They can move, but they can't cross the line.

Then there is the Neil Smith rule.

Bingo. But most false starts are due to an offensive player flinching before the snap - like a Chiefs offensive lineman backing up early in pass protection because he can't hear the quarterback.

Basically anything that simulates the snap is a false start.

The Joe Phillips rule supercedes the Smith rule.You nOOB!

Band-aids and semantics are of no use when you consider
that stormtroopers get a 15 yard penalty by default.

It's so easy.

Wow, I already forget how bad ass our OL was. Talk about a perfectly executed screen pass.

this rule works the same way for offensive players. unless you are forced out of bounds.

Just a note for those of you who will be on at about 1AM. Tonight, I want to learn more about the salary cap and cuts/adds. While my department is slow tonight, I do have some work to get done. See you all later.

Are you confused beyond belief about the NFL Salary Cap? Is it impossible for you to understand why some teams are WAY over the cap, while others are way under?

Fear not. The Commish is here to help. Our goal is to provide you with a quick course in Capanomics so that you can understand what is going on here. By the time we're through with you, you will have the knowledge and power to second guess your favorite team's General Manager!

The notion of the Salary Cap itself is a relatively simple one. Each team is granted a specific amount of money they can spend on player salaries. For 2001, that amount was about $67.4 M. For 2002, that amount was about $71.1 M, and in 2003 it was about $75.007 Million. For 2004, even higher revenues pushed the cap to $80.582 Million, and in 2005 it reached about $85.5 Million.

Originally, the NFL informed teams that the 2006 figure was going to be approximately $94.5 Million. However, once the owners and NFLPA voted to extend the CBA, which was due to expire after the 2007 season, their model for calculating the cap changed. Thus, the revised salary cap for 2006 was set to $102 Million.

Had the CBA not been extended, 2006 would have been the final capped season, and there would NOT have been a cap in place for 2007. Additionally, had the 2007 season carried on WITHOUT a salary cap, the NFLPA warned that they would never again agree to reinstate another cap. Mercifully, both sides averted out-and-out labor war with the extension of the CBA. For 2007, the cap will be $109 M.

Unfortunately, the rules governing the manner in which the cap is administered are so cumbersome, it takes a team of attorneys to understand them. Indeed, most NFL teams have attorneys and accountants on hand whose sole responsibility is to monitor the Salary Cap. With so much convoluted paper to go through, the Commish has decided to give you the quick and dirty details of the NFL Salary Cap.

Background


The NFL Salary Cap as we know it came about through the NFL's Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) back in 1993. The CBA was an agreement between the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) and the NFL owners to reach an equitable agreement in terms of the sharing of the pie, if you will.

Basically, through the CBA the parties have realized that the goal of the players and the management should be the same—increasing the revenue pie instead of fighting over the existing amount—and the NFL has tailored the CBA to achieve that end.

The NFLPA was rewarded with the concept of Free Agency, whereby players have the freedom to market their skills after a specific period of service. As a system of checks and balances, the owners sought a means of cutting back on the escalation of the players' salaries. This is accomplished by -- you guessed it -- the NFL Salary Cap.

Compromise is an abundant theme found throughout the CBA. The Free Agency system is slightly limited by the team’s ability to protect certain athletes (franchise and transition players) from leaving by paying a salary equal to an average of the top players at his position. On the other hand, the salary cap is flexible by allowing owners to pay signing bonuses up front that exceed the cap, but the amounts are amortized over the life of the contract. More important is the agreement that the cap, which is defined as a percentage of revenues, will grow as team and league revenues grow. This aligns the goals of labor and management because as teams make more money, so do the players.

The NFL Salary Cap has been in existence since 1994, and it will continue to rear its head at least through 2011, thanks to the new extension. On March 8, 2006, the NFL Management Council and the NFLPA agreed on the 5th extension to the original CBA.

In side-stepping labor war in 2006, and agreeing to extend the existing CBA , the league owners and players have jointly decided to dispell the fear of entering the 2007 season without a salary cap -- and labor peace remains on the horizon for the immediate future.
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This is a start but even more detailed.

Salary cap in the NFL

The NFL's cap is a so-called "hard cap", which no team can exceed for any reason under penalty from the league. A lesser-known fact is that the NFL also has a hard salary floor—a minimum team payroll that no team can drop beneath for any reason. The cap was introduced for the 1994 season and was set at $34.6 million initially. Both the cap and the floor are adjusted annually based on the change in the league's revenues. As of 2006 the NFL salary cap is approximately 102 million US dollars per team, while the salary floor is roughly $75 million per team. This number has increased every year since 1994 and will reach approximately $109 million in 2007.

Under the NFL's agreement with the NFLPA, (with a few rare exceptions) the salary cap effects of guaranteed payments to players are prorated over the term of a contract. A $10 million dollar signing bonus on a four year contract counts as $2.5 million towards the cap during each of those four years. If a player retires, is traded, or is cut before June 1st, all remaining bonus is applied to the salary cap for the current season. If after June 1st, the current cap is unchanged, and the next year's cap must absorb the entire remaining bonus.

Because of this treatment, NFL contracts almost always include the right to cut a player before the beginning of a season. If a player is cut, his salary for the remainder of his contract is not paid, and never counted against the salary cap for that team. A highly sought-after player signing a long term contract will usually receive a guaranteed signing bonus, thus providing him with financial security even if he is cut before the end of his contract.

Incentive bonuses require a team to pay a player additional money if he achieves a certain goal. For the purposes of the salary cap bonuses are classified as either "likely to be earned" which requires the amount of the bonus to count against the cap, or as "not likely to be earned" meaning it will not count against the team's salary cap. Large NLTBE bonuses are written into contracts to make them sound larger in the media. A team's salary cap may be adjusted downwards for NLTBE bonuses that were earned in the previous year and upwards for LTBE bonuses that were not earned in the previous year.

Teams usually design contracts so that the player's cap salary is highest in later years of the cap. They accomplish this by setting the player's base salary at lower amounts in the first years of the contract than the higher years.

The effect of the salary cap has been the release of many higher-salaried veteran players and their replacement by lower-salaried younger players. The salary cap prevents teams with a superior financial situation from the formerly widespread practice of stocking as much talent on the roster as possible by placing younger players on reserve lists with false injuries. This was often used to allow an inexperienced player to learn valuable skills, and some money, while not counting as a player on the active roster. This practice allowed teams to keep an experienced, capable quarterback, whose skills were beginning to decline with age or who was merely nearing retirement, to train a potentially great, but inexperienced young quarterback. (A notable example is the case of the San Francisco 49ers playing Hall of Famer Joe Montana while grooming Hall of Famer Steve Young.)

Generally, the practice of keeping older players who had contributed to the team in the past, but whose abilities have declined, had fallen out of favor, as a veteran's minimum salary was required to be higher than a player with lesser experience. To prevent this, a veteran player who receives no bonuses in his contract may be paid the veteran minimum of up to $810,000, while only accounting for $425,000 in salary cap space.

It is widely believed that the salary cap has increased parity in the NFL. Although the system has allowed a greater turnover in playoff teams than at any other time in the Super Bowl era, it has not prevented the New England Patriots from winning three Super Bowls in four years (The seasons beginning in 2001, 2003 and 2004). Media reports have attributed this to New England's aggressively unsentimental use of the salary cap in trimming veterans (such as Lawyer Milloy, a key member of the 2001 team who was cut just before the start of the 2003 season.)

The salary cap has also served to limit the rate of increase of the cost of operating a team. This has accrued to the owners' benefit, and is widely regarded as being responsible for the NFL being overall the most financially stable of the major North American sports organizations. While the initial cap of $34.6 million has increased to $102 million, this is due to large growths of revenue.

Brian Waters just punched that dude with one hand.

Of course, Brian's still a badass but our whole line used to be that way. God those were the days.

starting with GR!

She'll school you.

...A contradiction in terms.

"To prevent this, a veteran player who receives no bonuses in his contract may be paid the veteran minimum of up to $810,000, while only accounting for $425,000 in salary cap space."

O.K. I had it all down until this part...

And sent his ass flying. Beautiful.