Many of the details in the league has been scrambling to work out as training camp approaches are done. The COVID-19 testing protocol is set and there will be no preseason. That allows things to move forward and for players to report to camp on time. However, there are still a lot of details to be worked out. Namely, the money stuff.
Even with camp starting and the schedule set, there is still a possibility the season doesn’t happen. How the finances are handled in that possible eventuality puts the owners at odds with the General Managers and the players.
The money comes from the owners, who would stand to lose quite a bit should the season get canceled. The players already have contracts the club must honor and it’s the GM who must try and hold it all together. That means either the owners have to settle in with the fact that they are going to lose money — something rich people are loathed to do — or they have to come up with a way to make that money back.
The owners would like to limit the sting immediately, while the GMs and players would like to spread it out, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero.
The NFLPA wants to spread the financial hit through 2030, rather than taking it now. And even a $10 million reduction in the 2020 salary cap would be “too much” at this stage, one GM said. Rosters are largely set. Many teams would be scrambling to free up money somewhere.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 23, 2020
Cutting the 2020 cap could have devastating effects on many teams bordering on downright impossible.
As Pelissero notes, one GM said even a $10 million reduction would be too much. Let’s look at that for a moment.
There are currently 11 NFL teams that will have less than $10 million in available cap. Many of those teams have yet to sign all their draft picks, so even that number will go down soon.
Take the Raiders, for instance. They have just $5.99 million in cap space according to Overthecap.com. And they have yet to officially sign a single draft pick — all of whom were drafted in the first four rounds. Which means, every bit of that small amount of cap space is already spoken for.
A lower cap now would mean cutting some valuable players, which would also mean taking on a lot of dead money. With rosters set, that would put some teams at an unfair competitive disadvantage.
Ultimately, lowering the current cap is a non-starter. It may hurt some owners a bit in the short term, but the plan to spread it out over a few years, presumably by not raising the cap as much each year as they would have otherwise.
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