NFL Commish Roger Goodell is going to have a HARD time trying to reverse course here...

AtoZ Sports

Kyle Crabbs discusses a possible rule change coming to salary caps across the NFL after Roger Goodell's most recent comments.

Transcript

00:00Don't look now, but Roger Goodell might be setting his eyes on your favorite GM's favorite secret weapon against the salary cap.

00:10I'm Kyle Krabs with A to Z Sports, and on the heels of the owners' meetings last week,

00:15Roger Goodell was asked about the prospect of starting negotiations towards a new collective bargaining agreement

00:21between the Players Association and the league.

00:24And it wasn't necessarily what Roger Goodell said, but it was the underlying tones of what Roger Goodell said

00:31that seems to have people's attention in the days after the statement.

00:36Here's what Goodell had to say.

00:37There are no formal plans on any discussions.

00:39We obviously continue to be in close communication with the union on a variety of matters,

00:44but no stardom negotiations has been said or are under consideration really at this point.

00:48We did spend time today talking at length about areas of our collective bargaining agreement

00:53that we want to focus on.

00:55The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system,

01:01how it's working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining when that does happen?

01:06That was a very lengthy discussion, and that is probably because one of the recent trends across the league

01:14that has caught on like wildfire has opened Pandora's box as it pertains to the integrity of the salary cap.

01:22And that tool is the concept of void years.

01:26What's a void year?

01:26Well, it's effectively a dummy year put on the back end of a contract that allows a team to spread their bonuses

01:34that are paid to players across multiple years of the salary cap,

01:39even if the player is only signing a one-year contract to play for the team.

01:43So say a player signs a one-year contract with a $10 million signing bonus.

01:48With no void years, all $10 million of that money has to be accounted for in the current year's salary cap

01:55when the player has signed to play with the team.

01:58But teams have caught on to the idea that you can put up to four dummy years on the back end of a one-year deal.

02:04You can spread bonuses for up to five years against the cap.

02:06So that same one-year contract with the same $10 million signing bonus with four void years put on the back end of it

02:14means that teams only have to account for $2 million in the current year of cap.

02:19So teams that are willing to outspend and spend cash over cap on an annual basis

02:25have been rapidly speeding through the stop signs of salary cap for the past three, four, five, six seasons and more.

02:33It's helping spur and push player salaries higher.

02:36It's helping to put players back into the player pool on a more frequent basis

02:40to allow them to double and triple dip to get more contracts.

02:44And of course, it is causing the payroll and by extension,

02:48the expenses of owning a team to go up even higher.

02:52Some of the teams that are most known for their implementation of void years include

02:57the reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles,

03:00who have been wisely leveraging the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement,

03:05bringing a new influx in cash and by extension,

03:08a massive leap in the projections for the salary cap.

03:12It's a slippery slope that the league is frankly going to have a difficult time putting back into Pandora's box,

03:19considering more than three quarters of the league is now using void years in some way, shape or form,

03:26according to the most recent numbers.

03:29And the other part of this for owners and general managers, too,

03:33is if you foundationally have a problem with the concept of void years,

03:38you're playing the game with one hand tied behind your back

03:40because everybody else is unlocking significantly more spending power

03:45by borrowing against future years of cap

03:48because there's no interest for your debt at the NFL level

03:52with the current salary cap structure and the borrowing structure the way it is set up.

03:56So, good luck figuring this one out,

04:00but general managers across the league in recent years

04:02have very quickly adopted and embraced the borrowing power

04:07at an interest-free rate against future years of salary cap courtesy of void years.

04:12And it sounds like owners and Roger Goodell would like to put the kibosh on that.

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