The Super Bowl champion Seahawks debuted their season highlights tonight, and coach Pete Carroll left the door open on a possible return of two recently released players, defensive lineman Red Bryant and receiver Sidney Rice.
“Maybe we have a chance to get them back,” Carroll said via Bob Condotta of The Seattle Times. “Maybe we don’t. We’ll have to wait and see.”
The two were slated to earn a combined $17MM in 2014 before receiving the ax.
Other notes from the NFC…
- 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh addressed rumors he will leave the team after next season. “No,” Harbaugh told SI.com’s Michael Rosenberg. “Zero opportunity or chance of that in my mind.” Harbaugh flatly denied the assertions that he wants more money and power, and he spoke of the respect shared between himself and GM Trent Baalke.
- Cowboys quarterback Kyle Orton is set to earn $3.25MM in 2014, but the team still doesn’t if he plans on playing, according to ESPNDallas.com’s Todd Archer. Orton would have to repay $3MM of the $5MM signing bonus he received in 2012, so signs point to his return, but no declarative statement has been made.
- Attempting to ease cap woes, the Cowboys converted base salary to bonus money for cornerback Orlando Scandrick and Sean Lee, per FOX Sports 1 NFL insider Mike Garafolo (Twitter link). This type of conversion lowers a cap number by spreading the hit over the length of the contract. Garafolo continued, saying the team will continue to rework contracts, and that Scandrick had $3.75MM converted. Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tweets that Dallas created $4.75MM in space with Lee and $8.5MM total.
- With a $6.75MM salary and $11.3MM cap number in 2014, Giants offensive lineman Chris Snee reiterated his willingness to take a pay cut and “mentor the young guys,” from ESPN Giants reporter Dan Graziano.
I am just starting to get a grasp at how NFL contracts and bonuses work. That said aren’t the Cowboys just hurting their franchise long-term by converting base salary to bonus money? In that one of these years they will have to cut some players and than have a year like the Raiders with like 30-50 million in “dead” money?
Essentially, yes. The goal is not having many of those contracts pile up in the same year, but all contract restructures basically just push the problems down the line (unless the player agrees to a pay cut).
— Luke
Yep, it’s poor and irresponsible cap management but Jerry Jones ants to try to win with this core of players and until they rebuild, I’m pretty sure they will just continue to do it until the core ages out and/or Romo is done or gone. He’s in win now mode and it is going to really hurt, especially around 2015-2016. A lot of the bigger deals end in 2017-2018 unless they keep spreading them out.
By the looks of it Dallas will soon have to do what the Steelers did with Miller and tack on years to those contracts thus paying for a players past and not necessarily their future. Jerry Jones needed to rebuild the franchise and accumulated draft picks after the Cowboys failed to get a championship with Romo/Owens/Witten/etc.
Now the Cowboys will be stuck in mediocrity. Good enough to be in the playoff discussion towards the end of the season, but not good enough to make any legitimate noise in the playoffs.