Ndamukong Suh deal with Dolphins

[Distant Relative]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/nda ... ar-AA9wNcM

Not gonna be a Hawk!

[savvyman]

Yes - it will always be difficult for successful teams to overpay for a star (in Suh's case Super Star) in free agency.

Then you have to factor in the Human being factor - meaning coaching staffs and front offices who are under job pressure to "Win Now or Else" - who will make bad short term decisions like over paying for a player in order to save their jobs - for the short term - while these decisions eventually cost the team dearly over the long term.

Now the Hawks can focus on the one free agency goal that they probably have been focusing on since Feb. 2nd - Julius Thomas.

[Hawk Sista]

Suh was never going to be a Hawk. Interesting that he seems to be near signing in Miami. Yuck! Glad he's not in the NFC West.

[NorthHawk]

This might mean Odrick or Randy Starks could become available.
They're the types of players John and Pete seem to go after in FA.

[RiverDog]

I never thought for a minute that Suh would sign with the Hawks. It was pure fantasy.

[NorthHawk]

According to PFT he gets $60 million fully guaranteed over 3 years (not just guaranteed for injury).
By the article it means the owner has to write a check for $60 million today with Suh getting a boatload up front and the rest going into escrow.

[c_hawkbob]

According to PFT he gets $60 million fully guaranteed over 3 years (not just guaranteed for injury).
By the article it means the owner has to write a check for $60 million today with Suh getting a boatload up front and the rest going into escrow.

Other teams (and likely the league office) won’t like this. If owners who have the cash to make that kind of commitment start making that kind of commitment, they’ll have a huge advantage when it comes to signing players. Eventually, the richest owners will take over the league.

Be still my beating heart!

[Steady_Hawk]

Bob,

Help me out here, signing bonus money still counts against the cap right? So ultimately is this saying that Billionaires who want to spend cash out of their own pockets up front have a better chance to land larger FA's or am I understanding this wrong?

[c_hawkbob]

Yes signing bonus' still count against the cap, but they would exist purely as a tool for minimizing cap hits in the first year of a fully guaranteed contract.

For instance if we give Russ a $25M signing bonus and a $2M first year salary the first year cap hit would only be $7M against the cap in year one ($25M bonus pro-rated over 5 years = $5M + $2M salary), but in a fully guaranteed contract the owner would write a check for the entire amount of the contract upon the signing of it, Russ would get his $25M bonus up front and the rest would go into an escrow account to be paid out in weekly game checks over the balance of the contract.

Not many owners are going to be willing to write $100M + checks every time they sign a decent player.