Not too surprisingly, in the process of making the table on the Salary Cap page, I learned a lot about how the salary cap works. In particular, there were a few things that changed with the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The most substantial being that only the top 51 salaries count towards the cap. If you notice at the bottom of the table I made, there are two totals. The first is the sum of all of the salaries and the second is the sum of the top 51 that actually count towards the cap. I have been thinking about this for a while and thought this would cause an incentive to the team to pay the players at the bottom of the roster all approximately the same amount. I don't have evidence to support this, but I am going to look into this further later.
The focus of almost all my posts so far have been about the draft and this one is no different. Another part of the new CBA is a revised rookie wage scale. This exists mostly to lower the massive risks that are associated with picking in the top of the first round; making those picks incredibly valuable, case in point the Redskins trade for the number 2 overall pick. Right now the 51st salary that counts is Tiquan Underwood at $615k. Therefore, anyone signed with a cap hit smaller than $615k this year does NOT count towards the cap at all! (unless they are cut) Comparing the salaries from last year, players selected in the middle to end of the second round all had cap hits smaller than $615k their first year and are therefore invisible to the cap. To me, this seems to greatly increase the value of low second round and high third round picks. You can get top quality talent for free in regards to the cap! This may be considered penny pinching, but for a team, and coach in particular, that emphasizes value over just skill and is known for working the draft board, this makes me think the Pats will move to get several picks at the end of the second/beginning of the third round.
No comments:
Post a Comment