Quote:
Originally Posted by milkman
The salary cap keeps the salaries under control.
The tags have no effect on that, unless you take a guy like Matt Cassel, who was nearly worth the 14 mil price tag that the franchise tag put on him, and resulted in getting him a contract that was far more than he was worth.
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Of course the tags have an effect. A by-product of the salary cap is that teams and players have started looking for more front-loaded contracts. Big signing bonus of 15,20 even 30 million now to counter salary caps and non-guaranteed contracts.
Not only that, but the tricks of working around the salary cap by prorating the signing bonuses and then restructuring the contracts over and over again allow teams to push the salary cap numbers around. Teams can spend 180/190 million dollars in a year and still be under the 110 million dollar cap.
All this "front" money and cap "cheating" is more difficult for small market teams.
Especially when it comes to big name elite players.
The franchise/transition tags help smaller market teams have some addition leverage to keep those elite players.