At the NFL owners meeting in spring of 2022, the NFL management council gave a presentation raising concern about the increase in guarantees, signing bonuses and dead money that teams were taking on. In the notes, which were not visible except to the presenters, the presentation noted:
“if guarantees continue to grow both in amount and number of players…the risk …[is they] become the norm in player contracts regardless of quality.”
Guarantees could “hinder roster management” and “set a market standard that will be difficult to walk back.”
If clubs kept going over 100 percent cash over cap in perpetuity — spending more in signing bonuses and other prorated guarantees than the salary cap for that year, basically how the Eagles and a few other teams have managed the salary cap — it would effectively give players a higher percentage of the total revenues generated than they are entitled to per the terms of the CBA.