The Zimmer Principle

[StumpHunter]

just another grey old Vike fan here....since the 70's

We all know a great QB when we see one.. Cousins aint it...he fails the sniff test.
Those of us who see the Grim Reaper in the rear view mirror KNOW he is not the QB that is going to finally get us to the promised land. Any GM who tries to claim otherwise is blowing smoke.
I have no patience for mediocrity anymore...I cant afford it.
Same is true for our current Coach. He is NOT a difference maker who takes medium talent and makes them special...he is no GURU

Even Rick isn't claiming that anymore. He has come out this off season and said his goal is making the playoffs.

He went from saying he brought Cousins in to take the next step and finally win the SB to just wanting to make the playoffs.

[chicagopurple]

acknowledging his real goal...mediocrity....at least its a sliver of honesty.

[J. Kapp 11]

What to do now is the hard part. No 20-20 hindsight, no lamenting bad breaks. Cousins is the QB for at least two years. Likely longer given the cap number he will carry in 22. Virtually guarantees the Vikings must redo his contract and kick some of that coin down the road. Unless.....this year pans out poorly and Vikings decide to draft a QB in 22. That scenario quite probably means Zimmer is fired, and possibly Spielman is also gone with a rebuild in earnest happening. Personally I want the Vikings to succeed now. Which means riding Cousins at QB and a likely contract redo after this season.

The Vikings absolutely do not need to add more years to Cousins deal to get his cap number down in 2022. If Rick is still the GM they absolutely will do that and claim it was necessary to save cap, just like they did in 2020. Teams can easily add void years to deals to push cap hits down the road without extending the player and the Vikings could do that this year or next to move some of Cousins' massive cap hit to 2023 or even 2024.

I don't think Rick is unhappy with .500 football as long as making the playoffs every other year keeps him employed though, so as long as that continues to happen, we will continue to see Cousins as the highest paid, fully guaranteed QB in the NFL.

Correct me if my understanding is flawed here.

For most players, you can add void years because their entire salary isn't guaranteed.

However, the entire $76 million over the next two years for Cousins is now guaranteed. Doesn't that mean we have to pay all of it at some point? You can't void guaranteed money, can you?

I guess you could add years, convert his salary to bonus, spread it out, and make it voidable. But we'd still be on the hook for the whole $76 million, right? Just not by the end of 2022. So if you cut him after, say, 2023, and the money was spread out through 2025, you'd have to count the guaranteed portion against the cap, only amortized. Or am I mistaken?

It seems the only way to get (mostly) out from under this contract would be for somebody to be stupid enough to trade for Cousins prior to next year. Like, the 49ers miss the playoffs again, Kyle Shanahan's man-crush gets the better of him, and he says, "Y'know, he's worth every bit of $35 million."

[VikingTom]

The Vikings absolutely do not need to add more years to Cousins deal to get his cap number down in 2022. If Rick is still the GM they absolutely will do that and claim it was necessary to save cap, just like they did in 2020. Teams can easily add void years to deals to push cap hits down the road without extending the player and the Vikings could do that this year or next to move some of Cousins' massive cap hit to 2023 or even 2024.

I don't think Rick is unhappy with .500 football as long as making the playoffs every other year keeps him employed though, so as long as that continues to happen, we will continue to see Cousins as the highest paid, fully guaranteed QB in the NFL.

Correct me if my understanding is flawed here.

For most players, you can add void years because their entire salary isn't guaranteed.

However, the entire $76 million over the next two years for Cousins is now guaranteed. Doesn't that mean we have to pay all of it at some point? You can't void guaranteed money, can you?

I guess you could add years, convert his salary to bonus, spread it out, and make it voidable. But we'd still be on the hook for the whole $76 million, right? Just not by the end of 2022. So if you cut him after, say, 2023, and the money was spread out through 2025, you'd have to count the guaranteed portion against the cap, only amortized. Or am I mistaken?


It seems the only way to get (mostly) out from under this contract would be for somebody to be stupid enough to trade for Cousins prior to next year. Like, the 49ers miss the playoffs again, Kyle Shanahan's man-crush gets the better of him, and he says, "Y'know, he's worth every bit of $35 million."

Vikings could redo his contract in 22 converting some of that to a pro rated bonus over x number of years. Cousins still gets paid, just lowers his cap number for 22. Of course this depends on Cousins wanting to redo his contract. That of course leaves Cousins with a high cap number for whatever the length of his contract is. Vikings will be hoping that number is manageable in relation to the overall cap. Who knows, maybe Cousins will figure he can get a better deal elsewhere after 22. Maybe Vikings will decide they need to move on from Cousins and just eat that big cap hit in 22. Then they will need a plan for finding their QB for the future either in this draft, or in the 22 draft.

[StumpHunter]

Correct me if my understanding is flawed here.

For most players, you can add void years because their entire salary isn't guaranteed.

However, the entire $76 million over the next two years for Cousins is now guaranteed. Doesn't that mean we have to pay all of it at some point? You can't void guaranteed money, can you?

I guess you could add years, convert his salary to bonus, spread it out, and make it voidable. But we'd still be on the hook for the whole $76 million, right? Just not by the end of 2022. So if you cut him after, say, 2023, and the money was spread out through 2025, you'd have to count the guaranteed portion against the cap, only amortized. Or am I mistaken?


It seems the only way to get (mostly) out from under this contract would be for somebody to be stupid enough to trade for Cousins prior to next year. Like, the 49ers miss the playoffs again, Kyle Shanahan's man-crush gets the better of him, and he says, "Y'know, he's worth every bit of $35 million."

Vikings could redo his contract in 22 converting some of that to a pro rated bonus over x number of years. Cousins still gets paid, just lowers his cap number for 22. Of course this depends on Cousins wanting to redo his contract. That of course leaves Cousins with a high cap number for whatever the length of his contract is. Vikings will be hoping that number is manageable in relation to the overall cap. Who knows, maybe Cousins will figure he can get a better deal elsewhere after 22. Maybe Vikings will decide they need to move on from Cousins and just eat that big cap hit in 22. Then they will need a plan for finding their QB for the future either in this draft, or in the 22 draft.

Correct. Players actually like when their salaries are converted to signing bonuses because they get the money immediately instead of needing to wait until that salary was owed to them.

Kapp, you are correct that we are paying that 76 million no matter what now. However, the guaranteed nature of the contract doesn't stop us from moving some of that cap hit to future years without extending Cousins. As far as conversion to signing bonus goes, guaranteed base salary versus unguaranteed doesn't really come into play.

So we could do something like this with Cousins:
https://overthecap.com/player/drew-brees/1492/

Brees is on the books for 2021, 2022 and 2023 despite being retired. The Saints are paying 12 million for nothing this year, and 11 next year for nothing, but it is what it is.

[CharVike]

acknowledging his real goal...mediocrity....at least its a sliver of honesty.

You actually think that's his goal is to be 500. Zimmers winning pct with us is 568. 66-50-1. He has two division titles. Certainly nothing to write home about but not pathetic either. I'm sick of Zimmer also but I won't take away what he has accomplished. But no Super Bowl is a big downer. Plus his teams don't quite on him. Last year showed that. After that start very few would have turned it around. He kept them playing hard. I was hoping we would go 1-15 which is much better than 7-9 because you can get a top notch QB if there is one in the draft. This year by all accounts the next A Luck is sitting there. That's how a build is started correctly. There focus on winning cost us a shot at a potential great QB. There was talk on this board about us tanking for the pick. And clearer minds pointed out that no coach will try and lose. In the end I'm sick of Zim. Our no 4 offense was good I won't question that but I hate the scheme. We are under utilizing our guys as many have pointed out. It makes my stomach turn also. We should be trying to score as much as possible. If they don't get to a min of the Champ game he needs to be kicked to the curb. But Speilman has shown he can get talent. His CAP skills are garbage though.

[CharVike]

acknowledging his real goal...mediocrity....at least its a sliver of honesty.

You actually think that's his goal is to be 500. Zimmers winning pct with us is 568. 66-50-1. He has two division titles. Certainly nothing to write home about but not pathetic either. I'm sick of Zimmer also but I won't take away what he has accomplished. But no Super Bowl is a big downer. Plus his teams don't quite on him. Last year showed that. After that start very few would have turned it around. He kept them playing hard. I was hoping we would go 1-15 which is much better than 7-9 because you can get a top notch QB if there is one in the draft. This year by all accounts the next A Luck is sitting there. That's how a build is started correctly. There focus on winning cost us a shot at a potential great QB. There was talk on this board about us tanking for the pick. And clearer minds pointed out that no coach will try and lose. In the end I'm sick of Zim. Our no 4 offense was good I won't question that but I hate the scheme. We are under utilizing our guys as many have pointed out. It makes my stomach turn also. We should be trying to score as much as possible. If they don't get to a min of the Champ game he needs to be kicked to the curb. But Speilman has shown he can get talent. His CAP skills are garbage though.

Even that contract for that CB is a complete disaster. Every analyst is making fun of it. Rhodes just signed for basically nothing. That is what that should have been. That's the big CAP goof again. But it's also all or nothing which means playoffs. Still don't make a fool of yourself.

[J. Kapp 11]

Vikings could redo his contract in 22 converting some of that to a pro rated bonus over x number of years. Cousins still gets paid, just lowers his cap number for 22. Of course this depends on Cousins wanting to redo his contract. That of course leaves Cousins with a high cap number for whatever the length of his contract is. Vikings will be hoping that number is manageable in relation to the overall cap. Who knows, maybe Cousins will figure he can get a better deal elsewhere after 22. Maybe Vikings will decide they need to move on from Cousins and just eat that big cap hit in 22. Then they will need a plan for finding their QB for the future either in this draft, or in the 22 draft.

Correct. Players actually like when their salaries are converted to signing bonuses because they get the money immediately instead of needing to wait until that salary was owed to them.

Kapp, you are correct that we are paying that 76 million no matter what now. However, the guaranteed nature of the contract doesn't stop us from moving some of that cap hit to future years without extending Cousins. As far as conversion to signing bonus goes, guaranteed base salary versus unguaranteed doesn't really come into play.

So we could do something like this with Cousins:
https://overthecap.com/player/drew-brees/1492/

Brees is on the books for 2021, 2022 and 2023 despite being retired. The Saints are paying 12 million for nothing this year, and 11 next year for nothing, but it is what it is.

Perfect guys. Thank you.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the Vikings could extend him and then cut him, basically turning his salary into dead cap spread out over the number of years of the deal. Honestly, I hadn't thought of converting salary to bonus for the sole purpose of not actually having the guy on the roster.

Come to think of it, I don't recall ever entertaining the idea of paying a lot of money for nothing. My wife is a CFO and influences my thinking a great deal. She's managed the financing of a new events center, a new hotel, and about three different property renovations — at least $100 million worth of stuff — without taking out so much as a construction loan. Cash-flowed all of it. I guess she wouldn't be a suitable executive for the Vikings. Not nearly incompetent enough.

[CharVike]

Correct. Players actually like when their salaries are converted to signing bonuses because they get the money immediately instead of needing to wait until that salary was owed to them.

Kapp, you are correct that we are paying that 76 million no matter what now. However, the guaranteed nature of the contract doesn't stop us from moving some of that cap hit to future years without extending Cousins. As far as conversion to signing bonus goes, guaranteed base salary versus unguaranteed doesn't really come into play.

So we could do something like this with Cousins:
https://overthecap.com/player/drew-brees/1492/

Brees is on the books for 2021, 2022 and 2023 despite being retired. The Saints are paying 12 million for nothing this year, and 11 next year for nothing, but it is what it is.

Perfect guys. Thank you.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the Vikings could extend him and then cut him, basically turning his salary into dead cap spread out over the number of years of the deal. Honestly, I hadn't thought of converting salary to bonus for the sole purpose of not actually having the guy on the roster.

Come to think of it, I don't recall ever entertaining the idea of paying a lot of money for nothing. My wife is a CFO and influences my thinking a great deal. She's managed the financing of a new events center, a new hotel, and about three different property renovations — at least $100 million worth of stuff — without taking out so much as a construction loan. Cash-flowed all of it. I guess she wouldn't be a suitable executive for the Vikings. Not nearly incompetent enough.

That's why your always on this CAP stuff. Does she know anything about college prospects or FAs? Or how we did in FA?

[StumpHunter]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the Vikings could extend him and then cut him, basically turning his salary into dead cap spread out over the number of years of the deal. Honestly, I hadn't thought of converting salary to bonus for the sole purpose of not actually having the guy on the roster.

Just to clarify, there is no cutting involved. He just hits free agency and we have less cap to spend in 2023 and 2024.

One other thing I want to point out, while a player's name and contract is tied to these kind of moves, the player is actually irrelevant. So while it feels wrong to pay a guy for not being on the team, it is really no different than if instead of restructuring Cousins, they instead signed the free agent they were going to sign with the money saved in that restructure, to a contract that has a tiny cap hit in 2022, and much larger in 2023 and beyond.

It is borrowing cap from future years to spend in the current one. There are any number of combinations the Vikings could use to do that borrowing and honestly it is kind of dumb and overly complicated how the NFL has implemented this process. There is really no reason players need to be involved in this and instead of this weird cap manipulation teams should just be able to say they are going to take cap from 2022 and add it 2021, with a max cap dollar amount they can borrow.

[S197]

This doesn’t seem right to me, there has to be additional rules. I mean, you can definitely add void years, Dak’s contract has two void years to spread his $160M over 6 years instead of 4. But I don’t think you can just add void years however you feel like it. Otherwise you just sign a guy to a 30 year contract. With cap inflation, you really don’t care about amortizing over 30.

Is there a cap on void years?

[StumpHunter]

This doesn’t seem right to me, there has to be additional rules. I mean, you can definitely add void years, Dak’s contract has two void years to spread his $160M over 6 years instead of 4. But I don’t think you can just add void years however you feel like it. Otherwise you just sign a guy to a 30 year contract. With cap inflation, you really don’t care about amortizing over 30.

Is there a cap on void years?

I am sure there have to be some restrictions or teams would do exactly what you are describing. Either that or teams don't do that knowing that as soon as they do, the NFL will step in and put in a rule to stop it like they did when we added our poison pill for Hutch.

You also can't convert all salary to signing bonus and spread that out. I can't remember what the exact ratio is but if you want to move 8 million in salary cap to later years, you have to have like 10 million in salary to convert.

So some restrictions, but not enough that even an average cap guy can't find 20 million in cap in future years if they really need it this year.

[J. Kapp 11]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the Vikings could extend him and then cut him, basically turning his salary into dead cap spread out over the number of years of the deal. Honestly, I hadn't thought of converting salary to bonus for the sole purpose of not actually having the guy on the roster.

Just to clarify, there is no cutting involved. He just hits free agency and we have less cap to spend in 2023 and 2024.

One other thing I want to point out, while a player's name and contract is tied to these kind of moves, the player is actually irrelevant. So while it feels wrong to pay a guy for not being on the team, it is really no different than if instead of restructuring Cousins, they instead signed the free agent they were going to sign with the money saved in that restructure, to a contract that has a tiny cap hit in 2022, and much larger in 2023 and beyond.

It is borrowing cap from future years to spend in the current one. There are any number of combinations the Vikings could use to do that borrowing and honestly it is kind of dumb and overly complicated how the NFL has implemented this process. There is really no reason players need to be involved in this and instead of this weird cap manipulation teams should just be able to say they are going to take cap from 2022 and add it 2021, with a max cap dollar amount they can borrow.

That makes perfect sense to me.

I'm a simple guy. In my mind, they ought to make it like GBs in a data plan. If I don't use them this month, they carry over to next month. Same with the cap. I think if a team stays under the cap one year, it should be able to carry over some of that cap to the next. Or vice versa. Borrow from next year to pay for this year, with some kind of limit on how much you can borrow. My wife would call that a "line of credit." Like you said, that would make more sense than monkeying around with player contracts.

[J. Kapp 11]

Perfect guys. Thank you.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the Vikings could extend him and then cut him, basically turning his salary into dead cap spread out over the number of years of the deal. Honestly, I hadn't thought of converting salary to bonus for the sole purpose of not actually having the guy on the roster.

Come to think of it, I don't recall ever entertaining the idea of paying a lot of money for nothing. My wife is a CFO and influences my thinking a great deal. She's managed the financing of a new events center, a new hotel, and about three different property renovations — at least $100 million worth of stuff — without taking out so much as a construction loan. Cash-flowed all of it. I guess she wouldn't be a suitable executive for the Vikings. Not nearly incompetent enough.

That's why your always on this CAP stuff. Does she know anything about college prospects or FAs? Or how we did in FA?

No, it's kinda scary. I have to explain all this stuff to her. The fact that it makes absolutely no sense to her is probably a good indication of how messed up the NFL cap structure is.

[S197]

Just to clarify, there is no cutting involved. He just hits free agency and we have less cap to spend in 2023 and 2024.

One other thing I want to point out, while a player's name and contract is tied to these kind of moves, the player is actually irrelevant. So while it feels wrong to pay a guy for not being on the team, it is really no different than if instead of restructuring Cousins, they instead signed the free agent they were going to sign with the money saved in that restructure, to a contract that has a tiny cap hit in 2022, and much larger in 2023 and beyond.

It is borrowing cap from future years to spend in the current one. There are any number of combinations the Vikings could use to do that borrowing and honestly it is kind of dumb and overly complicated how the NFL has implemented this process. There is really no reason players need to be involved in this and instead of this weird cap manipulation teams should just be able to say they are going to take cap from 2022 and add it 2021, with a max cap dollar amount they can borrow.

That makes perfect sense to me.

I'm a simple guy. In my mind, they ought to make it like GBs in a data plan. If I don't use them this month, they carry over to next month. Same with the cap. I think if a team stays under the cap one year, it should be able to carry over some of that cap to the next. Or vice versa. Borrow from next year to pay for this year, with some kind of limit on how much you can borrow. My wife would call that a "line of credit." Like you said, that would make more sense than monkeying around with player contracts.

You can roll your cap forward to future years. The Vikings would actually do this quite often. There is a minimum threshold as well as a salary cap I believe so you can’t just pay an entire team peanuts but there’s definitely ways to be more fiscally responsible with your cap situation. Once the Vikings felt they were in their window, that all went out the door.