Grab That Cash With Both Hands And Make A Stash

June 25, 2009 at 01:37pm by Scott

Mike Florio of PFT did a small bit on an interview Mark Dominik did with WQYK in Tuesday. Most of it has to do with how much cap room the Bucs have spent, but first I want to cover how much they had to start with. Here’s Florio’s quote:

In his recent radio appearance on WQYK in Tampa, Buccaneers G.M. Mark Dominik made a stunning claim regarding the team’s offseason spending in 2009.

“We started free agency with over $80 million in cap room,” Dominik said. “And we’ve spent almost $60 million.”

Um, really?

For starters, the notion that the Bucs had $80 million in 2009 cap space far exceeds all estimates and reports of their actual spending room.

I wonder if Florio actually listened to the interview or if he just depended on someone else to give him the broad strokes. Here is the full-length interview. It’s 20MB, so if you’re reading this over a phone or something, wait until you get home. A few minutes in, Dominik says this:

“I think the misnomer is that we started free agency with over $80-million of cap room.”

Those first six words are kind of important. They actually change the entire meaning of what Dominik says. I don’t think “misnomer” is the word he was looking for. More like “misunderstanding” or “misconception”. But whatever. The way Florio reports it is like asking a suspect if he committed a crime and he says, “There’s no way that I did it” and Florio only quotes the last three words.

That aside, his bigger point in his post is that Dominik claims to have spent “almost $60-million of cap room” (another direct quote from the interview — that part he gets right) and that number seems very high.

The suggestion that the team has spent $60 million this year seems flat-out incredible.

As in not credible.

As in not true.

I would have argued that maybe Dominik is trying to add up the total values of all the contracts that have been signed and passing that off as their total spending, but he makes the effort to emphasize the words “cap room” in the interview, so that’s not the case.

Maybe the guaranteed dollars add up to $60-million? Kellen Winslow gets about $20-million, Antonio Bryant gets about $10-million… hmm… Michael Clayton got $10.5-million, Derrick Ward got $6-million, Luke McCown got $5-million. That’s about $51-million. I think Angelo Crowell got $3-million guaranteed. Add in the rookies and the non-marquee guys I’m not mentioning and you can probably get up to $60-million.

In this “last capped year” scenario the league is currently dealing with, maybe all guaranteed money accelerates and hits the books this year? That seems unlikely, but I’m not up to speed enough on this aspect of the CBA to speak intelligently about it. But I think there’s enough grey area there that you can’t go calling Dominik “not credible”.

Oh, and as long as I’m reporting on that interview, Dominik was asked about Barrett Ruud’s extension situation. He never really answered the question about why they haven’t done it yet, as one would expect. But he did mention two reasons in passing. One was the CBA situation, which is a nice crutch. The other was this:

“It’s important for us to see him in the new system.”

He kind of blew through the quote and the interviewer didn’t follow up on it. But at least what I gathered from it is that they want to see how well Ruud adapts to the new scheme before determining how much they should give him. It seems clear that they’re going to do something at some time for him. Like Dominik said, you don’t plaster a guy’s picture on the side of your stadium if you don’t intend on keeping him around for a while. But I guess his potential in the new system is going to determine how much love they give him.

I suppose that’s fair, but it still seems a little dirty. The whole regime and system changed right when Ruud was going to get his big post-rookie contract based on the excellent work he had already done. It’s an unfortunate coincidence for Ruud. Of course, one could make the argument that the defense’s poor play in December caused the regime change, and Ruud was definitely part of the group that didn’t play up to their standards. Makes you think. [strokes chin thoughtfully]