Podcast: Lynch Contract, Flowers Released, Pouncey Extension, and More NFL Talk

Posted on by Jason Fitzgerald

[adsenseyu1]

In this weeks podcast I: look at Marshawn Lynchs contract situation and threatened retirement; see how we value the Maurkice Pouncey extension; discuss the release of Brandon Flowers and Chris Houston; expand on some thoughts on the Lions front office, break down Mike Evans unique rookie contract; and take a look ahead at the 2015 League Year from a salary cap perspective.

View in iTunes
Listen via Stitcher
Subscribe to the OTC Podcast
  • Michael Schuttke

    Stitcher has the previous podcast listed as the latest and not this one.This podcast is not up on either the site or the mobile app.

    • mike jones

      yep, not up on feedburner either.

      I’m knocking down popcorn and painting walls in the living room – need my overthecap fix…

  • Jetsoex

    In the discussion of Maurkice Pouncey’s contract, you made some interesting arguments for real contract valuation. Although a perfect algorithm for comparing contracts is not possible, a useful metric for comparison might be achievable. Taking the average per year value of a contract assuming a player is cut once their cap value minus dead money is positive could be a start. This would not consider the case that teams do not like to pay a player to leave so a better algorithm would likely need to be adjusted to percentage saved vs cap value to determine if a player’s likelihood to be cut. Jason, would you know a fair rule of thumb (my guess is that a regression analysis probably would not be yield too much more better a prediction unless position by position varies greatly) for percentage saved? An example would be cap value minus dead money equals greater than ten percent of cap value for the first time in year four, then consider the player likely to be cut in year four for contract true value estimation purposes.

    • Thats a tough one because you also have June 1 options for players. I never would have thought Woodley would have gone due to his cap numbers but he was cut. Same went for Roy Williams year ago in Dallas though he was just awful. As a very loose approximation I usually go with cash saves plus cap saved divided by the cap number. I consider anything over 1 to be a positive in releasing the player.

      Another way to consider it which Ill sometimes do (more for the Jets since Im most familiar with the talent base) is to value the cost of a replacement player of the same skill level and what his cap and cash number would be to determine if there is an economic benefit. That approach though is more of a present approach rather than a forward looking one.

      Id have to look a bit deeper at percentage saved. Doing a bunch of research I could probably come up with something. I think the pool would need to be limited to players receiving a signing bonus above a certain number (50kish I guess) to eliminate the UDFAs and low level players so the numbers dont skew. I tend to think it would vary by position due to the cash aspect and the cost of replacing a 43OLB so low compared to a 43DE. But I think it would be an interesting stufy.

      My guess is with time and you know actually being able to work on this kind of stuff full time you could probably pull some kind of useful information from a regression analysis to see how much of a role money, stats, etc…might play in a release. Im very confident that one could do it on contract values, but again its a time consuming process to pull the stats and match them up with the right contract year.