Amendola, Hard-line Caps and Active/In-active Caps?

In a Miami Herald article by Adam Beasley, and an interview with ESPN, there's a quote from Amendola about why he left New England to come to Miami. In short, it was money.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

""I came in with an open mind. I understand Bill [Belichick] runs a tight ship, and he hasn't been known to pay his players, really. I understood that I gave money back to him so I could play for him and play for my teammates and fulfill my side of the contract, and at the end of the day, I had faith that he was going to give me an opportunity to stay," Amendola told ESPN.

"When free agency broke, I came to the realization that he wasn't going to really come close to any of the other offers I had," he continued. "I had to make a decision for my family and go down to Miami and continue my career there... It's not easy, that's for sure. He's an a--h--- sometimes. There were a lot of things I didn't like about playing for him, but I must say, the things I didn't like were all in regards to getting the team better, and I respected him," he said. "I didn't like practicing in the snow, I didn't like practicing in the rain, but that was going to make us a better football team and that was going to make me a better football player. It wasn't easy, and he'd be the first to admit, at the [Super Bowl] ring ceremony, that it wasn't easy playing for him. The silver lining was that we were at the ring ceremony.""

I could be wrong, (maybe Belichick just doesn't rate Danny that highly) but this left me with the impression that Belichick may have something more or less like an ideal figure in mind for different positions. That he's less focused on players as individuals and more on each position having a job to do and he has expectations/plans for how much someone is going to get paid to do that job.

If that's the case then that might not be a lot of fun from a player perspective, but it could be seen as highly pragmatic. One could argue, isn't that what cap management is all about?

Sure, there are exceptional talents and different factors that lead to fluctuations in contracts, but essentially, to win at football you need a balanced team, and that means a balanced cap -- and balance can be easily lost if one isn't careful.

From a Dolphins perspective, we've seen a lot of bad cap/contract management and as a result seen imbalance. Is there a lesson to be learned here for the Dolphins (and maybe for players too)?

On the flip-side, I think it's possible to be too hard-line. Rewarding commitment, sacrifice and faithfulness is a good thing, though I dare not venture to say where the line is drawn, I'm in no way an expert in these things.


On another note, this got me thinking about the cap in general. The general purpose of the cap is to keep things competitive within the league by preventing certain teams from monopolising the best players. However, in attempting to do so it adds an extra element into the recipe for success - good cap management. In itself that's not a bad thing, however, if you look at it as something designed to increase competitiveness in the league it's possible that the cap actually works against that goal where certain franchises just can't get it right. It can be an ingredient to success that some teams just struggle with. Such is life, one might say. But what if it was possible to mitigate some of that and help teams escape some of the damage to competitiveness/success that comes from bad contracts or situations? After all, a more competitive league was the point of the cap in the first place, right?

Now I know very little of the details of how the cap works, but I was pondering one way that it might be possible for the league to help teams be more competitive and field the best team possible - without removing the cap or taking away all responsibility for team's to manage their own cap. Make the cap an active roster cap. That is, allow franchises to settle certain contract obligations outside of the cap. Here's what I was thinking: it's one thing for a team to just give a player too much money, particularly when money/cap-space is at a premium, but it's another thing when team's have to pay that player even when they're not contributing to the team (think injuries and guaranteed money after being cut/traded).

What if, when a player is no longer able to contribute to the team (due to being injured/inactive, or cut/traded) any money being paid to the player is removed from cap considerations thus freeing up the team to spend that money on replacements/new players who can help the team be competitive? There would have to be certain restrictions, particularly where cuts are concerned to avoid loopholes, however, I would imagine that generally speaking, owners wouldn't want to be forking out tons of extra cash to players who aren't going to be a continue part of the team.

So take Suh as an example. The team offered him a large contract, and wanted him to contribute but in the end the active cap was unmanageable so they cut him to save a little. That's on the franchise, no way to avoid it, and they still owe him that money. However, instead of that cap space being used to fund a player on another team, the player gets paid outside of the cap, and the team can be a bit more competitive in replacing players.

Might that be a positive move to help create an even more competitive league? Or am I missing something?


TLDR: Amendola came for the money, Belichick didn't want to pay - maybe a lesson to learn for Miami in positional value?

Maybe the league should implement the cap only for active players.

 

Like I said, I'm sure there would be details to figure out, maybe certain limitations. Even in your example that would only work where you don't want to keep the player but want to pay them loads. It might well self-level.