Never understood why this rule exists.  I can understand you having to eat the guaranteed money if you cut a player but wouldn't it make more sense that a team taking a player in a trade would also have to take on money beyond the current salary and incentives? 

Need help understanding this.  Thanks

Every dollar that your franchise spends on player compensation has to hit your salary cap at some point.

When, e.g., you pay a signing bonus, every dollar of that signing bonus will have to hit the salary cap at some point, but you can amortize it over the life of the contract from a salary cap perspective and thereby defer much of the cap hit until later years.  But the permission to defer it disappears when you trade the player ... the salary cap hit accelerates to the current cap year the instant the trade is consummated.  You paid it, it would not make sense for it to hit the new team's cap instead.

If there is salary remaining to be paid on the contract, the new team will pay that when it is due and have it hit their salary cap.

You could argue that it makes sense to allow the cap hit to remain deferred rather than accelerate, but it would make no sense at all for the other team to take that cap hit -- you paid the money, not them.

Doing this would be the great NFL getting much closer to the inferior NBA and MLB.

We don't need Dodgers level teams selling off their dead cap.

The Saints already buy players from other teams at lower numbers through signing bonus conversion before a trade. We don't need to give the Saints more ways to escape their clumsy stupidity.

Prorated signing bonus money can’t be traded because the money is already paid out. This used to be a much bigger issue years back when base salaries weren’t guaranteed but signing bonuses were. You used to see $$50-$60 Million signing bonuses back in the day. Nowadays, contracts are structured with lower signing bonuses but some of or all of the base salary is guaranteed. It’s a little give and take but the guaranteed base salaries do follow the contract in a trade as I understand. The remaining dead money is signing bonus proration or other bonuses that have already been paid out. 

Thanks all for the explanation. 

Related question: do performance bonuses also impact the cap? Or are they exempt because they're conditional?

1 hour ago, beto_eagles said:

Related question: do performance bonuses also impact the cap? Or are they exempt because they're conditional?

Everything applies, it’s just a matter of when. There are two types of bonuses. "Likely to be Earned”, and "Unlikely to be Earned”.

 

LBE applies to the current cap. ULBE applies to a future cap if the conditions are met. That’s my understanding. 

2 hours ago, EagleJoe8 said:

Everything applies, it’s just a matter of when. There are two types of bonuses. "Likely to be Earned”, and "Unlikely to be Earned”.

 

LBE applies to the current cap. ULBE applies to a future cap if the conditions are met. That’s my understanding. 

Thanks, man. This means that, when a coach lines up a certain player in the last game to unlock some sort of bonus, he's kind of hurting the team in the long run with more cap allocated 😅. It's fair's and it's a cool thing to do, I just find it ironic hehe. 

We should use this thread for cap-related questions. It's a hard topic to research and many people here are somewhat versed in the matter. 

1 hour ago, beto_eagles said:

Thanks, man. This means that, when a coach lines up a certain player in the last game to unlock some sort of bonus, he's kind of hurting the team in the long run with more cap allocated 😅. It's fair's and it's a cool thing to do, I just find it ironic hehe. 

We should use this thread for cap-related questions. It's a hard topic to research and many people here are somewhat versed in the matter. 

I’ll be the first to admit, my understanding is a very elementary level. Most of what I know is just easy to understand things that I’ve picked up along the way. For the most part, the cap isn’t a huge interest to me. Others understand it way better than I, but yeah, it’s a good idea to have a thread for cap questions.