Free-Agent Salaries Are Soaring in N.F.L.

[buffalobillsfootball]

Free-Agent Salaries Are Soaring in N.F.L.

 

By JUDY BATTISTA

 

When Marv Levy was the coach of the Buffalo Bills in the 1980s and 90s, he never knew how much money his players made. He did not have an agent, and his own salary negotiations consisted of the Bills’ owner, Ralph Wilson, telling him what he would be paid.

 

When Wilson asked Levy to be the Bills’ general manager last year, Levy, never comfortable with numbers, immediately told Wilson that someone else would have to negotiate player contracts.

 

But even Levy could not miss one emerging trend in free agency this season: contracts that are bigger than ever.

 

Flush with cash from a salary cap that ballooned to $109 million this season from $85.5 million in 2005 and faced with a thin class of free agents, N.F.L. teams have spent lavishly.

 

That includes huge amounts of guaranteed money, much of it given to players who in past years would have been second-tier free agents at best.

 

“It makes me blink,” Levy said in a telephone interview. “It certainly raises the risk ante.”

 

One of the biggest shocks came from the Bills. They gave a guard who has never made a Pro Bowl, Derrick Dockery, a $49 million contract, including $18.5 million in guaranteed money. It was the richest contract in Bills history and nearly equaled a contract given by the Minnesota Vikings last season to Steve Hutchinson, widely regarded as the league’s best guard. And it came from a small-market franchise that does not have limitless cash to cover its mistakes.

 

“It’s stunning you get paid that much money to play a game, but it’s a game that’s generating a lot of funds.” Levy said of the upswing in money.

 

Teams have long offered lucrative contracts during free agency, but they usually go to big-name players. This year, the spoils so far have gone to players who were lucky enough to become free agents but were not so valuable to their current team that they received the franchise tag. Guard Leonard Davis, a career underachiever, received $18.75 million guaranteed from the Dallas Cowboys, their biggest bonus ever. The Denver Broncos gave $15 million in guaranteed money to tight end Daniel Graham, who is more of a blocker than a receiver.

 

The list of free agents this year was thin for the same reason that so much money was available for them. The new collective-bargaining agreement resulted in a jump in the salary cap at the same time that the league’s lucrative television contracts gave every team enough money to keep its best players off the free-agent market.

 

Teams used the franchise tag to hold onto one top player; for instance, the Indianapolis Colts made defensive end Dwight Freeney their franchise player. Teams must pay their franchise player the average of the five highest salaries at his position, usually less than that player would receive on the open market.

 

When free agency began March 2, the pickings were slim, but most teams’ coffers were full. Teams had an average of about $15 million available, and some teams had much more. The San Francisco 49ers, in salary cap purgatory for several years, had nearly $40 million to spend. They gave cornerback Nate Clements $22.6 million guaranteed on a deal reportedly worth $80 million for eight years. That was more guaranteed money than a more talented cornerback, Denver’s Champ Bailey, received in his contract in 2004.

 

“If anything is surprising, it’s the money handed to players that if everyone was a free agent, they wouldn’t get,” San Francisco Coach Mike Nolan said in a telephone interview. “Some of the guards who have signed are getting money of Hutchinson value, but they are not near him as a player. But teams had to pay more just to get a void filled. That’s the luck of the draw.”

 

Patriots Coach Bill Belichick does not seem bothered by the large guarantees given this year. He compares them with large signing bonuses frequently given in the past to players with lower annual salaries as a way to spread the cost of the salary and bring it under the salary cap.

 

“I really think it’s not as big of a deal as everybody is making it out to be, in relation to the expansion of the cap,” Belichick said in a telephone interview. “In the end, it’s just shuffling money around. It’s more accounting than it is a fundamental change.”

 

Somebody will probably have to explain that to the players. One unintended consequence of the free-agency largess is the resentment it is likely to breed among players who were not due a new contract this year, but who must watch teammates — some of them lesser talents — cash far heftier checks. Nolan is already imagining the repair work needed in locker rooms.

 

“It is a concern,” Nolan said. “They have agents, and agents will be in their ear. They see the numbers handed out. My thing is you’ll get a deal, but you’ve got to play out your deal. Maybe you’ll strike it rich. When your contract is up, you get an opportunity as a free agent. By last year’s numbers, you got a great deal. This year’s numbers, maybe it doesn’t look as great.”

[Pyrite Gal]

Any resentment created is likely to be among those players who are so short-sighted as to not see that the CBA is delivering every single player more money than they could have expected to get under any system for payment the NFL has ever used.

 

There will be individuals who are either so stupid as not to see this or so venal and self-centered that they will not be able to get beyond the comparative with other players.

 

My sense is that most of these two types of players will not be a problem because:

 

1. The stupid ones will simply be getting a bigger check than they ever had before and have more money to deal with than they ever thought they could seriously get and they simply will no how lucky they are.

 

2. The vein ones like the TOs of the world will always be dissatisfied no matter how much they are paid and will throw their hissy-fits whenever they have a chance when they are not being tamped down by teammates who expect them to and will pressure them to be good teammates (even though ultimately they will fail at this in the end).

 

If Marv is blinking at the amount of money being paid to the individual players, then I am not sure what physical reaction he is having at the amount of cash being generated by the teams and their owners.

 

Even though Upshaw and the NFLPA were smart enough and tough enough to force their "partners" the owners to make the players essentially the majority partner as they are getting 60.5% of the total revenue. On an individual basis, the players take divided between their hundreds of members with an average career of 5 years simply pales in comparison to the take of an individual owner like Ralph and his 1/32nd share of the 39.5% of gross revenues.

 

In the end, if I had a choice of watching JP play football on a Sunday or watching Ralph enjoy himself, my eyeballs and ticket price would pay for JP and not for Ralph.