5 2025 - 13.8 2026 - 13.8 2027 - dead cap of 3.6M due to void years Notice how his cap hit doesn't rise to 2025 and by then the salary cap will like be close to 270M.
What if these players don’t want to restructure also we need more players to fill those your cutting and good ones cost more. Not saying we can’t fix the issue but it’s not as easy as you say. I just don’t think Grier is the man for the job.
You don’t think they’d rather get a huge chunk of money up front in a signing bonus? Strange thought.
These are their FA’s, not an inordinately high amount mind you. (Bills have 22, for example) How many of these guys should they sign? Running back Salvon Ahmed Tight end Tyler Kroft Wide Receiver Braxton Berrios Robbie Chosen Chase Claypool River Cracraft Cedrick Wilson, Jr. Offensive line Jonotthan Harrison Robert Hunt Robert Jones (RFA) Kendall Lamm Connor Williams Isaiah Wynn Defensive line Raekwon Davis Da’Shawn Hand Christian Wilkins Linebackers Justin Houston Melvin Ingram Bruce Irvin Calvin Munson Andrew Van Ginkel Cornerbacks Eli Apple Justin Bethel Elijah Campbell (RFA) Nik Needham Safeties DeShon Elliott Brandon Jones Special Teams Jake Bailey, punter
They usually won’t have a choice as it’s often written into the contract that a team can restructure their deal without their permission. Plus, it usually favours the player as they get a chunk of money upfront. An example would be someone who has a guaranteed salary of $19M this season. Instead of getting a cheque for $1.117M each game if the team restructures that salary to be $3M salary and $16M signing bonus then the player gets the $16M straight away and then the other $3M split out per game.
There was $36M of new money added to the deal yet his cap hit this season is $4.5M (first year of the new deal). It’s how a lot of the new contracts will be split but you seem to just keep ignoring this for some reason no matter how many times people point this out.
You don't quite seem to understand how things work. Eventually things catch up. For instance here is Ramsey's contract. It is not cheap forever. See how it was small the first year, now it is not so small? Why do you continue to ignore this? I added Jackson to help you out. We get one "cheap" year and next year it explodes.
The irony of your first sentence is just too much. LMAOOO YOU’RE the one who is lost here my good man. Please, for the love of God, either stop talking about the cap, or at least learn a little about how it works before debating it.
As of February 24th, 2024, the Dolphins are $28m over the cap. With some very minimal moves they should be able to get to around $80m under the cap. That’s more than enough money to, if they want, retain Wilkins and AVG or anyone else for that matter. Sign FA’s and pay their rookies. It looks like we’ve all been saved by a miracle!! Lmao
Eventually they have to pay, Somehow you think the bill never comes due. if you want to keep restructuring players into their 80's go ahead.
The league's new cap is $255.4 million, well over the $240 million-plus it was expected to be, according to the league's website. More specifically as far as the Dolphins are concerned, it means they're not $52 million over the cap anymore, but closer to $38.4 million, according to overthecap.com. Sure, make it 28 million if that makes you feel better. Shoot why not just make it only 8 million over??? Got lucky the new cap went up so much.
Nope. I don’t think that at all. Again, maybe sit this one out. It’s obvious you don’t really know how any of this works.
It seems you’re lost again. Wonder why I put Feb. 24th? Ogbah was released and that savings was immediately added to their cap. But you keep flailing and not understanding how any of this works if it makes you feel better. If you’re going to use snark at least be correct or else you’ll look even more clueless.
I was curious as to why OTC had the Dolphins still at $38m over like you posted here. It seems you did a quick Google search, instead of doing any due diligence (not surprised) and used the first hit on Google as your gospel. The first hit from OTC is 3 days old and indeed shows the Dolphins at $38.4m over. LMFAOOOOOOOO!!! If you actually took the time and looked at the CURRENT OTC website, you'd see the truth. You won't though. Instead you'll just keep being angry.... and wrong...mostly wrong.
Instead of arguing over the salary cap, can I suggest, if there are those who are willing, to track the Dolphins current salary cap status, track who is cut, track who’s contract is restructured, track who is extended and the overall effect said moves have on the team’s salary cap? Seems a bit silly the back and forth and the desire to be RIGHT than what the reality truly is. Just a suggestion.
I, and others, have done all of that and actually posted those things here. Yet some would rather ignore those facts, make stuff up, and cry about things that aren’t true.
Hey, this might be a big ask, but I just get the feeling that you probably understand the cap situation better than most people on here. I was wondering if you could make a longer post that really gets into the weeds. You seem to think that a lot of our problems could be solved by restructuring guys, but I am struggling to visualize what that would look like in both the short term and in the long term. My fear is that restructuring today might mean cap hell in the future. I am not asking you to do this for every player on the team, but maybe just show us a before and after of a few contracts that you think need to be restructured.
I’m no cap expert. However, I just read things and do the math and use past examples of what other teams have done in order to be cap compliant. It’s too hard to get into specifics for any player because we don’t know what route the player, his agent, and the team want to go. We can be certain, going off of the past, that guys like Tyreek, Ramsey, etc, won’t have these giant cap hits we are seeing now. The basic premise is that restructuring a contract often times, not all the time, gives a player a lump sum of money upfront and that lump is spread out over the length of the contract or 5 years… whichever is shorter. For example, Tyreek’s 2024 cap hit as of right now is over $30m. The most likely outcome of this will be he will get a large “signing bonus” (or some other type of bonus) let’s just say $15m to keep it simple, and that will lower his cap hit to $15 in 2024. The $15m will be prorated over the length of his contract or 5 years. If it’s 5 years, that will add $3m to his cap hit each year in 2025-2030. The idea is, and like what happened with X, by the time the player will end up being released or traded, there will be a net savings to the cap. I can’t recall off hand how much X’s cap hit was going to be this year, but once he’s released, the Dolphins save around $18m on the cap. Yes, those prorated bonuses go towards the future cap, but a lot of people don’t consider that the cap rises every year. Sometimes not so much, but this year it went up $30m (a record). So in that Tyreek example, that $5 extra million each year will be covered, and more, by the increases in cap. The NFL doesn’t have a hard cap. It’s very fungible. It’s basically a myth. Sure, there are ways to screw it up, but no team is going to hire people that are dumb enough to do that. Every team can basically get who they want and retain who they want. The Dolphins ended the 2023 season $52m OVER the cap. There are realistic ways they can get to $80m UNDER the cap for the 2024 season. There are a few very good breakdowns in this thread on how that can happen. Bottom line, if the Dolphins want to pay Wilkins.. he will get signed. If they want to keep every player currently on the roster, they can. The key word is WANT. Maybe Wilkins doesn’t fit what Weaver wants to do? Maybe Weaver thinks he has a couple of other players that would be a better fit and would rather pay two players than just Wilkins? We don’t know yet. Here’s a good article explaining that the cap is a myth: https://www.audacy.com/national/sports/schlereth-nfl-salary-cap-isnt-real-easily-manipulated#
Okay, as a general followup, I had a few clarifying questions. The notion that we can get anyone is probably true. But is it also true that we can't get everyone? Like I get that if we really, really wanted to, we could go sign Mike Evans and find a way to make it work. But I don't think we could get Mike Evans, Christian Wilkins, Christ Jones, and L'Jarius Sneed So do you have a rough estimate of how many of "those kind of guys" we can get, AND how many of those kind of guys are already on our roster?
Correct. There’s a “cap limit” in the sense that if every player cost $50m every season there’s just not enough money. However, when it comes to having a handful of high priced guys… DT, Edge, QB, DB, LT… most teams have most of those guys getting insane amounts of money. So much so that it looks as if they can’t sign anyone else. That’s obviously not true. And that’s mainly due to restructuring and the cap increases each year.
Sigh… I’m on the verge of giving up trying to explain this. Every team does this, the cap goes up every year so you push money forward. Miami has one of the best cap guys in the business so they should be able to avoid becoming a Saints situation where you are restructuring indefinitely. Do you see those large base salaries in the following years? They allow a team flexibility in managing large contracts, again Miami is very, very good at that. So much so that they have the greatest amount of restructure room in the league. With all big contracts you have to give you yourself an out where you know that you will eat a big dead cap hit but at the same time you give yourself enough of a cap saving to sign a replacement or two for the person you are cutting. Restructuring now, gives you space now but cuts into the saving when you do finally get out of the big contract.
The Dolphins are currently around $15m over the cap. That’s due to the cap increase and the releasing of Ogbah, Baker, and Crossen. When X is released they will be around $3-4m under the cap. Releasing a few more guys, restructuring Tyreek, Ramsey, Chubb, and a few others, along with signing Tua and a few others, could potentially get the Dolphins to around $80m under the cap. If I had to bet, I’d say that realistically they’ll make the moves necessary to be around $60m under when it’s all said and done. Plenty enough to sign Wilkins, a few FA’s, and their rookies from this draft. If Wilkins decides that he wants to set a DT contract record he may leave, but the money they’d likely offer him can get us nearly anyone else available who wants to take his spot. That’s not saying I want or think he’s going to leave. I think he’s a Dolphins next year. Fingers crossed*.
Wilkins in going to garner a big payday, but will he get what he thinks he warrants? That’s the $64,000 question. I don’t believe he’ll get more than $22 million per year. If that’s all he’s offered by any other team, we could pick that up after restructuring. If we do lose Wilkins however, I say the odds on favorite to land him will be Houston.
