Detroit Lions: NFL Contracts and their Complexity

Understanding NFL contracts can be complicated. This article will simplify them as well as looking at the Detroit Lions current salary cap situation.

NFL contracts can be designed in many different ways. Most contracts are back loaded, meaning the majority of the player’s money isn’t secured until he is playing near the end of it. Some are front loaded by teams with extra cap room in the current year and want to reduce the players cap hit in future years. The rookie contracts operate on a predetermined pay scale, which is designed to offer teams less cap penalties if they release a player before his contract is up.

Teams often will restructure players contracts as well. This occurred all too often when Tom Lewand and Martin Mayhew were running the Detroit Lions front office. The purpose of redoing a player’s contract can occur for multiple reasons, the most common being to free up cap room in a current year. The downside of restructuring contracts is they work like credit cards. You’re buying a player’s time now and paying for it over the next several years.

Bonuses add another complicated element to contracts. Some, like signing bonuses, are fully guaranteed and paid up front, then the cap hit is distributed over the length of the contract. Roster bonuses are agreed upon incentives that are earned by a player and paid out at the time of completion. Stat bonuses and playing time bonuses fall under the “incentives” category and are earned throughout the season. They are paid to the players as they achieve the bonus but don’t count against the team’s cap until the next season.

Last year, offensive lineman Manny Ramirez was close to achieving three playing time bonuses and some speculated that the Detroit Lions were purposely benching him so that he wouldn’t reach them. Were they? It’s possible, after all he was PFF’s #1 offensive lineman in Detroit last season. But we must also keep in mind, during the off season Ramirez signed a one-year deal with the Chicago Bears and by May he was rumored to be on the roster bubble. By June he had retired from the NFL.

As fans, we have access to websites like Spotrac.com, Overthecap.com, and Rotoworld.com who gather information from reliable sources like the NFLPA. They lay out the contracts in a readable format and typically provide a lot of information. Local news outlets like the Free Press and Mlive have even put out, at a glance charts of the player’s cap hits for the upcoming or current year.

Yet, contacts are complicated. Sometimes even these websites who specialize in this often don’t always match up. Take the case of guard Larry Warford who is in his final year of his rookie contract. Both Spotrac and Over The Cap now have matching specifics on his contract but that wasn’t always the case.

Just a month ago these sites had different cap hits and bonuses allocated to Warford. Why were they different? I’m not sure and I tried several ways of checking, but like most people outside of the organizations, my resources were limited. Likely it was just an error, but it illustrates that even the specialty sites struggle at times with these contracts.

Next: Looking Beyond the Players Value