NBA-aish Contracts

[sportscurmudgeon]

The reason Manning's cap number used to be $18.2 M on the franchise tag is that the franchise amount is calculated by a formula.

A. The average SALARY (not cap number) for the top three players at his position (QB) paid last year. There is no amortizing and no averaging.

B. 120% (or maybe it's 112% I don't recall) of whatever he was paid last year.

Take the larger of A or B and that is the number for a franchise player.

His cap number now is reported to be $8.3M (I did not make the calculation, I'm only reporting what they said on ESPN) which means that they "saved" $10M on their salary cap this year by signing him to this monster contract. Go figure.