Redskins, Cowboys Lose in Arbitration

Yesterday, the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys appeals of their salary-cap penalties were dismissed by special master Stephen Burbank.

A couple months ago, the Redskins and the Cowboys were both docked a sum of their salary caps due to overloading contracts in the uncapped 2010 year.

The NFL claimed that they verbally warned the Redskins and the Cowboys that doing so might result in some sort of penalty. According to all reports, a written statement was never issued to either team.

Neither the Redskins/Cowboys nor NFL won in this situation. Simply put, Burbank heard all sides and decided just to drop the whole mess and force everyone to move on.

Personally, I think the whole thing was organized chaos. Before the teams had even heard about the penalties, several media outlets had already reported of them. That's how the Redskins and Cowboys heard about them...through the media.

The fact that they were penalized for what could be labeled a "salary violation" in an uncapped year is ridiculous. In theory, teams should have been more than allowed the ability to load contracts like both sides did.

The NFL's argument to make their side safe was that they warned the teams that something bad could happen if they overloaded contracts. Nothing was ever submitted to either team in writing. If that's the case, no disciplinary action should have ever been taken.

Arguably the two best businessmen in the NFL, Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones, outsmarted the NFL. They took an uncapped year and designed contracts accordingly. The NFL got upset and took action to make sure that the league knew they weren't ever going to be outsmarted again.

Now that this whole mess is over with, it's time for both sides to look ahead and plan out their salary strategies around the cap penalties.

The Redskins have been docked a total of $36 million over the next two years and the Cowboys have lost $10 million over the same time period.


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