Green Restructures Contract [Chronicle]

[Keith]

Well, the Chronicle seems to still think the roster bonuses begin in Week 2, so maybe that's not a mistake after all...?

Regardless, something else from McClain's article and blog is confusing me... and I'm not sure if it's because he's in the media and doesn't really understand this stuff or if the roster bonus is somehow treated as a NLTBE bonus.

From the blog link from an earlier post:

By agreeing to reduce his base salary this year from $3.8 million to $1.8 million, Green helped the Texans come up with an extra $2 million in cap dollars.

So does this mean the new $3mm roster bonus(es) are not counted on the cap because they are though to be Not Likely to Be Earned? Normally roster bonuses are LTBEs, which then should actually increase Green's cap hit by $500,000. (It's not $1mm - - Don't forget the $500k in roster bonuses Green had before the restructuring.)

The CBA is tough to decipher when it comes to incentives. It basically says that any incentive bonus based on a per game occurence automatically will be deemed as LTBE to the extent the performance was achieved by the player in the previous year.

So, does that mean since Green was not active for 15 games last year that the entire $3 million bonus is NLTBE? Or is it prorated based on the # of games he was active in 2007? ****.

My understanding was that the roster bonuses before the restructuring were LTBEs, so I'm not sure why that would change under the altered agreement.

Still, getting Green to lower his base by $2mm is a pretty good move any way you slice it. If the roster bonuses are LTBE and Green doesn't earn them, then they ought to be added as additional cap space in 2009.

We'll see. Anyhoo... I'm working on the cap page updates if you can't tell, hopefully I'll have them done on Sunday.