Every NFL team except the Houston Texans has spent the offseason complaining about being clobbered by the salary cap, and the only thing that's stopped the Texans from complaining is that they don't exist yet. Every coach and GM has lamented: We had to cut veterans; we couldn't go after free agents; we were forced to let promising young players leave; we've got no depth. Tuesday Morning Quarterback begs to point out that it cannot be that everybody is hurt by the cap. If good players are leaving Team A, they must be arriving at Team B. Players are not spiraling down into black holes. (Note: draft choices of the Cincinnati Bengals excepted.) The cap can't be diminishing everybody, and it certainly can't be reducing the net amount of depth since the total number of worth-having players does not change.

Thus TMQ proclaims its Law of the Conservation of the Salary Cap: The sum of good and bad players in the league cannot equal any value other than zero. Though, certainly, players can be created and destroyed.

Under the Law of the Conservation of the Salary Cap, cap crashes at franchises that overspend have no macro effect on NFL quality since momentum (usually angular, though sometimes down-and-in) is merely transferred among franchises. Each quantum of talent cap-cut by the Vikings or Bills adds an identical aggregate to the valence level of some other team, leaving the league's overall skills at a perfectly symmetrical null set value. The condition in which every coach complains that his team has been harmed by the salary cap—this is the current condition—is impossible and must be dismissed as erroneous data.

At the bottom of this column, TMQ offers his All Cap-Cut Team for the offseason. It's quite a respectable squad, one that would stack up well against any club, including the defending champ Ravens. An amazing eight players on the All Cap-Cut Team made the Pro Bowl this year. TMQ thinks the NFL could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by putting the All Cap-Cut Team into play immediately as the Texans. This would have allowed realignment to begin now, avoided another of those tedious expansion drafts, and provided a direct empirical test of the Law of the Conservation of the Salary Cap. Sadly, the league front office just never thinks in terms of Newtonian physics.

Be this as it may, the hype, folly, and fumbles of the NFL will resume in but a few more cycles of the apparent motion of the sun through the sky. It's about time! TMQ couldn't have lasted another week. There's been intense household pressure to take the kids to horizon-broadening cultural events or picturesque state parks and no "but I have a professional obligation to watch the games!" excuse.

Before the new season begins, here are the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Offseason Highlights:

Offseason Football-Like Substance Highlight No. 1: The March 17 XFL night game between the Las Vegas Outlaws and the Birmingham Bolts, shown nationally by NBC, achieved a 1.6 rating—making it the lowest-rated prime time broadcast in American television history.

Offseason Football-Like Substance Highlight No. 2: The New York Dragons of the Arena Football League defeated the Carolina Cobras by 99-68. In this game there were 22 touchdowns, four field goals, and a safety. Afterward, league officials said they planned to legalize the zone defense and call three-second violations on interior linemen.

Cartographic note: The Dragons are the only pro football club with the words "New York" in its name that actually plays in the Empire State, in this case on Long Island. The Arena League also has a swamp-based franchise, the New Jersey Gladiators. Why, pace the NFL, doesn't this team claim to be the New York Gladiators?

Offseason Ivy League Highlight: Players from Yale were selected on consecutive picks during the NFL draft. This is definitely better than having three consecutive presidents with Yale diplomas!