Here’s why the Panthers and Matt Rhule are battling over buyout money
We learned on Wednesday morning, through the reporting of CBS Sports lead NFL insider Jonathan Jones, that Matt Rhule has filed an arbitration suit against the Carolina Panthers. The complaint alleges that the team is refusing to pay roughly $5 million of his severance compensation, which is a part of the buyout from this past season’s firing.
Well, Jones also noted that the Panthers are indeed refusing to pay Rhule—under the belief that he and the University of Nebraska are trying to get one over on owner David Tepper.
Rhule’s buyout entails a dollar-for-dollar credit against what’s left on his deal with Carolina. So—essentially—the less Nebraska pays, the more the Panthers will.
Being that Rhule’s new pact is considerably backloaded, Carolina will argue that Rhule and his new employer have finagled the terms to get Tepper to pay more upfront. Here, as mentioned by Jones, is the policy the Panthers will reference under reasonableness with new contracts.
“If the contract with the new club includes a substantial salary increase in new contract years, the Commissioner shall use the following as a guideline to determine the reasonableness of those increases: (i) if annual compensations is scheduled to increase by 20 percent or more for the new contract years, the prior club’s annual offset, if that club is entitled to an offset, shall be calculated based upon the employee’s average annual compensation during the entire term of contract.”
The eight-year deal with Nebraska, which has an annual average salary of $9.25 million, will pay Rhule just $5.5 million in his first year and eventually escalate up to $12.5 million.
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