First, recognize that its his agent's job to make the argument that he shouldn't walk away from money.
Even you disagree about an agents proper role, we should at least be able to agree that the agent is compensated as if it is his job to maximize the expected value of a player's earnings.
The agent would be 'walking away from money' by allowing his client to play for the Franchise tender. We are talking about guaranteed money. You get more of it under contract. That's a fact. You seem to be under the impression that a player loses money by signing a deal that has a cap figure that's less than the Franchise tender. That's not how it works. They don't lose money, because the guaranteed money is greater and it is long term. Nobody wants to play under the Franchise tag. Sure, you gain money over one year. But you lose money
long term. You also open yourself up to injury risk.
Again, if Players and Agents didn't mind the idea of playing under the tag, we'd see far less complaining about it.
That said, let me make the agent's case based on a seven year deal at $7/year.
No. This isn't even rational. You are taking the total money and simply diving it by the years to get the cap figure. Do I seriously have to tell you that's
not how contracts work? Not to mention the terms aren't what I'm arguing. I want a 4 year deal worth around 40 mil, with a loaded 2010 - not a seven year deal that is
actually a seven year deal. There is no way a 29 year old player will get a true 7 year deal. That's nuts. If Peppers gets a 7 year deal - it will be filled with backloaded
funny money. Just like the Haynesworth deal. Ya know, the one that I've been talking about? The one that comes with a very reasonable 7 mil cap figure in 09? The one that is
actually a 4 year 47 mil deal? That's the precedent that should be applied here.
Tell me, did Haynesworth "lose money" on his deal?
If Peppers takes the money, he gets $17M, plus whatever the market gives him (in an uncapped year) for the next six.
If he signs a $7M/year deal, he gets $49M.
For him to be losing $40M, the six year deal would have to pay (49+40-17)/6 = $12M/year.
Again, you are tossing around numbers instead of using actual precedents.
Dwight Freeney signed a deal for $12M/year when the salary cap was $109M when he was looking at his first franchise tag for $8.64 million (I took that from an online report that may have been wrong because the tag may have been exclusive)
Ah, an actual precedent! You are aware Freeny's contract is backloaded to high hell, right?
First off, The Franchise tag was 9.43 mil for Freeney that year. Second, The Colts were also in a financial bind. They were literally 3 mil under the cap with Freeney Franchised - barely enough to sign draft picks. So they gave Freeney a whopping 6 year 72 million deal. By your logic (
division, lol
) that's 12 mil per year. Sorry. That's not how it works - at all. Freeney has yet to make 12 mil in a single year. In fact, 2009 - 3 years into the deal - is the first year he'll even
sniff that kind of money.
The Breakdown:
Year - Cap Figure
2007 - 5,750,000
2008 - 5,750,000
2009 - 11,220,000
2010 - 13,680,000
2011 - 16,130,000
2012 - 19,470,000
Look it up on Colts cap.
Colts Salary Cap - Colts Cap
Better yet read the article from Len Pasquarelli:
League salary documents reviewed on Saturday evening by ESPN.com show that not until the 2009 season, when the cap charge skyrockets to $11.22 million....But for 2007 and 2008, the salary cap charges are a palatable $5.75 million each year....The base salaries in the contract are $750,000 (for 2007), $750,000 (2008), $6.22 million (2009), $8.825 million (2010), $11.42 million (2011) and $14.035 million (2012).
Freeney's deal cap friendly for 2007, 2008 - NFL - ESPN
Peppers (who I think is a better player) would probably be signing a deal in an uncapped year (one year after the cap rose to $127) unconstrained by the Franchise tag.
No. He's still be constrained by the Franchise tag. If he goes back to Carolina to play in 09, they'd just tag him again in 2010 -
with no cap to worry about. Thus giving Peppers even more incentive to get out now.
Do I think he could get a lot more than $12M/year? Hell yeah.
Like what? The same 19 million Freeney is getting in the 6th year of his contract? That's not real money. The only way he gets 12 mil is if it's
after a low starting year - just like Freeney, just like Haynesworth.
We can quibble about guaranteed money (which is important, but which complicates the discussion without making anything clearer) and the risk of injury, but my point is that any deal which values Peppers at $7M/year is massively underpaying him. It is absolutely his agent's job to keep him from doing this.
I'm sorry, guaranteed money isn't something you "quibble over" in a contract discussion. Guaranteed money
is the discussion. You don't turn your back on it for the Franchise tender. You also don't calculate it by taking the sum and dividing it by the total years. You have to look at how the guaranteed money is structured - you didn't do that.
Giving a discount to the Patriots is a reasonable and smart thing to do. But it should be a modest discount, not a blue light special.
Again, you overestimate the real value of the contract. When you break down the numbers you'll see how contracts are structured. It's hardly ever as simple as doing simple division.