*Estimated as of February 24, 2013*Cap Spending figures for teams not spending 89% of their cash so far (sorted by most Cap money needed to be spent to least):
•$107,779,000 is the number which equals 89% of the cap spending limit (cash spending) on average for this year’s cap.
•This figure doesn’t count against these teams yet, but is just for reference purposes to understand where teams are in terms of their spending SO FAR with respect to this new rule which is in effect starting this year—teams will NOT be penalized this year if they don’t spend any more money towards the cap.
•If teams don't spend another cent towards the cap spending minimum this year, they'll still have to account for it sometime in the next 3 years.
•It counts towards a 4 year cycle, or “bucket”, which begins in 2013 season and ends in the 2016 season.
•The penalty for not spending the required minimum amount of cash money towards the cap will not be meted out until after the 2016 season cap spending figures have been calculated.
•If the total cap spending of teams in cash money between 2013 & 2016 does not turn out to be 89% of the salary cap for those four years, then that team will be penalized monetarily on early 2017—no draft picks or any other kind of penalty affecting personnel or salary cap space will be meted out.
•Any team(s) which will NOT have spent 89% of its cap will be required to pay the remainder back to the players who played for the respective team(s).
•The remainder will be divided up by the amount of players who played for the team(s) in question, and then that cash remainder will be distributed evenly amongst them.
•Please see this link below to a thread which I posted about this topic last week for more information:
•Minimum Salary Floor explanation for the salary cap
•To conclude, I recommend reading Jenny Vrentas's article on the salary cap in today's Star-Ledger titled "Flat salary cap presents challenges, limits for NFL clubs" - February 23, 2013 at 10:22 PM, updated February 24, 2013 at 12:59 AM
•It's a great article that focuses on the problems that teams in the league have had with respect to adjusting to the flat cap.
•Hopefully, the possibility about the $2 million that Ralph Vacchiano tweeted about possibly being added to the cap comes to fruition; it would certainly make life a little easier for teams throughout the league w/respect to handling the cap, especially those clubs who are close to the limit one way or another.
•The additional $2 million would also especially help teams that are over the cap, who are within striking distance of the cap limit which include San Franciso, Oakland, Arizona, and St. Louis--3/4 of the NFC West other than Seattle.
•Those 4 clubs would benefit greatly from that extra $2 million because they'd then be all be less than $1 million over the cap instead of where they are now.