Yes Virginia, There is a Salary Cap!

Any media outlet that provides sports coverage, owes it to their audience to inform and educate in an accurate way, assuming of course the intent is to be credible. Outlets that are consistently credible develop reputations as reliable sources. Those that don’t eventually lose the trust of their audience. Enter Inside Access on 105.7 The Fan.

Now before I get too far along, let me make it clear where I stand on the three-headed monster that forms Inside Access. Ken Weinman provides a wealth of sports knowledge and he’s the show’s pacesetter. He can be overtly snarky and condescending, but if you can get beyond that (sometimes I can’t), he’s a fine point guard in the sports talk arena. Tim Barbalace is an up-and-coming sports talk talent. His improvement is marked and when he goes solo at times during the 6 o’clock hour, his preparedness and work ethic shine.

And then there’s Jason La Canfora…

La Canfora has experience as a reporter for the Washington Post and as a league insider (if only by title) for both NFL Network and CBS Sports. So, while the resume looks impressive and suggests a great get by The Fan, the substance isn’t there. Nor is the accuracy or reliability. And really that’s a disservice to Weinman and Barbalace.

On Thursday, February 27, La Canfora went off on another of his microphone-eating soliloquies that sounded strikingly similar to a hog slaughterhouse. Only the swine makes more sense.

To set the stage for his rudderless rant, La Canfora had his board op cue up The Misfits. How appropriate. The song choice? Last Caress which starts off like this:

I got something to say

I killed your baby today

And it doesn’t matter much to me

As long as it’s dead

Who picks that song? It’s a disservice to The Fan’s audience and the station’s sponsors. Nevertheless, with the song playing in the background, La Canfora reminded his audience before he started his diatribe that, “We always strive to keep it real around here.”

Sure, they do! And in the case of La Canfora – real dumb!

The target of his microphone drenching blather was none other than one of La Canfora’s favorite whipping boys, a man he’s labeled, “Silent Steve”, aka Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti who he claims is too cheap to go all-in to win a Super Bowl. La Canfora proudly states that the Eagles, Chiefs, Bills, 49ers, Browns, Rams, Vikings, Dolphins, Texans, Packers and Commanders all have owners who clearly want to win more than Bisciotti based solely on the cash that they spend in a given season – as if cash spending is the clear precursor to winning a Super Bowl.

It’s not.

RSR contributor Cole Jackson posted this on X:

Here’s SB champions cash spending and cash spending rank since 2010.

Notice anything?

Being even in the single digits is rare and there doesn’t appear to be a correlation between CASH SPENT and winning.#TruthHurts https://t.co/sUih0oT4gu pic.twitter.com/yE8KEIKJct

— Cole Jackson (@ColeJacksonFB) February 28, 2025

Back in 2022, La Canfora made similar claims about Bisciotti which inspired an article I wrote called, Cash Over Cap: Dispelling the Notion That the Ravens Are Cheap. For the benefit of Ravens fans who might have been listening to La Canfora at the time, I wanted to provide facts about cash spending in the NFL to illustrate why La Canfora was wrong, again. And he still is. Part of that article is worth repeating here so that fans can brush off La Canfora’s erroneous claims that are as real as the Easter Bunny, with all due respect to Russell Stover.

Signing bonuses (cash paid up front), for cap purposes, are prorated over the term of a contract. So, for example, if a player signs a 5-year deal and part of the deal includes a $25M signing bonus, that bonus hits the cap at $5M per year for the five-year term. However, the actual cash spent on that bonus is $25M in year one. So, the cash over cap for that player in year one as it pertains to the bonus, is $25M in cash, $5M against the cap. Hence the term, cash over cap.

The more deals like this that a team structures in a given season, the more it will lift the cash spent over the cap number – a cap number that is predetermined by the league for ALL TEAMS. A number that is fully enforceable. If teams are not in compliance, they will be fined and/or have draft picks taken away, as the Dallas Cowboys and the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins remember all too well.

But La Canfora thinks the cap is fake! Don’t believe me? Listen to the audio clip below starting at the 2:00 mark. He genuinely believes that teams can manipulate the cap in perpetuity to acquire the best players money can buy and never be impacted by the cap. And teams that don’t spend-spend-spend either don’t want to win enough or they’re too cheap. Or both.

Audio Clip

During an extremely weak attempt to make his point about the alleged frugal nature of “Silent Steve”, La Canfora suggested that:

1. The State of Maryland has given Bisciotti $600M but he still won’t spend like an owner who wants to win; and
2. Owners willing to spend cash prove that they want to win more than the Ravens owner.

As for the $600M approved by the State of Maryland for improvements to M&T Bank Stadium, those aren’t funds that the Ravens can spend on the roster. That money is earmarked for stadium improvements, the end game of which is to provide more creature comforts for fans who are willing to spend more money at the venue which in turn creates more revenue opportunities for the State in the form of taxes.

The State didn’t one day have a big powwow in Annapolis and decide that since Steve Bisciotti is such a good guy and Baltimore deserves a winner, that the Assembly concluded, “here, take this $600M and go buy yourself a better football team”. And even if Bisciotti could use that money as La Canfora suggests, the salary cap is not fake. The salary cap is the lifeblood of the league. It acts as a checks and balances tool to promote competitive balance in the NFL. Otherwise, owners like Jerry Jones, Stan Kroenke, Shahid Khan, Rob Walton and David Tepper to name a few, would unleash their inner LA Dodgers and open the vault to win a Lombardi.

The salary cap prevents the NFL from becoming a league of haves and have nots like Major League Baseball. And the cap really doesn’t have all the loopholes that La Canfora suggests. Sure, there are restructures, extensions and voidable options that can help teams in a single season. But eventually, continually kicking the can down the road manifests itself in massive amounts of dead money making it difficult to field a competitive team. Just ask the Saints and the Browns.

And speaking of the Browns, Cleveland owner Jimmy Haslam is one of the owners praised by La Canfora for going all in to try to win. I kid you not! Jason must be the only person on the planet praising Haslam who isn’t in Haslam’s last will and testament.

La Canfora then praised the Bills for going all in when they traded for Stefon Diggs and when they signed Von Miller. Diggs was outstanding for the Bills, catching 445 balls for 5,372 yards and 37 touchdowns during his 4 seasons in Buffalo. Diggs earned $77.4M as a member of the Bills but his team never advanced beyond the AFC Championship Game. And then the Bills wanted Diggs gone so badly that they ate $31.1M in dead money to get him out of Orchard Park.

As for Von Miller, he’s earned $47.2M during his 3 seasons in Buffalo where he’s averaged just under 5 sacks per season. Put another way, that’s $3.4M per sack. But let’s put the Bills down as “all-in” on the La Canfora scorecard.

La Canfora also lauded the 49ers for acquiring Chase Young who had a whopping 2 ½ sacks in 9 games in Santa Clara. Then he gave the Vikings and Dolphins plus grades for effort while those teams have combined for exactly 4 playoff wins since Bisciotti took full control of the Ravens in 2004.

There’s no real correlation between cash over cap spending and hoisting the next Lombardi. There is a correlation between winning and teams that successfully manage the salary cap from year to year without mortgaging the future. Those teams generally draft well, acquire quality veteran depth at an affordable price and possess a measurable level of organizational continuity. “Silent Steve” and his franchise do those things.

La Canfora comes off as a frustrated fanboy. Maybe that stems from his precipitous fall from relevancy. He was allegedly gifted the insider job at NFL Network thanks to former Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder who wanted him out of Washington. After three years at NFLN he moved on to CBS Sports and was eventually replaced, never really earning the title of “Insider”. But they called him that anyway.

He’s been kicked to the curb by the Orioles, and he lacks the connectivity at The Castle to even approach the description of “insider”. On social media, he’s regularly destroyed for his bad takes, inaccurate “insider” information and wild speculation that rarely hits its mark. Even his Baltimore-based podcast with Jerry Coleman tanked not long after its launch.

I wouldn’t blame La Canfora if he’s frustrated. And now he’s reduced himself to a shock jock in the local sports scene, but even that misfires because the miscreant does little other than to spew venom in the form of lies and twisted truths to support his warped agenda characterized by a cantankerous demeanor.

Ladies and gentlemen, the salary cap is real. As fans, you shouldn’t be subjected to the garbage La Canfora spews, such as the cap is fake. But somewhere along the line, the suits at Audacy once thought and apparently still do, that the Baltimore native would be a good fit for The Fan. Instead, he’s John Harbaugh’s fan at the end of the bar – a quite loud and obnoxious one at that.

I guess every village has one.

Do yourself a favor and pay no attention to the man behind that soggy microphone.

And then maybe one day, if we’re all lucky, we can call him “Silent Jason”.

So we’ve heard that @1057TheFan ‘s alleged “Insider” @JasonLaCanfora believes that the #NFL salary cap is fake. Upon hearing this, which of the following best represents your take?

— Russell St. Report (@RussellStReport) February 28, 2025

The post Yes Virginia, There is a Salary Cap! appeared first on Russell Street Report.

Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2025/03/02/lombardis-way/la-canfora-is-clueless/