After "Why is Dwayne Allen still on the Patriots?" the question I get the most is "What is the salary cap impact of signing the Patriots 2018 draft class?"
(With Brian McFarland's permission, I am using his fine work here as a template for this blog post.)
After the 2018 draft is over, we'll hear the exact amount of the Patriots' 2018 rookie pool. This is an oft misunderstood number, because while it is part of the team’s salary cap, it does not have a dollar-for-dollar impact on the team’s overall salary cap.
The rookie cap is often referred to as “a cap within a cap” because it limits the amount teams can allocate to their rookies in the year they were drafted (and over the life of the rookies’ contracts). But beyond that, there is a lot of confusion about the rookie cap and how it works. Even some in the media do not fully understand the mechanics of it. Some say that it’s a totally separate pool of money that is not included in the team’s overall cap. Others think the entire amount of the rookie cap is included in the team’s overall cap, meaning that teams will need that much overall cap space to sign their rookies.
Both of those characterizations are incorrect.
The rookie cap is not a separate, distinct pool, but rather, a separate calculation. There is not a dollar-for-dollar correlation between the rookie Cap and the overall cap. So, while all of the salary cap numbers of a team’s draft picks must fit under the team’s rookie cap, very rarely will all of that amount actually impact the team’s overall salary cap.
The reason for these misconceptions revolves around the Rule of 51, which is contained in Article 13 of the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Rule of 51 dictates that, from the beginning of the league year in early March until the beginning of the season, only the top 51 salary cap numbers and all of the pro-rata shares of bonus money for the players outside of the top 51 count toward the team’s overall cap. All “dead money,” i.e. amounts that count against the salary cap for players who are no longer on the roster, counts as well.
Said a simpler way, during this period of the offseason, a team’s Rule of 51 salary cap number can be calculated by removing the base salaries of all players who do not fall amongst the top 51 cap numbers.
This rule is necessary because, during the offseason, team rosters can number up to 90 players. As such, it would be impossible for teams to fit all of those players under the cap. So, to counter this problem, the NFL has instituted the Rule of 51.
So, by way of example, Eric Lee has the Patriots’ 51st highest cap number at $570,000. The 52nd highest cap number (Harvey Langi) is $560,000. Langi’s base salary of $555,000 is not currently counting against the Patriots salary cap, but his $5,000 in signing bonus proration does. This treatment also applies to all other players who are outside the team’s top 51 – the player’s base salary will not count, but signing bonus prorations and offseason workout bonuses will.
OK, so what does this have to do with how the rookie cap works?
First, as way of further explanation, under the CBA of 2011, all draft picks receive four-year contracts, generally with a signing bonus and often with minimum base salaries set for each year of the deal. While first- and second-round picks may have base salaries of more than the minimum in years two through four of their deals, even those players will almost always receive the rookie minimum base salary during their first year. For 2018, the minimum base salary for a rookie is $480,000. For salary cap purposes, the bonus received by the player is prorated over the four years of the deal and that prorated amount is added to the base salary to create the player’s cap number.
So, because of the low base salary and the small signing bonuses that many of the lower round draft picks receive, those draft picks will not be among the top 51 cap numbers on the Patriots (they currently have 64 signed players, not including the seven draft picks). As such, under the Rule of 51, those players’ base salaries of $480,000 will not count against the teams overall Salary Cap and only the player’s bonus proration will count toward the team’s overall Cap.
So, how will this affect the Patriots in 2018?
To keep it simple, let's pretend that the Patriots do not trade any of their current drafts . The Patriots currently have seven draft picks in the 2018 draft.
With the new CBA’s rookie wage scale, the compensation for draft picks is now basically slotted, so based on the seven draft picks, the Patriots will have a rookie cap number of $6,068,023.
Those cap numbers should break down as follows :
- 1st round (No. 31): $1,755,959
- 2nd round (No. 43): $1,185,614
- 2rd round (No. 63): $800,166
- 3rd round (No. 95): $676,965
- 4th round (No. 136): $593,591
- 5th round (No. 159): $549,607
- 7th round (No. 219): $506,121