Pats and Brady deal- frees up 24 million W T F?

[dbair1967]

How can this possibly be? This screams of "salary cap evasion"

So all it takes now is for teams to take guaranteed money only payable when a guy is injured? WTF? And they can release him and never pay the "guaranteed" money that was in his deal?

Looks like the most bogus contract agreement since the Niners signed Deion for "only" one million in 1994, a deal to this day that Deion refuses to discuss further.

Tom Brady frees up $24M for Pats


Updated: December 29, 2014, 6:45 PM ET

By Adam Schefter | ESPN

In a deal turned into the NFL office Monday, quarterback Tom Brady restructured his contract to give the New England Patriots $24 million more in cash to spend this offseason, according to league sources.

Under the new deal, Brady changed the $24 million in "skill" guarantee to only "injury" guarantee, meaning that Brady now would get the guaranteed money only if he were injured.

Brady also now can be released by the Patriots without any liability, but he then would become an unrestricted free agent, free to command the type of guaranteed money he has agreed to surrender.

Brady will receive a $1 million bump in each of the three remaining years of the deal. His base salaries will now be $8 million in 2016, $9 million in 2016 and $10 million in 2018.

The move frees up cash for the Patriots to use on other players. New England needs the cash to help re-sign some of its own free agents, including cornerback Darrelle Revis, safety Devin McCourty, tackle Nate Solder and running back Shane Vereen, among others.

 

[Midswat]

I'M OUTRAGED!

 

[dbair1967]

Struggling to see how something like that is ok but what we did in the uncapped yr with Miles Austin wasn't, and we got a huge hit on our salary cap as a penalty for it.

 

[ThoughtExperiment]

We'll probably do something similar. Steve has been pretty leading-edge on these kinds of clauses in contracts.

 

[cmd34(work)]

Watch what we do with Romo's contract this off-season and you might not want to draw attention to this kind of thing.

 

[dbair1967]

Watch what we do with Romo's contract this off-season and you might not want to draw attention to this kind of thing.

He's gonna get restructured, just like a lot of players do.

But I don't ever recall reading the kind of stuff Shefter is talking about in regards to anyone else's contracts

 

[Doomsday]

Watch what we do with Romo's contract this off-season and you might not want to draw attention to this kind of thing.

We've actually, already done something similar to this with Tony's deal. But it involved moving guaranteed money further down the road to save cap space. There will be a correction I'm sure, and will almost have to be. But the talk was, they plan to do the same thing again this offseason.

 

[w8lifter]

Bellicheat must've dusted off his trusty pair of kneepads and promised to blow Goodall and other officials.

Start suckin Bill. :gay

 

[Bob Sacamano]

Struggling to see how something like that is ok but what we did in the uncapped yr with Miles Austin wasn't, and we got a huge hit on our salary cap as a penalty for it.

It's a clause, so it apparently is OK. Stop crying.

 

[peplaw06]

He's gonna get restructured, just like a lot of players do.

But I don't ever recall reading the kind of stuff Shefter is talking about in regards to anyone else's contracts

The typical restructure is converting salary to a signing bonus to take advantage of spreading out the money over the remainder of the deal... If you can convert actual salary into signing bonuses, I don't see why you couldn't convert one type of guaranteed money to another type of guaranteed money. The union may not like it if a player gives up money, but if the CBA doesn't prevent it, and the team and player contract to do it, no harm, no foul IMO.