Face it, NFL teams were warned. They were warned that writing all of those multi-million-dollar signing bonus checks would someday handcuff general managers.

That's why the free-agent market collapsed after two weeks of spending. Eighteen teams had to restructure or cut players to get under the $67.4 million cap. Suddenly, good players are facing the reality of playing at much less than what they were making last season. Players making $4 million will have to make do with salaries below $1 million.

	Jerry Jones will have $23 million invested in players who won't suit up in 2001.

The NFL Management Council, which polices the salary cap, is snickering. They knew this would happen. Each year the Management Council shows the charts of how spending over the salary cap would soon eat away at a team's ability to function. Few listened.

The NFL Players Association doesn't have many beefs, either. The cap system is working. In their calculations, players are getting roughly two-thirds of the revenue designated for sharing. Benefits have soared to $261 million. As a bonus, each team is spending an average $5 million over the cap to stay competitive.

What fans have to get used to, though, are the subtle changes in the way free agency will affect teams and players. In many ways, it's mirroring what happened to the NBA in the mid-1990s. Instead of having a multi-tiered system of salaries, the NBA evolved into a league of the Haves and the Have Nots. Very few players fit into the middle group and it grew to a point in which there were more players at the minimum salary level to accommodate the two or three players who were at the top of the pay scales.

For the good of the game, the NBA had to offer a lifeline. They created a low-level exception around the $1 million level and then a middle level exception in the $2 million range.

The NFL is heading in that direction, but it may be a tough concept to sell. Now is the time to think ahead a little bit. Negotiations for a two-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement are ongoing and will start to really heat up by the fall. Because owners and the Players Association both like this system, there is little doubt labor peace will prevail and the extension will be consummated even if the system undergoes limited changes.

Still, there are warning signs that things need to be done to make sure there is a middle class of players. Roster turnover is good for the game, and there is no chance that the NFL will ever go back to the old ways of controlling a player's career by restricting movement. A majority of players like to stay with their teams anyways.

Here's the problem:

To fit in a $4 million a year contract that includes a six-year contract, teams have no trouble giving a free agent a $6 million signing bonus and a low base salary of $500,000 to produce a cap friendly $1.5 million number. A $1 million pay hike the next year produces a manageable $2.5 million cap. Year Three is the problem. To get the average up, the base salary jumps to $3 million to $4 million, so the $4 million or $5 million cap causes a team to either replace the base salary with signing bonus to free up cap room or simply cut the player and take the cap hit.

More than 100 players became cap casualties as a result. With the cap going up only $5 million a season, a player two years into his contract has to be very good to be able to remain on the roster for a $2 million or $3 million increase.

Those paying the price are the names most familiar to the fans. More than a dozen of the best known defensive tackles -- Chester McGlockton, Cortez Kennedy, Dana Stubblefield, John Randle and Ted Washington -- are out on the streets looking for jobs. The 49ers can't keep Jerry Rice, their Hall of Fame receiver.

	Free agency will always create roster transition, but it's not good for the game if the fans can't keep track of their favorite players. Because the drop from being a $4 million player to the NFL minimum of $477,000 is too sharp, many of these aging stars may say no and end their careers early. That's not good either.

Free agency will always create roster transition, but it's not good for the game if the fans can't keep track of their favorite players. Because the drop from being a $4 million player to the NFL minimum of $477,000 is too sharp, many of these aging stars may say no and end their careers early. That's not good either.

Sure, there is a dog-eat-dog mentality to the sport of football, and it's not bad to have a "only-the-strong-and-smart-survive" mentality. Ways of finding roster stability need to be built in.

Study the Cowboys and you'll see the symptoms of things that aren't good for the sport. Owner Jerry Jones deserves applause for trying to maintain a long run of Super Bowl contending teams. He rewarded his Super Bowl veterans with contract extensions and huge signing bonuses to stay solvent under the cap.

No one around the league will sympathize with this year's problem. By cutting Troy Aikman, Chad Hennings and others, the Cowboys have $23 million of dead money, meaning they are only spending about $44 million of cap room on this team. Jones will be hardpressed to pay out more than $50 million of real money on the team this year. That means a huge profit for Jones, who is among the league's highest revenue producing teams.

It means that he can reload for next year because his cap won't be so bad. But having a team spending $17 million below the cap isn't healthy either.

No drastic changes aren't coming in the cap. One little lifeline that might help was offered by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and it's similar to the NBA exception system.

Kraft devises a pool of incentive money available for veterans who stay with teams. The incentive pool wouldn't count against the salary cap, but it would be available for veterans who stick around and contribute. In the NBA, the league picks up half an aging veteran's salary and doesn't count it against a team's cap.

A similar policy in the NFL might work the same way. Minimum salaries will rise anywhere from 9 to 10 percent a year, so it's not ridiculous to think a proud veteran can making a living off of a $600,000 or $700,000 base salary years from now. Not counting a portion of that for a player who is 30 and has been with his team six or seven years promotes continuity.

Throw in a couple hundred thousand of incentives and aging starters aren't cast aside like dirty laundry.

Owners aren't going to increase the percentage of designated revenue to players more than one or two percentage points. The Players Association will never limit what a top player can make. Recent contracts by Drew Bledsoe and Brett Favre point to the realization that there will be $10 million-a-year players in the NFL.

Softer landings need to be found for those at the top of the pay scale to keep those who fall to the bottom from crashing and getting out of the game. Football is a macho sport, but the knockout blows need to happen on the field not in the budgets. Football finances are too healthy for that to happen.

John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.