Austin Bonta

Yeah, it's been a point of consternation here in Chicago, as you can imagine, and really just trying to set the record straight for future opportunities, whether it be the compensatory picks for a head coaching job or anything else.

Mike, I'm curious, when you look at what's going on with the salary cap going up,

And now teams trying to sort things out, whether that's waiving players, whether that is restructuring contracts.

How difficult of a process is that for teams each and every year to go through what the Bears and everybody else is going through right now?

I think it gets overblown.

It's very easy to create cap space by restructuring contracts.

Most contracts now, second contracts, third contracts, big money deals, they have a provision in there that gives the team the automatic right to restructure.

And it's simply, and I'll keep the numbers as basic as I can, just so I don't short circuit my own brain.

If somebody's due to make $30 million this year in salary,

You take that $30 million, you reduce the salary down to the minimum for that player's years of experience, and the rest of it gets treated as a signing bonus, and the money gets spread over five years.

And so 80% of those cap dollars get pushed out to future years.

That's the easy way to do it.

Every year, oh, what was this team?

What was that team?

Oh, they're never going to figure it out.

And they always figure it out.

The Saints are the best example.

Every year, how are they ever going to get out of this cap mess?

And they get out of it.

And the thing that helps teams is the cap keeps going up and up and up.