Quickie - Will Allen

Normally I wouldn't suspect too many people would be interested but since the new Will Allen contract extension drew so many comments over the last few days, I thought I'd share the confirmed information with you all.

The contract was indeed for 3 years and $16.2 Million. However, the signing bonus was only $1.5 Million, and the first two years of the contract salaries are guaranteed.

It breaks down as follows:

2009 $4 Million Salary, $500k Bonus = $ 4.5 M
2010 $5.2 M Salary, $500k Bonus = $ 5.7 M
2011 $5.5 M Salary, $500k Bonus = $ 6 M

By doing some simple math, you'll see that the guaranteed money is $10,700,000.

Also, 2011 could be a simple, relatively painless snip of Allen if he slows down due to age/injury.

After seeing the way the contract is structured, I feel a lot better about it, but I still don't see why they couldn't wait until after training camp to extend him. But that point is moot, he's here now and likely got similar money to what he would get on the open market in 2010. That said, I guarantee he'll have to be still starting in order to get that 2011 money.

Salary Cap Schmalary Cap - A Financial Bit o' Tin

• Turns out Jason Taylor is not THAT cheap. Let's clarify the contract because there are a lot of conflicting reports in the mass media. Here is what JT actually costs.

$400k signing bonus (this is the 'guaranteed' money)
$700k salary (i.e. $43, 750 per game)
$500k incentives (these are always kept private, but I would guess they include staying healthy, participating in a certain percentage of plays or games, and number of sacks.)
This adds up to $1.6 Million total. But wait...that's not the ACTUAL total, is it...
Turns out Taylor is still owed approximately $1.7 Million by the Dolphins from his previous contract. Ah yes, that means Jason Taylor is scheduled to smack up the Salary Cap for $3.3 Million in 2009! Cheap for Jason Taylor, sure, but still a sizable blow to the Cap.

• Will Allen was ACTUALLY scheduled to hit the cap for $4.9 Million this year making him the fifth-highest paid player on the team behind Joey Porter, Jake Long, Ronnie Brown and Vernon Carey. Then he was to be a free agent in 2010. Now with his re-signing, it's unclear how much he will hit the cap for but let's assume it will be more, since his guaranteed money went from $900k to $10 million over 3 years (this could be very erroneous reporting and may turn out to be significantly less).

• Channing Crowder signed a 3 year deal that will hit the cap for $3.5 M in 2009. Strangely enough, they managed to sign him without any guaranteed money. He either has the worst agent in history, or he really loves that Miami fishing.

• Lousaka Polite got a pretty good deal for a relatively unknown full-back. As long as he keeps his YPC average above 1 yard, he'll be getting about $1.8 Million this year.

• Rookie Tight-End, John Nalbone, will have to compete with David Martin, Anthony Fasano, and Joey Haynos for a roster spot but for now he'll put a $483k dent in the cap.

While this is highly-speculative, and I'm no math expert, and even less of a salary cap nerd, I did do some math for this post and came up with an approximate projection of $8.9M of current cap room for the Dolphins.

This may seem like enough to sign the partnership of Smith, White, and Davis, with possible room for a low-ball contract for a rookie wide receiver, but one must factor in that Matt Roth, Anthony Fasano, Davone Bess, Ricky Williams, Jason Ferguson, Tyrone Culver, Dan Carpenter, John Denney, Ronnie Brown and even Chad Pennington will have their agents attacking the front office for extensions of their own, though I suspect they will tell both Brown and Pennington flat out that they won't talk contract until 2010.

So, you can see there really isn't a lot of cap room for the Dolphins to work with here. It's clear that we can't afford to trade for Anquan Boldin, or to extend Ronnie Brown's contract. This time last year we had only a handful of players who wanted an extension, and we also had more than double the cap room we have now (and this was AFTER Jake Long and Justin Smiley practically mugged the salary cap).

So unless Pat White plans to play for potato chips and Wilford will void his current contract in favor of a box of oreos, this could get ugly, and players could be let go simply to save money (see Jason Allen, Ronnie Brown, Randy 'Freightliner' Starks, etc.)