Kearse a Cowgirl???

[sportscurmudgeon]

It is an "ethical violation" for an agent to use one player's contract as a bargaining chip for another player's contract with a team. Having said that, it happens more than once in a while.

Obviously the Skins and the Rosenhauses can work well together; that could be a big help in trying to get Kearse. But Rosenhaus was asking for a signing bonus in the $20M range and a total contract value of about $60-65M from the Titans. OK, MAYBE their release of Kearse has made him realize those numbers were high, but he is not going to have Kearse sign a deal at the numbers that were paid out to Brunell ($8.5M signing bonus and $23M).

Here is the danger in a Kearse signing. Yes, he is a dominant pass rushing DE and he may be a mainstay on a DL for the next 6-8 years. He might also have one more injury left in his leg that he can recover from and still be a dominant DE. If he signs a deal for $20M up front and then is really slowed by his next injury, the team will still have to keep him around for a while until they have amortized a big chunk of that $20M to avoid a huge amount of dead money.

Here's an example. Signing bonus is $20 and the deal is 10 years long. That means in each year, his cap number is $2M ($20M/10yrs) plus his salary for that year. After two seasons the team would have written off $4M of the signing bonus and if they trade him or release him the rest of the bonus ($16M) gets shoved into their salary cap for a year. The cap this year is $80M for the team and so $16M is 20% of the cap for the whole team.