2020 Patriots off season

Yes, my statement was too general. Only meant to point out that you couldn't just cut someone at the bottom of the 90 man (but maybe folks here all know that already so it probably was extraneous of me).

That cap hit is 610K in salary and 904,891 for this year's portion of the signing bonus (Miguel) but it's really the $1,514,891 that matters.

If my math is correct, it probably is more like Top 38 or higher (might even be further narrowed down within that list of players for those whose dead money would offset any benefit of released).

Still think the savings is most likely to come from a restructure than a cut.

Let’s be realistic.... so they play games with no fans. Virus is obviously still circulating the country. There’s basically a 100% chance that at some point a player gets it during the season. Then what? They shut it down? This won’t work / my guess is they try but there’s no real season.

The article isn't crazy, and the author is one of the most respected cap guys who isn't an actual NFL employee. He didn't suggest "no fans means no local revenue", I don't know how you got such an extreme black and white take from that, it's obviously more nuanced than all or nothing.  His sole mention of no local revenue was to reference the actual cap figure that specifically comes from local revenue.  He didn't suggest he knows exactly how much local revenue will be lost (the 40% example was probably a guess), he just makes it clear there will be a loss, and that ticket sales aren't the only aspect of local revenue that will be regress in a season without fans. His article was certainly more balanced and informative than you make it out to be, but fine, I read more on the subject and only found similar opinions from all the other sources I could find (even though Over The Cap is great for NFL cap information).

www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29165716/sources-nfl-teams-agree-raise-debt-limits-150m-club
Seth Wickersham also suggested teams could lose tens of millions in local revenue without fans (tens is vague, I admit), with the expected hit being a main factor in raising the debt limit by $150m for each team. In that same report, he mentions Patrick Riche "estimates the NFL would lose about $138 million in revenue from tickets and game-day fan spending for each week played without fans. A full season without fans could cost the league nearly $2.3 billion, Rishe calculated.".

www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/no-fans-allowed-what-empty-stadiums-would-cost-nfl-teams-and-how-theyre-trying-to-solve-the-financial-strain/
www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/how-nfl-teams-and-players-are-preparing-for-a-major-salary-cap-hit-because-of-covid-19/
Jonathan Jones of CBSSports is doing a three part series on the situation as well. He quoted an anonymous executive that doesn't believe any team can replace the local revenue losses, and I've seen similar quotes from executives in other articles on PFT and I believe Peter King. I really can't find credible sources that believe the NFL will make the same amount of money without fans this year, just by increasing other revenue streams.  Almost everyone (like Jones) has given great ideas for new revenue opportunities during this time, but even then he expects "regression in even the most optimistic situations", because those opportunities aren't close to enough to offset the projected losses. Of course, we know a full season without fans is not the worst case scenario.

Schefter (who is pro-owner/league, so take it with a grain of salt) suggested no fans all year would equate to a ~$100m drop in revenue per team, which matches the projection by Riche. Schefter said owners and executives expect a 30-80m drop in cap space (which would be negotiated and spread out). Mike Florio says there's no way around the NFL taking a revenue hit, and said he can't see how the NFL would avoid a 2021 cap decline in a season without fans. Florio made a great point that the NFL's best opportunity is the NCAA canceling the football season, but it's tough to imagine at least SEC football being cancelled in a world where NFL football is being played across the country. Even without a campus and students I'd expect that conference to play, they need the football money and have the right geographical location.

If there's a significant cap hit, the players and owners will have to reach a compromise to mitigate the impact. The regression may not look significant at first (say 40% loss in local, national money remains around the 2019 level, and they spread the $31m cap drop over 3 years), but it ignores that teams have built their rosters assuming they'll have steady growth each year. Rather than getting the expected $10m+ increase each year, they'll get a decrease and/or a flat cap for a couple years. This is why it's uniquely beneficial at this time for the Patriots to have so many 2021 veteran FA's. They can build their future rosters knowing the new landscape. Teams that spent big money the past few years with the assumption revenues would continue to grow exponentially will be in a tougher spot. Teams who are already up against next year's cap will probably clench their buttcheeks every time a team employee has to cough.

The national money is tough to figure out, I could see it going both ways but the sources I've read all expect it to stay flat or decrease. I've seen some suggestion that the national tv deals could be partially or even fully guaranteed without games, I have no idea if that's true but it'd obviously be huge. I think your idea that people are going to reallocate their ticket dollars to purchase merchandise is faulty (that'd be a separate lengthy discussion I'd like to avoid), but it's certainly tougher to predict the national impact than the local impact. I hope we have a full season so we can actually find out the results instead of discussing hypotheticals in this time of no sports.

Each scenario isn't a projection of what he thinks will happen, it's to predict the cap effect in each possible 2020 scenario (normal season, lost season, shortened season, season without fans, etc). He actually believes a lost season is less likely than a COVID-19 breakthrough that would allow a normal NFL season with fans and only minor revenue losses.  He's closer to an optimist than alarmist in terms of actual predictions of what will happen.  Still, we have to admit it's impossible to know if/when a second wave will hit (or if they'll discover a suitable treatment) so it'd be foolish to assume this season will definitely be completed in full.

The projection of a $40-85m salary cap loss is in the event of a 40-100% local revenue loss with at least a small hit to the national revenue, not his actual prediction of what will happen. Obviously, the only way they could lose ~100% local revenue is losing the season, or maybe playing a shortened season at a remote "bubble" location. His scenarios of teams losing almost all of their local revenue include seasons that are suspended, shortened, or lost.

The 40% figure is closer to a full regular season without fans, but without disruptions and major issues. Without fans in stadiums or national revenue growth, this figure is probably a good case scenario even if the season isn't disrupted.  Many of the elements of local revenue should be disrupted to some level without fans.

Teams have been planning for substantial growth each year.  Spreading the hit and borrowing against future caps will freeze the cap for at least two seasons. Leaving the cap flat will absolutely have an effect on player salaries.  How can they continue to reestablish positional markets each FA class without cap growth.  For example, how do the Chiefs reset the QB market with Mahomes and pay him ~$40m per if the cap won't increase? They can and will do it, but it'll certainly hurt other parts of the roster even more than it would've before.  Scenarios allow for little cap change, or anywhere from moderate to significant changes…that's why the Patriots are in a good position to deal with any scenario.  If they already had a lot of guaranteed money committed to 2021-2022 I'd say the opposite.

It's an article of different projections for each scenario, he doesn't claim to know how the season will go. He also projects little or no revenue loss if there's a COVID-19 breakthrough in July, which is a different projection for a different specific scenario. If I project the Patriots to go 10-6 if Stidham starts all 16 games, but 3-13 if Lewerke starts those games, you could say I predicted the Patriots at 3-13 but you'd be ignoring the context of the projection (or that I made other projections for other scenarios as well). I don't want to get stuck in the semantics of predictions vs. projections though, so moving on...

The projection you've cited ($40-85m cap decrease) is in the scenario of no fans and at least a small national revenue loss. National growth would lower those figures, as would stadiums of 33% capacity. The low end ($40m figure) looks like a reasonable baseline without fans. The high end looks too high if the national revenue only takes a small hit, unless you read the article and saw the mention that games may not be played in the home market. If NFL states don't allow gatherings sufficient for an NFL game and they have to play in a remote/bubble location it'll wipe out almost all local revenue (radio broadcasting fees and some local sponsorship deals would remain) and get near the high end figure. Maybe some states will operate in their home market and others won't, who knows? It would be negligent to assume every NFL state will definitely allow NFL games throughout this season. It's unlikely the NFL season will occur only at remote locations, but that's why it's the $85m figure represents a worst case scenario and not the most likely scenario.

Yet he only gives cap projections/prediction on one outcome, the likely one that we were debating. An NFL season without fans. Obviously things can change, yet we were talking about the impact of a season without fans on next year's salary cap.

There is zero chance they play a season and you get basically zero local revenue. I'd argue even without a season local revenue won't be close to zero. Unless you think fans won't buy merchandise from places like patriots.com.  Is Gillette going to pull it's naming right for the Stadium? It's one of the biggest bargains in pro sports. I bet the Patriots would love it if they did, they would likely get 2-3 times more with a new sponsor. Even if some teams can't play in parks, most have too or there won't be a season.

You can think this guy is great. I don't it's a sloppy article that makes it seem like all local revenue is based on fans coming to games. When well over 1/16 of the total NFL revenue is corporate sponsors that counts towards local revenue. It's likely the 2nd biggest chunk of local revenue and he acts like it doesn't exist. Yet in 2018 it was over $42 million per team.

You can believe whatever you want, it doesn't change the facts of that article.

I'll believe the guy who specializes in the NFL cap over umassgrad2005 with all due respect (*in Ricky Bobby's voice*).

There’s a zero percent chance there’s a vaccine this calendar year.

Does that mean no season?

You can’t social distance a virus out of existence. That was never the plan, but somewhere along the way it became the plan in some people’s heads. The social distancing was to flatten the curve to let hospitals prepare and hopefully isolate those most vulnerable. We are going to have to live with this virus for a long while and if we choose to do that while social distancing as a full society then kiss any semblance of an economy good bye and be prepared to lose a lot more people from economic hardship than the virus would take.

I’m not going down a political rabbit hole in this thread. As much as I enjoy those conversations, the mods have made it clear they don’t want that here or anywhere on this message board.