Vikings are now #8 in available cap space

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@dadevike said:
Front loading cash is dangerous. You get to the point late in the deal where the player does not see much cash coming next year.  He will forget about the mega cash he received up front and focus on the mini cash he is expected to play for next season. Then comes the holdout and everyone agreeing that he is underpaid.

Kind of like the Hunter situation.  He got top 5 DE money in his first couple years of his extension and then missed most of two seasons while he got that big money, and now that he's only due a 5.5 mil base salary, he thinks he needs more.

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I don't mind front loading contracts because it's actually better for the team when you're paying guys for what you expect them to do the next couple years.  If it's a 5-yr deal, you are basically front loading for 3 and leaving it open to do another extension at Year 4 or in the final year of the deal... Or if their play is declining, you can cut them with minimal dead money.  

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@Wetlander said:
I don't mind front loading contracts because it's actually better for the team when you're paying guys for what you expect them to do the next couple years.  If it's a 5-yr deal, you are basically front loading for 3 and leaving it open to do another extension at Year 4 or in the final year of the deal... Or if their play is declining, you can cut them with minimal dead money.  

The problem is when the dead money is not so minimal -  the Cook situation. You can have a big non-guaranteed number that the team is not going to pay, so it offers a smallish but guaranteed number. The player may have other ideas. He knows you are not going to pay that big fake number but he also knows that cutting him creates a big cap problem. He refuses to renegotiate: pay me per the contract or cut me and I'll go where I want. So the team has only bad choices: pay the player more than the team wants to pay (more than any other team would pay him); or cut the player and take a big dead cap number and get nothing for the player.