Veteran Salary Offset Rule Proposal

[Steve-LA Chargers]

I'd like to propose the following rule for next offseason (yeah, I know you won't do it this offseason):

Coaches may use points to reduce a veteran player's salary by $1 million per point. They can spend as many points they would like to reduce the veteran's salary by $1 million increments, but it can't go lower than half the player's original salary. For the purposes of this rule, veterans are any player 7 years or older after the start new season button has been pressed. If the player is subsequently traded to another team, the new team only pays the reduced salary.

Example: If a 10 veteran player has a $9,000,000 salary in 2026, the coach can spend up to 4 points as bonus payouts to this player to reduce this to $5,000,000.

My case for this is that we use points for anti-aging of veterans so I realized we should consider treating points as the equivalent of an immediate bonus for them too in order to help offset their ballooning salaries. I figure Rich could simply add a column in the contract sheet for each team that tracks this deduction.

[Steve-LA Chargers]

Just to be clear. It only last the current season. It goes back up to the full salary next offseason.

[Charlie-49ers]

Pretty interesting idea, since we can also trade points. I think that I like it! I assume that if you buy-down his Cap number and trade him, the lower number goes with him! If we can get League buy-in, Rich can let us know if he can do it this season. I would probably want 8-10 of the owners to think that this is a good idea, but we need to talk it up ASAP.

[Steve-LA Chargers]

Couple of other pros for this:

1) Makes it easier to sign expensive vets during the regular season. Let's say you have an injury and want to sign a decent vet to a 0 point current season deal but you are only $3.5M under the cap. If he costs $5M, you could give him the equivalent of a signing bonus in the form of 2 points which brings his salary cap hit to $3M.

2) No one freaking trades. And it's even more unlikely with 1/3rd of the league open. The only option GMs over the cap have right now is to cut a few expensive vets or a lot of young players. Cutting is the only option. Yeah I get we want more quality FAs, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone over the cap to only get under the cap by cutting players. If there is no way to get compensation for elite players, it's kind of unfair. In the NFL, they are able to make deals with elite players to spread their salaries over time in order to reduce salary cap impact. We can't do that, but we could provide some temporary relief with the proposed salary offset.

[Justin-Chicago]

Knowing what the cap will be a year in advance might help too. Teams will use more restraint in bidding it up for top talent anticipating their inflating salaries every year. $210 is higher than last year but still above year one as I recall. Are we looking at the same next year or to go higher?

Would be interesting to anchor the cap increase/decrease to the average player salary increase/decrease. It seems like salaries increased dramatically this offseason and the cap only slightly.

When both happen without much advance notice it can cause desperation reactions. Not saying we don't want or need that in the grand scheme of things, I think it makes it interesting, but I am seeing some more complex proposals that seek to mitigate this without addressing the root cause.

[Shawn-Giants]

With points being more of a commodity, I think that's a solid proposal and addresses yearly salary inflation which is natural but also aides in cap space management without the need for drastic measures to operate within the limits of the cap space allotment. I dig it.

[Mitch-Oilers]

I believe this rule change has merit if the amount the player's contract is reduced by is added to the remaining years of the player's contract. Based on how I read the proposal, the player salary would go back to normal levels the following season. I don't think a player would restructure his contract to earn less money over the life of the contract. I know player like Brady and some others have restructured deals to free up cap space for the team. However, they get that change in salary back as bonus or higher back loaded salaries.

[Steve-LA Chargers]

Actually, it's not really a restructure. We don't have that luxury and no way Rich wants to track that money moving to the end of a contract. This idea needs to work for 0 point contract players in the regular season too.

The proposal is to treat points as the equivalent of upfront cash that falls outside the salary cap. Kind of a like a bonus. So a veteran player expecting $10M can get up to $5M in cash and the rest hits the salary cap. I know it's not totally realistic nor is it the same as what really happens in the NFL, but it's really the simplest way to offset salaries without driving Rich insane.

[Steve-LA Chargers]

Most coaches will only need to do this to a few players. As an example, QB Andrew Luck is at $21M against the cap right now. If I make the painful decision to spend 10 points to give him an upfront $10M cash bonus for the 2036 season, he will only count $11M against the cap. This gives me some breathing room but at the same time keeps me out of chasing other stars in the Free Agency market. Also forces me to do short restructure contracts with my other vets. I could do the same with other expensive players on my team, but inevitably I'll still have to let players go though because there simply is not enough points for me to save everybody.

[Steve-LA Chargers]

If Rich doesn't want to deal with this offset all the time, we could restrict it for now to only the restructure window we are about to go into. So when you spend points to sign players to keep them out of FA, you'd also be able to spend points to reduce veteran salaries. This forces us to make the decisions on these players now regardless of how the draft and free agency goes.

He could then reopen the window after week 1 starts. This way everyone is under the cap before week 1, but can continue to pay out bonuses in order to sign players to fill injuries during the regular season.