I don't think you guys understand how salary caps and contracts work.
We have a lot of cap space due to having a young list and their low initial contracts along with the early re-signings after their first contracts. We have lots of cap room with a number of our bigger wages (Lobb for example) soon freeing up more space. A lot of our bigger contracts would be the old boys like Walters, Fyfe and Mundy who would have had heavily front loaded contracts over the past 5 years considering we didn't have a particularly good team with players earning low wages.
You have to spend a minimum of the salary cap (I think it's at least 90%) so even when your squad isn't particularly good, you have to pay everyone to reach that minimum. if you hear Fyfe earning $1M per year, that is more than likely not $1M in 2020, $1M in 2021 and $1M in 2022. It would be structured to absorb most of the amount at the beginning of the contract while they can afford it and provide salary cap room in future years.
While we had room in those earlier years, he would likely receive $1.3M and then it'd drop this year or towards the end of his contract to $700K. How you structure these contracts is very important and the way Freo have performed combined with the youth in the side allows a lot of leeway in terms of our salary cap space going forward.
Offering a large salary for Jackson would be structured similarly with a lot of room in our salary cap at present (don't forget we offered large sums of money for Cerra last season which have likely now been renegotiated into existing contracts this season). Hayden Young signed a new long term deal which no doubt would have been heavily front loaded in order to use all of our salary cap in this and next year while easing off down the line.
Over the next few years the money for Lobb, Fyfe, Tabs, Walters and co will drop away and be redistributed to our younger players as they come out of contract and improve (most are already signed up on long term deals so we are in a very good position). The club isn't breaking the bank here or getting anywhere near it. There's still a lot of talk in regards to poaching Angus Brayshaw as well as Jackson who's a restricted free agent and can leave for big money.
Basically, we have a lot of room to play with given our past 4/5yrs and we should be looking at using every cent now we're in the premiership hunt. Our current contracts should easily allow that.
