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Cap Rundown with Tony Pastoors
Posted Mar 10, 2015
Tucked away in an office opposite of Rams C.O.O. Kevin Demoff sits Tony Pastoors, the senior assistant of the Los Angeles Rams. As the team’s lead negotiator, Pastoors works alongside Demoff in salary cap management, contract negotiations, compliance with the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement and the team’s financial and strategic planning.
In honor of the New League Year and the start of free agency, Pastoors has agreed to indulge us in a quick overview of the salary cap, since many of us are often left in the dark wondering what it is.
THERAMS.COM: What is the salary cap?
PASTOORS: The salary cap is basically the maximum amount a team can spend on its players in any given year. Football has a “hard cap,” which means we cannot exceed that number. For 2015, it is $143,280,000 plus player benefits. We cannot spend any more than that. Professional basketball and Major League Baseball have what we call “soft caps.” They can go over. They just pay a penalty when they do. In the NFL we cannot.
THERAMS.COM: How much forward thinking is involved when managing the cap?
PASTOORS: Every team does it differently. Every time we do any deal here, we are looking two, three years ahead to make sure it all makes sense. What you never want to do is make, as the general manager would say, “emotional decisions,” and then have to deal with the ramifications of that. So every contract we set up, we’re always looking two, three years down the road.
THERAMS.COM: Is there a salary floor or a minimum that teams have to spend each year?
PASTOORS: Technically, no. In any given year there is not. However, in the new CBA there is a four-year period in which there is what they call “minimum spend.” The teams have to spend over a four-year period 89 percent of the salary cap in cash. For this year, you essentially have to spend $127 million to get to that 89 percent, and that’s in cash, and it’s that way for all four years. The salary cap, you can manipulate some of it, but that 89 percent spend threshold was put into place to make sure teams actually spend and aren’t just manipulating the cap.
THERAMS.COM: What’s the difference between cash and the cap?
PASTOORS: The salary cap is like a credit card. You can put charges on it and you can pay it off a million different ways. You can always pay the minimum payment, but at the end of the day you’re eventually going to have to pay the whole bill. You can push payments back and spread “cap” out through years, but there has to be cash behind it.
THERAMS.COM: Can you illustrate an example of a cash vs. cap breakdown?
PASTOORS: If you give a player on a five-year contract $5 million as a signing bonus, the way the salary cap works is that $5 million prorates out (see Exhibit A, Row 3 below).
In cash, most of the time if you’re giving a player a signing bonus, you’re going to pay him the year he signs. Now on the cap, it will hit like Exhibit A, where the signing bonus prorates out $1 million over a 5-year period, the maximum is a 5-year period. So, his cap number is $2 million and his cash number would essentially be $6 million (Exhibit B).
If the contract was written and agreed upon with a roster bonus, it would look a little different. When you give the roster bonus in the first year of the contract, the cap hit would be $6 million in Year 1 and his cash number would be $6 million, keeping the cash and the cap in line with one another instead of that $2 million cap hit via the signing bonus in Exhibit A.
Back to the signing bonus scenario, let’s say we finished the second year of the player’s contract and we cut the player before his third. Those $3 million in cap (2017-2019) is going to all come back and count against us in 2017. Like I said, the credit card – you can spread out your payments, but eventually you’re going to have to pay it. Teams do it differently and there’s a million different ways to navigate it and I think every team does a very good job for their parameters. Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET, the entire league will be under the salary cap.
THERAMS.COM: How long did it take you to learn everything?
PASTOORS: I don’t think you’re ever quite done learning. I think there’s a lot of different things that you can continue to learn and different ways to look at things. Like I said, I don’t think there’s one way to do the cap. Trust me, it’s not something that you just read overnight and say, “I got it.” It’s a process.
THERAMS.COM: Aside from you, who else is involved in managing the salary cap?
PASTOORS: Everything we do is a collaboration between Coach Fisher, Kevin, Les Snead and myself. At this point with most of our guys, I’m the one that the agents will talk to and deal with, but the end of the day, it’s good to have Kevin across the hall.
Pastoors is entering into his sixth year with the Los Angeles Rams where assists Kevin Demoff, Head Coach Jeff Fisher, and General Manager Les Snead in the development and implementation of the club’s strategic plan for player signings and player acquisitions. He also aids Demoff in all aspects of the team’s business operations.
Prior to joining the Rams, he was a student at Dartmouth College where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history. He was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minn.
