Denver's Salary cap violations in the 90's

by PABroncofan on Sep 11, 2008 9:32 PM MDT

I was on Football's Future, and I responded to a topic about Brady and Belichick, and a Patriot fan came back at me about being a hypocrite because of some Salary Cap problems the Broncos had in the 90's. I have heard about that, but I forgot the whole story. What exactly did the Broncos do, and how much were they penalized? I just hope that there is no controversy like this tied to our future success. That would really be terrible.

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guilty

we had several salary cap violations for “deferred payments” to star players. although this was a bookkeeping violation, to be nice, we did lose i believe 2 3rd-round draft choices, in seperate years(they found further violations later, and penalized us again). ht wrote an article covering this in much more detail. if you searched on the site for it, you may find it. i don’t remember the exact details of the proceedings, but we were guilty

by davecheffy on Sep 11, 2008 10:26 PM MDT reply actions

I didn't write the article...

…but I had a lot to say. Here’s the story.

What ensued after the story was beautiful. The head dog from the Colts SBN site came over and started trashing the Broncos. Unfortunately for him, he was a few facts short and ran into a buzzsaw of informed Broncos fans. He left with his tail between his legs.

First, the Broncos were guilty. They were also guilty twice. But there are several facts that get brought up in the comments section that are mitigating.

1) It wasn’t cheating. The Broncos received NO competitive advantage, nor could the incident have led to an advantage.
2) The error was caught by the Broncos. They also fired the parties involved (accounting errors).
3) The NFL correctly fined the Broncos, because those accounting errors where outside of the rules.

Much more detail can be found in the comments under the linked story. The important thing to bear in mind is that neither Bowlen or Shanahan was fined nor involved, and that the charges the Bronco front office was guilty of had zero to do with cheating. Denver gained no advantage in funds or personnnel as a result of the error, nor could they have. Denver also brought the matter to the attention of the NFL (something they wouldn’t have done if they thought they needed to cover something up).

"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" Defoe

by Steve Nichols on Sep 12, 2008 7:36 AM MDT up reply actions

Man, yeah....

We all put a country-style beating on Big Blue Shoe that day. Poor guy…..

"I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning." -- Robert F. Kennedy

by Ted Bartlett on Sep 12, 2008 8:12 AM MDT up reply actions

Love that Buzz Lightyear quote, HT

What was BBS’s problem that day?Did he have some sand in his vagina or something? I thought he was the MOD of the Colts’ site. Very poor example he set for his followers that day.

1-0.

by papigrande on Sep 12, 2008 12:52 PM MDT up reply actions

IIRC - the majority of the $$ fines were not really fines

Has been a while since I dug into this and I don’t have any links handy, but the rules Denver broke were not really salary cap violations, but violations of the deferred compensation fund. It is perfectly legal to defer a player’s salary into the future, but the team has to put a portion of that money into a league run escrow account. The Broncos did not do that. From what I recall, the lost draft picks were for circumventing the rules. The money that they were “fined” was actually the interest that the principal would have made if it had been deposited into the league fund in a timely matter. It is also important to note that when money is deferred, it still counts against the cap the year it is earned. So deferring salary to a later date does not affect the cap number of any player.

by MattR on Sep 12, 2008 2:50 PM MDT up reply actions