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"Cheap Owners" (1 Viewer)

eighsse2

eighsse2

Footballguy
Okay so there's a narrative about certain owners being cheap and "not paying their players". But, tell me if I'm wrong here. Salary cap stuff is complicated and over my head. But my understanding is, unused cap space rolls over to the next year. If Cheapy McOwnerguy doesn't pay his players as much as other owners pay their players, wouldn't his team be rolling a massive cap space snowball year after year?
 
eighsse2 said:
Okay so there's a narrative about certain owners being cheap and "not paying their players". But, tell me if I'm wrong here. Salary cap stuff is complicated and over my head. But my understanding is, unused cap space rolls over to the next year. If Cheapy McOwnerguy doesn't pay his players as much as other owners pay their players, wouldn't his team be rolling a massive cap space snowball year after year?
Click to expand...
Cap space doesn't roll over, you get a hard cap for the year which changed every year based on TV revenue and a bunch of other things.
 
From https://www.profootballnetwork.com/how-does-nfl-salary-cap-work/

"NFL teams are allowed to roll over any unused cap space from one season to the next. Teams must tell the league they plan to roll over cap space by 4 p.m. ET on the day after their regular-season finale.

While the NFL has a salary cap, it also has a salary floor, so teams cannot hold onto money perpetually. Teams must spend at least 89% of the cap over a four-year period, while the NFL as a whole must spend at least 95% of the cap.

If a team fails to reach the 89% threshold, it will be forced to pay the difference to players who were on its roster during those four years. However, no NFL team has been penalized in this manner in recent memory."
 
Cap space does roll over.

In plain words…what you are getting at is that there quite a few owners in the NFL who are ok with spending CASH ho front and using mechanisms in place within the rules to manipulate the cap such as using void years, restructuring/extensions and kicking the can down the road which with a increasing salary cap each year…is not the end of the world. These mechanisms allow you to spread out the cap hits for a longer period of time which ALLOW you to sign more players but this also means the owner needs to spend more. Every team is hitting the minimum requirements but the “not cheap” owners are spending way more than that such as the eagles.

The Cowboys can be considered cheap, they do the bare minimum and look at their team as a stock or whatever you want to call it opposed to some owners who want to do everything to win. And I don’t mean by not paying Parsons, there are more examples but a big one is when Derrick Henry was a free agent. He wanted 6-7 mil a year and to play in Dallas and Jerry did not want to manipulate the contracts and his excuse was that they didn’t have anymore money because they had to pay Dak.

This is very quick and broad but you get the point. Check out the spotrac podcast and you’ll really get a good understanding.
 
If your team is bad than it makes no sense to spend extra money which I get. But if you are a playoff team and a few players can make a big difference, you should go all in and spend the extra cash and some owners do not. Cowboys,
Bengals, etc

Bengals let their safety go to free agency a few years ago bc they are cheap

Great/good players rarely ever hit the free agency market in their prime but it’s always possible with questionable owners
 
Last edited:
eighsse2 said:
Okay so there's a narrative about certain owners being cheap and "not paying their players". But, tell me if I'm wrong here. Salary cap stuff is complicated and over my head. But my understanding is, unused cap space rolls over to the next year. If Cheapy McOwnerguy doesn't pay his players as much as other owners pay their players, wouldn't his team be rolling a massive cap space snowball year after year?
Click to expand...

Big guy, we’ve got terrible owners. I mean Cincinnati and the New York Jets. At least we’re not loud and throwing money in the air like we don’t care and then doing a double back after the crowd leaves to pick it all up like Jerry would.

Peace and solace,

-rockaction
 
dblock05 said:
Cap space does roll over.

In plain words…what you are getting at is that there quite a few owners in the NFL who are ok with spending CASH ho front and using mechanisms in place within the rules to manipulate the cap such as using void years, restructuring/extensions and kicking the can down the road which with a increasing salary cap each year…is not the end of the world. These mechanisms allow you to spread out the cap hits for a longer period of time which ALLOW you to sign more players but this also means the owner needs to spend more. Every team is hitting the minimum requirements but the “not cheap” owners are spending way more than that such as the eagles.

The Cowboys can be considered cheap, they do the bare minimum and look at their team as a stock or whatever you want to call it opposed to some owners who want to do everything to win. And I don’t mean by not paying Parsons, there are more examples but a big one is when Derrick Henry was a free agent. He wanted 6-7 mil a year and to play in Dallas and Jerry did not want to manipulate the contracts and his excuse was that they didn’t have anymore money because they had to pay Dak.

This is very quick and broad but you get the point. Check out the spotrac podcast and you’ll really get a good understanding.
Click to expand...
So it's really just a delaying of cap hits in order to max out spending this year. Seems like that wouldn't be a massive difference proportionally. And even if some team only hit their 89% minimum every year, they would be rolling up a massive cap space. So I don't think anyone is doing that.
 
rockaction said:
eighsse2 said:
Okay so there's a narrative about certain owners being cheap and "not paying their players". But, tell me if I'm wrong here. Salary cap stuff is complicated and over my head. But my understanding is, unused cap space rolls over to the next year. If Cheapy McOwnerguy doesn't pay his players as much as other owners pay their players, wouldn't his team be rolling a massive cap space snowball year after year?
Click to expand...

Big guy, we’ve got terrible owners. I mean Cincinnati and the New York Jets. At least we’re not loud and throwing money in the air like we don’t care and then doing a double back after the crowd leaves to pick it all up like Jerry would.

Peace and solace,

-rockaction
Click to expand...
That may be, but I'm interested in finding out if the "cheap owner" you hear of is a real thing as far as paying players is concerned. It seems like the system would make it unlikely to be feasible, and if you did it, it seems like you would be rolling up this massive cap space number.

If you and I each have a bucket, and the Money Fairy drops $10 in each bucket every day, and it's intended to be given away to someone in need (the Money Fairy knows what you're doing with it, so you can't take it out and stash it somewhere else). And after a full year, I say, "Rock doesn't give his Money Fairy money to people in need," and I cite certain examples where you used discretion to opt not to give to certain people at a certain time. And then you show that your bucket has $13 left in it and my bucket has $11 left in it, then you've proven that I'm making things up. If you weren't giving it away, it would be piled up in the bucket.
 
There seems to be a slight misunderstanding here about cap space. It does roll over to the next year provided a team designates it to do so, but there is also a hard ceiling each year that is tied predominantly to a percentage of league revenue.

In other words, a team can roll over as much remaining cap it has to the following season but cannot exceed that next season’s designated maximum cap space no matter how much is rolled over.

Now, there are ways of circumventing that hard cap, such as with certain incentive bonuses, but that’s a whole different conversation.
 
eighsse2 said:
From https://www.profootballnetwork.com/how-does-nfl-salary-cap-work/

"NFL teams are allowed to roll over any unused cap space from one season to the next. Teams must tell the league they plan to roll over cap space by 4 p.m. ET on the day after their regular-season finale.

While the NFL has a salary cap, it also has a salary floor, so teams cannot hold onto money perpetually. Teams must spend at least 89% of the cap over a four-year period, while the NFL as a whole must spend at least 95% of the cap.

If a team fails to reach the 89% threshold, it will be forced to pay the difference to players who were on its roster during those four years. However, no NFL team has been penalized in this manner in recent memory."
Click to expand...
My understanding was 90% and that basically is what you posted.
If the Cap is $270-$280M, somewhere in there, owners can pocket $27M if they choose to
I also think they can roll some of this over a 2-3 year period so it's possible certain years they could pocket as much as double that and still be within their rights as owners

Do we have any clear examples where owners pocketed and did not roll the money over?
I more or less view owners that make Top 3-5 talent at their positions and almsot force them into 5th year options with no extensions, franchise tag vs extend on time, expose their QB to potential injury without extending the contract until the absolute last minute as the season is reay to start.

There's different ways to measure cheap and an owner that can delay an extension by 12 months and avoid a signing bonus of $25M+ that sits in his account earning interest and delaying the inevitable, all of those decisions should factor in.

:whistle:
 
Fans and media often ignore cash considerations and focus only on cap constraints as we see in this discussion so far, but I guarantee owners do not ignore their cash obligations. Salary cap considerations are an accounting construct that GMs and bean counters certainly have to consider, but if you’re offering a player a $45m signing bonus and $136m in guarantees cash over the next three years, someone has to cut those checks and that guy doesn’t really care much about carry-forwards and void years.
 
There's a great couple of podcast episodes from Freakonomics regarding how the players are treated by the owners. Some players have to pay for their own food in the stadium. One team had rats in the locker room. It won't surprise anyone that the teams that are always targeted for having "cheap owners" are the ones that really don't treat players as well as the others.

They did two episodes, an original came out in 2023 and then an update just before the Super Bowl in February of 2025 with the results of the second survey after the cheapest owners were shamed into improvements.
 
It's definitely real. And it's not just salary cap. Here are things that set some teams apart:

1. Coaching staff and associates salaries

2. Perks - game day childcare, practice childcare, number of meals, quality of meals, quality of snacks, travel style, etc

3. Training staff and associates equipment

4. Cash and guarantees vs waiting. This is the Cowboys example - they try to pay fewer guarantees and they pay WAY less in year cash - it looks like they have a $225M or so cash budget, vs a team like Philly which may spend $400M in a single year of cash. They both end up the same in cap but by paying cash up front you can often manipulate your cap better and fit more and better players into it.

5. Stadium experience - not just for fans but for player families too


That's just my off the top of my head list.
 
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