again, why would teams in larger markets be able to offer more money? I'm not understanding this. 80% of all revenue in the nfl is from tv markets, it's split evenly between all the teams, therefore all teams have roughly same money. Heck in baseball, even without a salary cap the Cardinals were able to sign Matt Holiday to one of the largest contracts that year. Every single team in the NFL and MLB could right this second add an Pujols sized contract to their payroll without losing money. Yes a small market team couldn't go out and get two Pujols, but there is no reason to think that the Colts wouldn't have been able to keep Manning if they wanted. As to remotely plausible scenario. Maybe not, I don't know the football drafts too well. It doesn't seem to unreasonable to think that in a short time frame a smart front office could have ended up with a bunch of great players at the same time. The point is that the better players you develop, the more the salary cap hurts you by forcing you to give some of them up in their primes. It may not be at the skill positions, but you get this great draft because you shrewdly made the moves you needed to, and a few years later they are hitting their primes and are becoming free agents and you have to choose to keep one or another.