The thing is, he won’t have any value when he shops himself as a free agent anyway.
True, perhaps they would have gotten value if they’d simply traded him, but trades are pretty rare in the NFL (owing usually to salary-cap constraints), especially during a season.
And if they did simply trade him, I don’t think it would have had the same intended effect that this did. Trade him to a Gruden-less team, and the player benefits. Gruden didn’t want him to benefit - he wanted him to be punished.
voguevixen, he’s essentially still a member of the team in that he can play for no other team. He just won’t be on the active list for any of the remaining six games. Sure, he’s getting paid for those games, but it’s money they’ve already figured into their budget for the year (again, constrained by the salary cap), and when the season’s over he’ll be cut outright - at which time he won’t cost them any money. (I don’t think they would have done this earlier in the season, since they’d be paying him to sit. Or maybe they would have.)
Tampa deactivated him after the trade deadline, so that wasn’t an option for this year.
MeShawn has also been very clear that he wasn’t going to be playing in Tampa next year no-way, no-how. His attitude and performance both on and off the field since he let that be known has deteriorated. His talents didn’t make up for the trouble he was causing.
He didn’t exactly leave the Jets on good terms either. He has the prima donna attitude that a lot of the top receivers have, just not the skills.
I don’t think this episode decreases his “stock” in the market at all. I doubt there is a head coach or GM who doesn’t know that MeShawn is an egomaniac who talks the talk but doesn’t always walk the walk. You get a known quantity in MeShawn.
MeShawn’s commentary on Marvin Harrison was very telling. He tries to build himself up by trying to tear others down, not by lifting himself up.
By deactivating him, they avoid any cap hits THIS YEAR. It’s my understanding that if they release him, it will be ~ $8mil cap hit for them. But, if they wait until June to do so, they can spread this out over two years instead of sucking it all up next year (which would be the case if they released him before June.)
Ideally, they’d want to trade him so that someone would take over his contract – how likely that is remains to be seen.
See, I’ll never get these NFL contracts. They’re not guaranteed, right? So how come they have to take a 2004 hit if they release a player today? Makes no sense.
Becuase they are able to prorate signing bonuses and other figures other than the annual salary out over the length of the contact. I don’t fully understand it myself.
This article may help.
No, I understand that they can pay a guy a zillion dollars in a prorated signing bonus, and that’s his to keep even if he’s cut. But why should the player’s salary count against the subsequent season’s cap if he’s cut? For example, his salary for 2003 will be paid through the remainder of this season anyway - but why would it count against them in 2004? If he’s released at the end of the season, they don’t have to pay him in 2004, I would think.
Q: But why should the player’s salary count against the subsequent season’s cap if he’s cut?
A: It doesn’t.
The simplest way to think of NFL contracts is like so:
Signing bonus money is the “real” money. This money is paid up front, making it the only guaranteed money in virtually any NFL contract. The cap hit of the signing bonus is prorated only so long as the player is under contract.
For any one given season:
(Signing bonus / # of contract years) + non-guaranteed base salary = current season’s cap hit.
…
Let’s look at a sample contract of Player X:
**5-year contract. Total value is $10,000,000.
$5,000,000 signing bonus (guaranteed).
$300,000 base salary in Year 1 (non-guaranteed).
$600,000 base salary in Year 2 (non-guaranteed).
$1,000,000 base salary in Year 3 (non-guaranteed).
$1,400,000 base salary in Year 4 (non-guaranteed).
$1,700,000 base salary in Year 5 (non-guaranteed).**
Let’s look at this same contract in terms of its effects on the team’s salary cap:
**$5,000,000 signing bonus / 5 years = $1,000,000 per year against cap, so …
$1,300,000 cap hit in Year 1.
$1,600,000 cap hit in Year 2.
$2,000,000 cap hit in Year 3.
$2,400,000 cap hit in Year 4.
$2,700,000 cap hit in Year 5.**
So if the team cuts Player X after Year 3, what happens?
Well, firstly, the non-guaranteed base salary is eliminated from future contract years, yielding:
$1,000,000 prorated signing bonus money in Year 4.
$1,000,000 prorated signing bonus money in Year 5.
But hold on! Once a player is released (in the offseason before June 1st), all future prorated signing bonus money counts against the following season’s cap:
$2,000,000 prorated signing bonus money in Year 4.
$0 prorated signing bonus money in Year 5.
But if player is released in the offseason on or after June 1st, all future prorated signing bonus money are split over the following two seasons’ salary cap:
$1,000,000 prorated signing bonus money in Year 4.
$1,000,000 prorated signing bonus money in Year 5.
…
I hope that helps! Please ask any questions, and I will do my best to clarify.
The howstuffworks.com article is greatly simplified, but gives a decent, if brief, overview. The askthecommish.com Salary Cap FAQ page is long on detail, yet is not nearly as difficult to wade through as might be expected.
I just found this, which shows Key’s contract details. http://www.bucs-news.com/cap/player.php?name=Johnson%2C+Keyshawn
Now, it appears that through 2007 his signing bonus is prorated to $1.625mil every year, or totalling $6.5mil. Can we assume this is the total cap hit, bordelond?
There will be a little more cap hit than that, mouthbreather, because Keyshawn renegotiated his contract this past March. From the March 19, 2003 St. Petersburg Times:
Now, that roughly $2.5 million Key received as a bonus this past March woulc normally have been prorated over the five years running 2003-2007. Now, though, you’ll have to add that $2.5 mill 2003 bonus to the remaining prorated bonus from his original signing bonus (the $6.5 million figure you derived). So his cap hit, if he were released right now, would be about $9 million from the 2003 cap – meaning players currently on the roster would have to be cut for the Bucs to achieve salary-cap compliance.
The Buc News source you’ve given has a column for “Other Cap” that lists a $2.25 million hit for 2003. If that is meant to reflect the March 2003 renegotiation, it’s not quite accurate. It seems that the Buc News figures predate the renegotiation, but it’s hard to tell.
My understanding, from another St. Pete Times article, was that if he had stayed he would have cost them $6 million next year, since he’s gone it will be $5 million. But of course they still have to bear the cost of replacing him somehow. And they’ve not exactly been long on draft choices the past few years.
Your figures jibe with mine. I was talking about the effects that an immediate release of Keyshawn would’ve had on the current season’s salary cap (over $9 million).
But no NFL team is foolish enough to cut big-bonus-dollar players during the season (as opposed to big-salary players). The Bucs will wait until on or after June 1st, 2004 to completely cut ties with Keyshawn. That way, the cap hit will be equally spread over the 2004 & 2005 caps. That will roughly yield the $5 million 2004 cap hit you got from the other SPT article.
There is some inexactness in the numbers we’re discussing because we haven’t got the exact amount of Keyshawn’s March 2003 renegotiated bonus money. Keyshawn said in the SPT article I quoted that it was “about $2.5 million”. In the next paragraph, the SPT writer acknowledges that the exact terms of the renegotiation hadn’t been released, but that Johnson would have “more than half his (2003) $5-million salary and roster bonus” paid in the form of a proratable signing bonus.
More than half of $5 million > about $2.5 million.
Keyshawn could have gotten $2.51 million in bonus money; or he couls have gotten more like $2.9 million. There lies the lack of precision in our future-cap-hit calculations. But we can still be accurate to within 200-300 grand.