optimus prime
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It was always pretty unlikely that the Bears would move on from Jay Cutler, but by the end of the 2013 season, you could piece together a bunch of logic that would seem to have it make a bit of sense. Josh McCown had stepped in and played admirably during Cutler's (seemingly annual) absence due to injury, which seemed to suggest that Marc Trestman and those two stud wide receivers might be able to coach up any middling passer into a viable Cutler impersonation at a fraction of the cost. Given that Emery wasn't involved with the organization when it acquired Cutler to begin with and that Emery hadn't felt the need to sign Cutler to an extension before the end of the 2013 season, well, you could begin to imagine that the Bears might let Cutler move on and spend the money they would have used on him to shore up a suddenly subpar defense.
Well, that didn't happen. The Bears came to terms with Cutler last week on a seven-year, $126.7 million deal that will keep the perennially controversial quarterback in a Chicago uniform for the foreseeable future. It's the sort of contract a team offers when it's 100 percent sure it has a quarterback who can win a Super Bowl, a sentiment I'm sure some percentage of Bears fans do not share with Emery. It's also a contract that makes some interesting trade-offs that speak to the level of confidence each side has in Cutler's — and Chicago's — future.
What's notable about this deal is the structure. The length and total value of the deal is relatively common; it's about halfway between the values of the contracts signed by Joe Flacco (six years, $120.6 million) and Aaron Rodgers (seven years, $131 million, by virtue of the five-year extension he signed this season). Unlike virtually every other deal given to a veteran quarterback, though, Cutler's contract contains no signing bonus. Instead, the base salary is guaranteed for the first three years of Cutler's deal, which ensures that Cutler will receive a whopping $54 million in guaranteed cash.
This sort of deal has strengths and weaknesses for each side. From Cutler's perspective, he gets a larger guarantee than most would have expected. Flacco, who had more leverage as a younger, more reliable quarterback coming off a Super Bowl win, only got $52 million in guaranteed money. Matt Ryan got $42 million. Rodgers, an MVP winner, got a similar $54 million in guaranteed money on his deal, albeit with less leverage. On the flip side, Cutler doesn't get as much money up front as his brethren do; with no signing bonus, Cutler only [sigh] gets $17.5 million of his 2014 salary upon signing the extension, with the other $5 million coming in deferred payments throughout the season. Cutler's 2015 and 2016 base salaries are also guaranteed for injury only.
By structuring the deal this way, the Bears can help keep their salary cap clean in future seasons and keep themselves flexible with Cutler as he ages. If the Bears had given Cutler a standard signing bonus, it would have stretched across the entire length of the contract; that would have made the cap hit lower during the first few years of the deal, but it would have made the latter years of the deal more expensive and required the Bears to eat dead money as part of the contract if they chose to move on from Cutler. Instead, this deal is more like a typical contract, only with the "signing bonus" spread exclusively over the first three years of the deal. After those three years are up, the Bears will have four more years remaining on the contract with base salaries between $12.5 million and $19.2 million. If the team decides to move on from Cutler at any point during that time frame, it can trade or cut him without incurring any cap penalties. In other words, this is the sort of contract a team makes when it wants to have a guy locked up for a few years while knowing it also wants to be able to end things very quickly and cleanly. Think of this as a three-year, $54 million deal with four one-year team options attached at the end.
Also curious is the way the Bears structured the actual year-by-year base salaries. Notably, while most contracts see the base salaries in a deal rise on an annual basis, Cutler's deal starts off with a $22.5 million base salary in 2014, falls to $15.5 million and then $16 million over the next two guaranteed years, and then drops to $12.5 million in the first option year before steadily rising to $19.2 million over the final four years of the deal. The quarterback franchise tag for 2014 was, before the Cutler deal, expected to come in at about $16 million. It's not so simple to say that the Bears should have just franchise-tagged Cutler, since the salary afforded a player franchised in consecutive years rises in the second year by 20 percent (which would pay Cutler $19.2 million) and then by 44 percent ($26.9 million), meaning the Bears would have paid Cutler $62.1 million over the same three-year stretch, with the added ability of being able to cut him or trade him if they wanted. The Bears are trading that leverage of being able to get rid of Cutler for $8.1 million and those four option years.
Was it the right move? It's hard to say. I support the idea of spending a premium to keep Cutler around, but I'm also of the opinion that Cutler's a lot better than some might believe. While McCown's performance in Cutler's stead this season was impressive, it was also driven by a freaky-low interception rate that will be impossible to repeat. The Bears would have also had to rush into finding a new quarterback without a high draft pick or an obviously available candidate, which seems like a recipe for disaster. I might have considered franchising Cutler before offering him two more guaranteed years as part of an extension in the hopes of saving money, but I don't think the general concept of locking Cutler up and paying him like he's better than Ryan is an incorrect assumption.
And by putting the largest base salary in the first year, the Bears are suggesting that they aren't about to go on another offseason spending spree, despite having just 32 players under contract for 2014. That number will fall when the Bears likely let Julius Peppers go, creating about $10 million in cap space, but Emery & Co. will have a lot of work to do in filling out their roster over the remainder of the offseason.
They kept two players on that roster with lower-profile contract extensions last week, neither of which enthuse me as much as the Cutler deal. In giving cornerback Tim Jennings a four-year, $22.4 million extension with just less than $12 million guaranteed, the Bears are locking up an undersize cornerback who just turned 30 and whose value is mostly tied up in creating interceptions, which tends to be a wildly erratic statistic from year to year. That's the profile of a player who can lose it and begin to look bad very suddenly. The contract's terms are still vague, but it seems likely that the guarantees amount to $7.5 million in assorted compensation for Jennings in 2014 and his $4.4 million base salary in 2015. My suspicion is that Jennings will be released after the 2015 season.
Chicago also gave left guard Matt Slauson a four-year deal after he produced a solid season on a one-year contract this past campaign. Slauson made $815,000 plus incentives, and was a starting guard on the Grantland All-Bargain Team. His new deal is worth $12.8 million with just less than $5 million guaranteed, but there's also a reason why Slauson was available for a million bucks in the middle of free agency last year. Competent guards are a relatively fungible property and a group getting squeezed by the market in recent years. It's entirely likely that Slauson would have struggled to match this deal on the free market, and even if he had gotten a better contract, the Bears likely could have found somebody as good as Slauson on another short-term deal. There's something to be said for stability and continuity, but there's also something to be said for opportunity cost and trusting your ability to read the market for a second consecutive season. Slauson's a solid guard, but this was probably an overpay.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/87960/the-nfl-discard-pile
Well, that didn't happen. The Bears came to terms with Cutler last week on a seven-year, $126.7 million deal that will keep the perennially controversial quarterback in a Chicago uniform for the foreseeable future. It's the sort of contract a team offers when it's 100 percent sure it has a quarterback who can win a Super Bowl, a sentiment I'm sure some percentage of Bears fans do not share with Emery. It's also a contract that makes some interesting trade-offs that speak to the level of confidence each side has in Cutler's — and Chicago's — future.
What's notable about this deal is the structure. The length and total value of the deal is relatively common; it's about halfway between the values of the contracts signed by Joe Flacco (six years, $120.6 million) and Aaron Rodgers (seven years, $131 million, by virtue of the five-year extension he signed this season). Unlike virtually every other deal given to a veteran quarterback, though, Cutler's contract contains no signing bonus. Instead, the base salary is guaranteed for the first three years of Cutler's deal, which ensures that Cutler will receive a whopping $54 million in guaranteed cash.
This sort of deal has strengths and weaknesses for each side. From Cutler's perspective, he gets a larger guarantee than most would have expected. Flacco, who had more leverage as a younger, more reliable quarterback coming off a Super Bowl win, only got $52 million in guaranteed money. Matt Ryan got $42 million. Rodgers, an MVP winner, got a similar $54 million in guaranteed money on his deal, albeit with less leverage. On the flip side, Cutler doesn't get as much money up front as his brethren do; with no signing bonus, Cutler only [sigh] gets $17.5 million of his 2014 salary upon signing the extension, with the other $5 million coming in deferred payments throughout the season. Cutler's 2015 and 2016 base salaries are also guaranteed for injury only.
By structuring the deal this way, the Bears can help keep their salary cap clean in future seasons and keep themselves flexible with Cutler as he ages. If the Bears had given Cutler a standard signing bonus, it would have stretched across the entire length of the contract; that would have made the cap hit lower during the first few years of the deal, but it would have made the latter years of the deal more expensive and required the Bears to eat dead money as part of the contract if they chose to move on from Cutler. Instead, this deal is more like a typical contract, only with the "signing bonus" spread exclusively over the first three years of the deal. After those three years are up, the Bears will have four more years remaining on the contract with base salaries between $12.5 million and $19.2 million. If the team decides to move on from Cutler at any point during that time frame, it can trade or cut him without incurring any cap penalties. In other words, this is the sort of contract a team makes when it wants to have a guy locked up for a few years while knowing it also wants to be able to end things very quickly and cleanly. Think of this as a three-year, $54 million deal with four one-year team options attached at the end.
Also curious is the way the Bears structured the actual year-by-year base salaries. Notably, while most contracts see the base salaries in a deal rise on an annual basis, Cutler's deal starts off with a $22.5 million base salary in 2014, falls to $15.5 million and then $16 million over the next two guaranteed years, and then drops to $12.5 million in the first option year before steadily rising to $19.2 million over the final four years of the deal. The quarterback franchise tag for 2014 was, before the Cutler deal, expected to come in at about $16 million. It's not so simple to say that the Bears should have just franchise-tagged Cutler, since the salary afforded a player franchised in consecutive years rises in the second year by 20 percent (which would pay Cutler $19.2 million) and then by 44 percent ($26.9 million), meaning the Bears would have paid Cutler $62.1 million over the same three-year stretch, with the added ability of being able to cut him or trade him if they wanted. The Bears are trading that leverage of being able to get rid of Cutler for $8.1 million and those four option years.
Was it the right move? It's hard to say. I support the idea of spending a premium to keep Cutler around, but I'm also of the opinion that Cutler's a lot better than some might believe. While McCown's performance in Cutler's stead this season was impressive, it was also driven by a freaky-low interception rate that will be impossible to repeat. The Bears would have also had to rush into finding a new quarterback without a high draft pick or an obviously available candidate, which seems like a recipe for disaster. I might have considered franchising Cutler before offering him two more guaranteed years as part of an extension in the hopes of saving money, but I don't think the general concept of locking Cutler up and paying him like he's better than Ryan is an incorrect assumption.
And by putting the largest base salary in the first year, the Bears are suggesting that they aren't about to go on another offseason spending spree, despite having just 32 players under contract for 2014. That number will fall when the Bears likely let Julius Peppers go, creating about $10 million in cap space, but Emery & Co. will have a lot of work to do in filling out their roster over the remainder of the offseason.
They kept two players on that roster with lower-profile contract extensions last week, neither of which enthuse me as much as the Cutler deal. In giving cornerback Tim Jennings a four-year, $22.4 million extension with just less than $12 million guaranteed, the Bears are locking up an undersize cornerback who just turned 30 and whose value is mostly tied up in creating interceptions, which tends to be a wildly erratic statistic from year to year. That's the profile of a player who can lose it and begin to look bad very suddenly. The contract's terms are still vague, but it seems likely that the guarantees amount to $7.5 million in assorted compensation for Jennings in 2014 and his $4.4 million base salary in 2015. My suspicion is that Jennings will be released after the 2015 season.
Chicago also gave left guard Matt Slauson a four-year deal after he produced a solid season on a one-year contract this past campaign. Slauson made $815,000 plus incentives, and was a starting guard on the Grantland All-Bargain Team. His new deal is worth $12.8 million with just less than $5 million guaranteed, but there's also a reason why Slauson was available for a million bucks in the middle of free agency last year. Competent guards are a relatively fungible property and a group getting squeezed by the market in recent years. It's entirely likely that Slauson would have struggled to match this deal on the free market, and even if he had gotten a better contract, the Bears likely could have found somebody as good as Slauson on another short-term deal. There's something to be said for stability and continuity, but there's also something to be said for opportunity cost and trusting your ability to read the market for a second consecutive season. Slauson's a solid guard, but this was probably an overpay.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/87960/the-nfl-discard-pile
