smg93

What hasn't been mentioned yet is the effect this will have on free agency. that to me is equally as interesting because you'll have more players available to be taken.

The shortening of the lengths of rookie contracts will force every team, yes even the Pats, to be more active in free agency because there will be a lot more players to sign and only one player (unless you have multiple top 16 picks in one draft) you can possibly keep on a 5 year rookie contract every year if you picked in the top 16 of the draft every single year.

Mike the Brit

In principle, if it means that teams get less benefit from the length of a rookie contract, of course it will make the rookies less desirable.

But what happens in practice? The Patriots push for long contracts for their rookies, but then, when a very successful (but also extremely well rewarded, by rookie standards) top ten pick holds out of training camp because he has "outplayed his contract" they revise the terms of the rookie contract in his favour. If that's what's going to happen regularly (and, if it has happened once, it's surely bound to happen again) then I don't see what the difference is in having long contracts. Better to re-negotiate earlier, at the risk of losing the player, in my view. At least everyone knows where they stand and there's no hard feelings.

__________________
My prized possessions: Our family pictures; my dad and me getting doused by Bruschi in Super Bowl XXXIX [Shalize Manza Young Up Close with ... Bill Belichick]


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, Pats fans should be invincible by now. [Fitzy, 16 November 2009]

Still here to learn

14thDragon

I'm not sure the change does all that much except accentuate the status quo.

Teams all will have the smae pool of money to spend on players. How that gets divided up will go along established patterns. More and more teams sit pat in free agency unless they are the Redskins or figure they are a player or 2 away from the Super Bowl.

When you draft a player, you do your best to get the right guy, then instead of five years down the road now it will be four, that he can hit the open market. Thus you need to always be maximizing your draft picks. Now 1 bad draft or 2 mediocure (sp?) drafts will kill a couple of seasons because you were unable to restock the cupboards.

The guys who will really get hit from this is the veterans, who will see younger, faster talent hitting the market sooner and causing the contracts given to the aging veterans go down as young players hit FA faster.

Miguel

The project guys are drafted on Day 2. If a Day 2 pick develops, is he better served playing under a 4-year deal or a 5-year deal?? IMO, a 4-year deal. Ask David Givens if he had rather signed a 5-year deal in 2002.

__________________
My youngest sister's best friend is on the board of directors of a food pantry in Malden, Massachusetts that distributed 285,000 meals and meal equivalents in 2005. I am asking that if you have found my salary cap pages useful that if you are able to do so, please make a donation to it. Please contact me for more information.

smg93

Actually, IMO the reverse is true. So many more guys will be hitting FA a year earlier. Because of that, you wont have to rely on the draft as much as in previous years because a bad draft can be cured more immediately due to more FA's being available a year sooner.

Miguel

I agree with 14thdragon. I think that teams are going to extend players in their rookie deals more than they have done so in the draft making the draft more important in finding young, talented players.

__________________
My youngest sister's best friend is on the board of directors of a food pantry in Malden, Massachusetts that distributed 285,000 meals and meal equivalents in 2005. I am asking that if you have found my salary cap pages useful that if you are able to do so, please make a donation to it. Please contact me for more information.

smg93

We'll see in four years.

Miguel

We have been already seeing teams locking up their young talent as the cap increases.

__________________
My youngest sister's best friend is on the board of directors of a food pantry in Malden, Massachusetts that distributed 285,000 meals and meal equivalents in 2005. I am asking that if you have found my salary cap pages useful that if you are able to do so, please make a donation to it. Please contact me for more information.

PromisedLand

I don't know if the CBA limits the length of free agent rookie contracts, that's why I was talking about draft picks.

__________________
It's so simple, even a Jets fan could do it.ä
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

PromisedLand

It seems to me that the bottom line effect of all this is to lower the value of draft picks. If a team can only be guaranteed of a player's services for a shorter period of time then the pick is relatively less valuable.

A couple of folks have mentioned that teams can "extend" players. If a player under his rookie contract is doing well, he will be looking to get to the open market and will not agree to an extension unless he is convinced the team that drafted him is paying him as much or more than he would get in free agency. (See Givens, David.) On the other hand, if a player under his rookie contract is not contributing much yet, he may agree to an extension but he wouldn't have commanded much on the open market anyway, so the team is not gaining much by extending him while he is still under contract, and on the other hand they are risking whatever part of his extension is guaranteed will cost them more than the player will be worth both in terms of real dollars and cap space.

I often find it useful when trying to understand the effects of some change on a system to think of the change in the extreme. Suppose that the CBA were changed so that all draft picks could only be signed for one year; then all players (unless they voluntarily agreed to an extension) would become free agents. In that extreme scenario draft picks would be almost worthless and the player personnel system would be run almost entirely under free agency, a free market system albeit with a salary cap.

In the actual case we see shortening rookie contracts which takes us a step closer to that extreme scenario. Each step closer reduces the value of a draft pick to the teams until in the extreme they are almost worthless.

__________________
It's so simple, even a Jets fan could do it.ä
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.