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The Packers would seem to fit into a middle group of teams that are neither tight against the cap, nor flush with room. They have the room to keep their own people, is how most cap people would describe it. Counts and amounts, in my opinion, are misleading because a team can instantly create a lot of cap room by restructuring contracts and pushing money out. What’s most important is to study how a team capped itself. When you do that, you understand a team’s philosophy and how it relates to its mode of operation; it tells you in advance what they’re likely to do. For example, the Eagles are a big roster bonus team. They pioneered the use of roster bonus, which is a way of prepaying on your cap because roster bonus, unlike signing bonus, must be declared in full in the year it’s paid. It’s like paying a second salary. The use of salary and roster bonus is a way of hard-capping yourself, and teams that do that are vigilant about protecting their futures. That’s why the Eagles were able to spend big last summer; they had used roster bonus to prepay on future caps. The Steelers are vigilant about getting bang for their buck. They don’t like paying big signing bonuses; they tend to overpay in salary because it gives them maneuverability. If a guy turns out to be a bust, they’ll cut him and his salary immediately comes back to their cap, and they avoided losing a lot of money in signing bonus that won’t come flying forward onto their cap in the year they cut the guy. The negative to this approach is that you’re always going to be tight against the cap, but when they identify a player as being worth the money, that’s when they restructure his contract by converting salary to signing bonus and pushing the money out. It’s a show-me philosophy. The Packers are what’s called “flat,” which means their players’ contracts tend not to spike in a particular year. The Packers are very good cap managers; they make sure there are no surprises, and that’s a formula for staying out of trouble. Cap management is a fascinating science; it tells you everything you need to know about how a team operates and what it values.
I got a kick out of Vic Ketchman talking about how good they are at cap management when he's writing for a team that doesn't believe in Free Agency.