Raidersblog.com

To me, one of the most important yet least talked about changes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was signed in 2011, is the ability for teams to rollover any unused salary cap from one year to the next. What this means is that if your favorite team is $5 million under the salary cap, they can notify the NFL that they want to take that amount and add it to the following year’s salary cap. Your most hated team only has $1 million in cap space and chooses to roll it over to the next year. Therefore, your team has $4 million more available to spend next year than your opponent. So you can see the benefits of being frugal already, right? But let’s talk about why this even happened in the first place. In negotiating the current CBA, both owners and players were looking for compromises that would benefit them the most. This was a compromise that both parties agreed to willingly because it serves a benefit for each. The players loved the idea because previously any unused cap space ...

  Disclaimer Some strength of schedule models calculate strength of schedule based on the opponents the team has faced to date.  My model calculates strength of schedule based on all the opponents on a team's schedule.  The reason for this is because it reduces weekly fluctuations. For example, when a team plays their Week 17 game, in the traditional model their strength of schedule would change by 31 games...their Week 17 opponent's 16 games plus the additional game played by each of their prior 15 opponents.  In my model, when a team plays their Week 17 game their strength of schedule will only change by 15 games...one additional game for each of the opponents on their schedule.