Yeah pretty much the length of the deal doesn't mean much. What matters is the length of the deal versus the signing bonus and then any roster bonuses. Most teams have followed the Skins's lead in giving big time signing bonuses with long contracts lengths so they money can be spread out better. This works great if you can keep a guy on your team and playing productively for 4 or 5 more years. Then if you need to dump them or they retire the cap hit is easier. I think the structure of the plan Canuck proposed is sound but the numbers are a little of. Something more like this seems to be the SOP for the Skins lately.
I would think with a 7 year deal they'd go bigger on the SB say to 14M with roster bonuses just like Canuck said except smaller.
Also the salary may not grow so precipitously but will jump all of a sudden.
.......................2005...2006...2007...2008...2009.. .2010...2011
Salary.............$535K...$535K..$1.5M...$3M..$6M... .$7M....$8M
Bonus.............$0........$0......$1M...$1M....$0.... ..$0.......$0
Signing Bonus...$2M.....$2M.....$2M....$2M....$2M....$2M.... $2M
Dead Cap........$5.8M...$0.......$0......$0......$0......$0.......$0

Total Cap Hit...$8.3M..$2.5M....$4.5M....$6M....$8M....$9M.. ..$10M

Of course this doesn't take into consideration any CBA rules as to salary reqs for veterans and such but I am not even going to begin trying to parse that gooblygook.

Also I think there are rules as to the max length of contracts. I always wondered why teams didn't sign guys to 30 year contracts to spread out the SB even more. Max length rules are the reason

This shows that the "7 year" deal is really more of a 4 year deal. If he lasts 4 years and gets cut, retires, or traded then 2009 cap hit ends up at $6M with a savings of $2M.

Remember the Skins really brought this style of contarcting into fashion with Stephen Davis's "10 year" deal that was really only a 3 year deal.

I love how the Media harps on how structuring stuff this way "mortages" the future when it really doesn't. With some luck (which everyone needs and depends on) you get your guys to the point in the contract where it is an easy decision to dump 'em or restructure. See the Skins are in that position this year with Samuels. It won't be the end of the world to cut him since the cap hit won't be hideous versus what it would be to keep him. But he is still a quality player so they'll go down the restructure road since money wise it makes no sense to get rid of him unless his demands are asanine.

FRPLG, i believe there's been a rule change so that signing bonuses can only pro-rate over 6 years instead of 7 now...

Good Stuff Canuck........I always admired those with the ability to crunch numbers.

Great post FRPLG. I agree with pretty much all of it.

[QUOTE=FRPLG]Of course this doesn't take into consideration any CBA rules as to salary reqs for veterans and such but I am not even going to begin trying to parse that gooblygook.[/QUOTE]

The league minimum salary starts at $230K for rookies and increases based on the player's experience, up to $760K for 10 or more years. There is also this rule - "All minimum salaries for veterans with at least four years of experience will only count $455,000 against the team salary cap." But this only applies to players with a signing bonus of $25K or less (ie Ray Brown, not Samuels).[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=That Guy]FRPLG, i believe there's been a rule change so that signing bonuses can only pro-rate over 6 years instead of 7 now...[/QUOTE]

True. Next year I think it goes down to 5 years.

Samuels drives me up the freakin wall!! It seems like every year it's the same rookie mistakes over and over again. And we all know what's going to happen...He'll get another undeserved trip to Hawaii and it will just inflate his ego and he just won't get any better

samuels is athletic, but his technique just isn't sound/consistant :(