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 each of the past two years. It's a bit 'technical' and didn't generate much interest then. It's no more interesting now than it was then, 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.

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 details of a contract. I think that this article will help readers understand the value that websites like Sportrac and OverTheCap bring to us; without them, we’d likely all be…