Wednesday’s PFT Live featured a wide-ranging discussion with Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports, which included an examination of the question of whether the Colts will, and should, take Andrew Luck with the first pick in the 2012 draft, and whether the Saints should tab Bill Parcells as the interim head coach during the suspension of Sean Payton.
We also talked about the ongoing salary-cap saga involving the Redskins and the Cowboys and their spending in what supposedly was the uncapped year. The situation continues to cry out “collusion,” but the NFL apparently is facing no real consequences because the party that would be most impacted by evidence of collusion -- the NFLPA -- signed away all collusion claims in 2011 and, more recently, agreed to take $46 million from teams that like to spend it and redistribute it to 28 other teams, many of whom don’t like to spend it.
Thus, in exchange for taking $23 million in 2012 and 2013 from the Redskins and Cowboys, the salary cap was increased from $116 million per team to $120.6 million per team.
That’s $147.2 million. So where did it come from?
Cole surmises that the NFLPA has borrowed against the cap in future years, which means that the cap in future years will be lower than it otherwise should be. Which means that a spike in the cap is less likely. Which means that the players eventually may be feeling more than a little buyer’s remorse.
But that’s just one small aspect of the conversation with Cole. For all of it, check out segment 3 of Wednesday’s PFT Live.