Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Here's a link to the CBA

Take a read: 2011 CBA - ratified on August 4, 2011

Great article explaining the Minimum Salary Benefit (MSB)

Check out this article by cap guru Jason Fitzgerald, who runs the best cap website on the web, overthecap.com. Here's a link to his article titled: "Explaining the Minimum Salary Benefit"

Jason made a boo-boo when it came to the Giants when he lsited them as having ten players who qualified for the Minimum Salary Benefit (MSB). They actually have 9, not 10, which is still enough for the most in the league. Those 9 are as follows:

David Carr
Josh Brown
Shaun Rogers
Kevin Boothe
Mike Patterson
Aaron Ross
Dan Connor
Ryan Mundy
Louis Murphy

These players all count the same against the cap: each one has a cap hit of $620,000 ($555 K base salary + $65 K bonus). As stated above, since these are all MSB players, their cap hits are lower than their salaries. I'll list them below in order of highest salary to lowest salary:



 

 

      As can be seen on the left, the total savings in cap dollars for the aforementioned 9 MSB players on the Giants is $2,320,000.

Restricted Free Agency (RFA) tenders for Giants, and some news on Victor Cruz

Here are the Restricted Free Agent (RFA) Tender amounts, when Albert Breer tweeted them about 4 months ago back in mid-January:














The reason that I bring this up now is as a reminder of the tenders that the 3 Giants' RFAs (Victor Cruz, Andre Brown, & Stevie Brown) received. They're as follows:

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Stevie Brown (he tweeted his signed RFA tender) and Andre Brown have both already signed their tenders, whereas Cruz has not. They all already count against the cap at the rates that they were tendered at (listed above), regardless of if they signed (A. Brown & S. Brown signed theirs) or didn't sign them (as in Cruz's case).

Giants' co-owner John Mara is optimistic regarding the chances that the Giants and Cruz reach a new deal for Cruz. Check out the article below:

"Victor Cruz still unsigned but NY Giants co-owner John Mara highly confident a deal will get done" | by Ralph Vacchiano / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 10:04 AM


The next 7 to 10 days are reported as being important for the Giants and Cruz to reach an agreement as per Pro Football Talk (see link below). This would be advantageous to the Giants since they would like Cruz in attendance as OTAs get underway.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/07/next-week-or-so-deemed-important-for-cruz-talks/


OTAs get underway 14 days from today on May 22nd, according to cbssports.com (source: NFL OTA, minicamp dates announced for 2013 offseason By Ryan Wilson | CBSSports.com April 30, 2013 7:14 pm ET).

Here are the dates for the Giants (the workout portion of the offseason for the Giants began on April 15th):


First day: April 15
OTAs: May 22-23, May 29-31, June 3-7
Mandatory minicamp: June 11-13
Rookie minicamp: May 10-12

Cruz's attendance during that time would be of significance for the following reason put forth by Patricia Trainia on this thread from BBI ( Giants want to get Cruz done in 7-10 days Jolly Blue Giant : 5/7/2013 4:22 pm):

Would Make Sense Because
Pat from Inside Football : 5/7/2013 4:26 pm
In a couple of weeks, the third and final phase of the offseason program, the OTAs, begin. and if Cruz isn't signed by then, then this has the potential to drag into training camp and become a distraction.

John Mara seems confident that a deal will be reached. Words of optimism always are encouraging to hear, hopefully they bare fruit in the upcoming days.