2014 Chicago Bears Offseason Thread

[Soul]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

[davell]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

[Soul]

How do we feel about Briggs moving forward? It seems as if he's unhappy to begin with. He's also older and showed signs of breaking down somewhat. Is he tradeable? If so, I can't see us getting more than a 5th or 6th back. But you'd also get the full use of his 6.5 mill salary to use elsewhere. If you cut him, he'd have a mill cap hit, but you'd save 5.5 by doing that.

 

How integral is he now? Emery spoke of adding leadership, so getting rid of Lance certainly is the opposite of that. But that extra money could go towards helping the D obviously. Too much turnover in one year for the D or feasible?

 

I prefer to keep him around another year for continuity.

[minnesotacubsfan]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

 

 

5 years from now the League will severely reprimand us for the work of our "cap genius"

[davell]

It's an automatic conversion clause for cap purposes. Creates a "use as you go" situation.

 

"The player and club agree that on one or more occasions and at any time during the duration of the contract, the club shall have the right, but not the obligation, to convert any portion of the players paragraph 5 salary, roster bonus and/or other amount set forth in this contract to signing bonus.

 

Paragraph 5 refers to base salary, by the way.

 

At any rate, this could change things dramatically, as depending on how crazy we want to go, we can certainly afford multiple players, if we want to go that route.

[davell]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

 

 

5 years from now the League will severely reprimand us for the work of our "cap genius"

With the quotation marks around cap genius, are you not in favor of this? Or do you like Cliff a lot?

[Splendid Splinter]

How do we feel about Briggs moving forward? It seems as if he's unhappy to begin with. He's also older and showed signs of breaking down somewhat. Is he tradeable? If so, I can't see us getting more than a 5th or 6th back. But you'd also get the full use of his 6.5 mill salary to use elsewhere. If you cut him, he'd have a mill cap hit, but you'd save 5.5 by doing that.

 

How integral is he now? Emery spoke of adding leadership, so getting rid of Lance certainly is the opposite of that. But that extra money could go towards helping the D obviously. Too much turnover in one year for the D or feasible?

 

I prefer to keep him around another year for continuity.

 

Briggs only has 1 more year left so just keep him and let him go after next year. Hopefully Bostic will be ready to slide in and produce.

[minnesotacubsfan]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

 

 

5 years from now the League will severely reprimand us for the work of our "cap genius"

With the quotation marks around cap genius, are you not in favor of this? Or do you like Cliff a lot?

 

I'm 90% joking around. He seems to be doing really innovating things to get guys under contracts everyone loves and the Bears fan in me just dreads it all going bad. And by going bad I mean being uncovered as illegal or not allowable.

[davell]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

 

 

5 years from now the League will severely reprimand us for the work of our "cap genius"

With the quotation marks around cap genius, are you not in favor of this? Or do you like Cliff a lot?

 

I'm 90% joking around. He seems to be doing really innovating things to get guys under contracts everyone loves and the Bears fan in me just dreads it all going bad. And by going bad I mean being uncovered as illegal or not allowable.

Ah, understandable. I'm assuming all teams have a guy doing stuff like this, but I don't know that for sure. But yeah, I guess it could face ramifications at some point. But the league has to approve the deals immediately, don't they?

 

To me, the possible negative is Emery over-using it and getting us in horrible shape a few years from now. But I doubt he'll just flat out abuse it honestly.

 

That said, my offseason outlook did just change......

 

I now expect to keep 2 of Wootton, Melton, and Ratliff. Plus add a top tier S in FA, one of Byrd, Ward, or Whitner AND one of Johnson, Bennett, or Joseph as well. Along with no issues in keeping Britton, Bowman, DJ, Garza, McCown, and Collins.

[minnesotacubsfan]

I'm sure the guy knows what he is doing, its more playing along with the "sulley's team" mantra and a general fatalist view towards the Bears.

 

I hope they use it wisely. so far, so good.

[rawaction]

I think Briggs' situation depends on the direction of the D. If they stay 4-3, gotta keep Briggs and let him play out his contract. If there is a drastic change, might as well let him go instead of trying to fit him into a new scheme for 1 year.

[Soul]

I assume they won't go full 3-4

[PosterToBeNamedLater]

Ah, understandable. I'm assuming all teams have a guy doing stuff like this, but I don't know that for sure. But yeah, I guess it could face ramifications at some point. But the league has to approve the deals immediately, don't they?

Not that I am worried about this, but didn't the league take cap space away from the Cowboys and Redskins a year or so ago for moves that they made during the uncapped season. If I remember correctly, the teams were mad because not only did their moves follow the rules of the season, but were also approved by the league at the time.

[KaiserCesar]

Ah, understandable. I'm assuming all teams have a guy doing stuff like this, but I don't know that for sure. But yeah, I guess it could face ramifications at some point. But the league has to approve the deals immediately, don't they?

Not that I am worried about this, but didn't the league take cap space away from the Cowboys and Redskins a year or so ago for moves that they made during the uncapped season. If I remember correctly, the teams were mad because not only did their moves follow the rules of the season, but were also approved by the league at the time.

 

Wasn't there a ton of prior warning from the NFL about not front-loading contracts in the uncapped year?

[davell]

Ah, understandable. I'm assuming all teams have a guy doing stuff like this, but I don't know that for sure. But yeah, I guess it could face ramifications at some point. But the league has to approve the deals immediately, don't they?

Not that I am worried about this, but didn't the league take cap space away from the Cowboys and Redskins a year or so ago for moves that they made during the uncapped season. If I remember correctly, the teams were mad because not only did their moves follow the rules of the season, but were also approved by the league at the time.

 

Wasn't there a ton of prior warning from the NFL about not front-loading contracts in the uncapped year?

Yeah, there was.

 

Some perspective of what Jay's deal can technically do: the Saints gave Bree's a 37 million dollar signing bonus a couple of years ago and pro-rated it out over the length of the deal.

 

If we turn Jay's 22.5 first year salary completely into a signing bonus, it'd be possible to turn his 22.5 cap hit into less than a 4 mill hit, opening up over 18 million to play with.

[KaiserCesar]

Ah, understandable. I'm assuming all teams have a guy doing stuff like this, but I don't know that for sure. But yeah, I guess it could face ramifications at some point. But the league has to approve the deals immediately, don't they?

Not that I am worried about this, but didn't the league take cap space away from the Cowboys and Redskins a year or so ago for moves that they made during the uncapped season. If I remember correctly, the teams were mad because not only did their moves follow the rules of the season, but were also approved by the league at the time.

 

Wasn't there a ton of prior warning from the NFL about not front-loading contracts in the uncapped year?

Yeah, there was.

 

Some perspective of what Jay's deal can technically do: the Saints gave Bree's a 37 million dollar signing bonus a couple of years ago and pro-rated it out over the length of the deal.

 

If we turn Jay's 22.5 first year salary completely into a signing bonus, it'd be possible to turn his 22.5 cap hit into less than a 4 mill hit, opening up over 18 million to play with.

 

It seems like this was designed to be done this year for a huge defensive overhaul, although converting next year's salary could still free up about 13 million in cap space. Between this and a potential Marshall re-signing, I'm definitely expecting some impact defensive talent.

[Splendid Splinter]

 

Without even informing any of Jay, TJ, or Slauson, we have the ability to turn their money into signing bonuses to lower our cap number, if we see FA we want and need money to get them.

 

That said, my offseason outlook did just change......

 

I now expect to keep 2 of Wootton, Melton, and Ratliff. Plus add a top tier S in FA, one of Byrd, Ward, or Whitner AND one of Johnson, Bennett, or Joseph as well. Along with no issues in keeping Britton, Bowman, DJ, Garza, McCown, and Collins.

 

All this means is Emery can get even more creative now. Cutler is probably the only one where they will lower his cap hit if they need to. Slauson/Jennings/etc don't make enough to really matter IMO. It also means Peppers isn't a lock to be cut. Bears could end up with Johnson and keep Peppers. I do think they would be able to check off a lot of their wish list if Peppers is cut and they convert like 14 mil of Cutler's base this year into signing bonus. What's really nice this can end up being a pretty good FA class (still have to wait on tags and see who gets re-signed by their team) on the defensive side so Bears could really take advantage of that with their flexible cap space.

[WrigleyField 22]

What's really great is if we do whiff on big FA (which obviously isn't great in itself) we have the ability to only free up exactly what we need, allowing to rain flexibility going forward. Bears have ways been fairly conservative with salary cap planning so I don't expect we'll see a huge FA splash and the full amount converted over, but it's nice to have some flexibility.

[Guest]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Haven't I taught you guys how to get around this enough times already?

[WrigleyField 22]

Edit- whoops Edited January 7, 2014 by WrigleyField 22

[minnesotacubsfan]

Bulls?

[ctcf]

Apparently ABTY does Bears now too?

 

Ty Youngfelt @TyYoungfelt

Heard Bears, BMarsh reps have discussed extension that will add upto 4 additional yrs to the 2 remaining while also reducing current cap #

 

Ty Youngfelt @TyYoungfelt

Also hearing Peppers has offered to yet again restructure deal to drastically reduce cap #, FO still may cut outright

[Soul]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Haven't I taught you guys how to get around this enough times already?

 

Darn it, I missed those posts. Thanks for the tip, works perfect.

[davell]

Marshall only has one year left, fwiw.

 

 

Question for anyone here, as I'm trying to find an answer on Twitter, to no avail yet. If we(example) decided to turn Jay's entire 2014 salary into a signing bonus and give him a minimum salary(715k), we would pro-rate the rest over the entire 7 years of his deal. This would add over 3 mill towards his cap number for the length of the deal, correct? Which therefore, would give him 3+ mill of dead money in each of the final 4 years, where now there is none, correct? Does it do anything else to those years cap numbers or is that it? It seems as if that IS it, but it also seems a bit too good to be true, in a way. As in , why aren't all teams operating like this?

 

Now, I get that year 2 the cap number jumps a ton, but again, with this clause, it's able to be done again. So, why wouldn't we just continue to turn his cap number into a signing bonus each year? Yes, by doing this, we'd see his 4-7 years cap number start to jump up, but the salary cap as a whole, should be increasing as well.

 

I'm much more interested in doing all we can over the 1st portion of his deal anyway, as its at least likely once he's gone, we'll take a step backwards for a year or two anyway.

 

In a way, I guess this is taking the "Hendry approach", but longterm NFL deals are easier to get out from under of and you can turn your fortunes around by good drafting much quicker than in baseball obviously. So doesn't it make sense to take this approach and do everything humanly possible to give him the absolute best chance to win over the first 3 years or so of the deal, even if conceivably you take this approach for 3 straight years and after that he has a 10 mill cap hit or so, if you decide to cut him? And may have a year or two of cap problems from him and others you've signed during the first 3 years?

[minnesotacubsfan]

Paywall.

 

Summary?

 

Haven't I taught you guys how to get around this enough times already?

 

Darn it, I missed those posts. Thanks for the tip, works perfect.

 

 

I missed them too