For those wanting to trade Cooks - Cap Ramifications

I see a lot of posts about trading Cooks this offseason. Please keep in mind that trading him this offseason would actually COST us about $1M in cap space due to the dead money. His salary cap figure for 2020 would be around $17.8M even after the trade due to guarantees and signing bonus figures. That said, a restructure is a more likely scenario as a trade AFTER the 2020 season has far fewer ramifications.

ALSO PLEASE NOTE: The upcoming offseason is going to be a “special” one due to the expiring CBA agreement. It is called a “final year” so the rules around free agents will be drastically different unless a new CBA is agreed to prior to the new league year. For example, the usual “post June 1st” deferral benefit when cutting a player will NOT apply this offseason. Also, teams will be able to designate both a Franchise tag AND a Transition tag player should they desire to do so.

If you are using Spotrac or Over The Cap for your salary cap calculations, I don’t think their programming takes any of these special rules into account. I may be wrong, but after a few quick tests several days ago it did not seem that way.

Let the fantasy GM season continue.....


HoustonRam