Reprint: Why calculating Total Contract Value, APY and Total Guarantee for an NFL contract can be really hard

This is a re-print of an article i published around this time last year. It's a bit 'technical' and didn't generate much interest then. It's no more interesting now than it was in 2017, but if anyone wants to understand salary cap more fully, it attempts to explain some reasons why reported contact numbers can be hard to track and understand.

It’s free-agency season, and — especially for Redskins fans dealing with the drama of the Kirk Cousins contract situation — time for fans to be inundated with articles about NFL contracts.

I thought it’d be worth looking at how three of the metrics get calculated, and just how hard it can be for a fan (or a journalist, for that matter) to unravel the…