NFLPA crys foul regarding abysmal FA market

[Triumph]

They got taken to the woodshed by the owners.

NFLPA asks agents for evidence of collusion

 

[Fencer]

Why is collusion a big deal with a hard cap?

I agree that the penalty against the Redskins was nasty, because the Redskins were acting in an uncapped year. So that's collusion, or something close to it, in a form that took significant money out of players' pockets.

But if teams spend to the cap, where's the collusion smoke, let alone fire?

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

So NFLPA agrees to cap numbers
They work in a cap floor system (90% of cap if I recall)
Some of the elite players aren't getting outrageous offers
So the middle/lower class players are getting more or the same?

Is this about the few people/agents that valued players at a higher level? Did they see some time of exponential rise in $$$ with a flat cap?

Players aren't getting paid or are they complaining that they didn't get paid during the 1 uncapped year, which has to figure in to the overall cap numbers for the player contracts.

 

[Patsgofor4]

Patsgofor4 crys foul regarding abysmal US educational system.

 

[Rob0729]

Easier for DeMaurice Smith to cry collusion than admit to his constituents that he made a bad deal for them.

What did the players really win in the last CBA? Easier practice schedules. A stagnant cap growth until 2015 (and it is unknown if the cap will grow a lot then either). A salary cap floor that still lets team sit on plenty of salary cap money (currently a third of the league have over $10 million in salary cap space). A free agency where many of the top free agents are getting contract that would have been considered second or third tier contracts just two years ago (for example, Cliff Avril's total deal that he got with Seattle would have been his signing bonus alone two years ago).

I never got why the NFLPA chose Smith to be their leader. He was not qualified for the job and he is clearly out of his league. The funny thing is while the media kissed his arse for winning the CBA negotiations two years ago, the owners were behind the scenes giving themselves high fives for taking him to the woodshed.

If the NFLPA were smart, they would have given their leadership role to David Cornwall who is a sports attorney with a long history of representing players both as an agent and an attorney and has a good negotiating relationship with the NFL.

The NFLPA has already had one collusion case thrown out of court. I assume they will go to court for this with similar results.

 

[chasa]

Kind of hard to cry about collusion when almost every team is up against the cap.

Its not like teams can go over it.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

NFLPA welcome to the universe your fans inhabit, a place where wages do not grow year to year

 

[patfanken]

This is the comment I left for Florio, who has been constantly banging the "collusion" drum.

The only ones that are “colluding” here Mike are you, the NFLPA, and your agent friends. All working overtime trying to convince the fans that there is “collusion” going on.

The fact of the matter is that as of right now virtually every team has already spent over 80% of their cap money and its only early April. Many are over 90%.

I thought you were a capitalist Mike, what you should recognize is that there is a clear situation where supply has started to exceed demand, and having the NFLPA “leak” memos to you isn’t going to change the reality.

That being said we are all resigned to the reality that you ARE going to pound this non-issue with daily posts regardless, because if your agent buddies don’t talk to you…..who will?

I suggest that whenever the "collusion" card is played, the only cure is to react aggressively with the truth. As one PFT poster put it, if there were actually collusion going on then no one would have paid Kruger $40MM for 15 career sacks, and back up QB's wouldn't be being paid more than Cliff Avril

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Why is collusion a big deal with a hard cap?

I agree that the penalty against the Redskins was nasty, because the Redskins were acting in an uncapped year. So that's collusion, or something close to it, in a form that took significant money out of players' pockets.

But if teams spend to the cap, where's the collusion smoke, let alone fire?

What happened to the Redskins was not collusion per se; they were punished for dumping bonuses that should have been spread out into the uncapped year.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I think here's why the NFLPA so desperately wants to find collusion:

under the following circumstances:
(a) Where there has been a finding or findings of one or more instances of a violation of Section 1 of this Article with respect to any one NFL season which, either individually or in total, involved five or more Clubs and caused injury to 20 or more players; or
(b) Where there has been a finding or findings of one or more instances of a violation of Section 1 of this Article with respect to any two consecutive NFL seasons which, either individually or in total, involved seven or more Clubs and caused injury to 28 or more players. For purposes of this Subsection 16(b), a player found to have been injured by a violation of Section 1 of this Article in each of two consecutive seasons shall be counted as an additional player injured by such a violation for each such NFL season;
or
(c) Where, in a proceeding brought by the NFLPA, it is shown by clear and convincing evidence that 14 or more Clubs have engaged in a violation or violations of Section 1 of this Article causing injury to one or more NFL players.

If the NFLPA can do that, then "Section 16. Termination: The NFLPA shall have the right to terminate this Agreement."

 

[VinnyPatrollie]

Easier for DeMaurice Smith to cry collusion than admit to his constituents that he made a bad deal for them.

What did the players really win in the last CBA? Easier practice schedules. A stagnant cap growth until 2015 (and it is unknown if the cap will grow a lot then either). A salary cap floor that still lets team sit on plenty of salary cap money (currently a third of the league have over $10 million in salary cap space). A free agency where many of the top free agents are getting contract that would have been considered second or third tier contracts just two years ago (for example, Cliff Avril's total deal that he got with Seattle would have been his signing bonus alone two years ago).

I never got why the NFLPA chose Smith to be their leader. He was not qualified for the job and he is clearly out of his league. The funny thing is while the media kissed his arse for winning the CBA negotiations two years ago, the owners were behind the scenes giving themselves high fives for taking him to the woodshed.

If the NFLPA were smart, they would have given their leadership role to David Cornwall who is a sports attorney with a long history of representing players both as an agent and an attorney and has a good negotiating relationship with the NFL.

The NFLPA has already had one collusion case thrown out of court. I assume they will go to court for this with similar results.

I don't agree in the least. Just because the salary pool isn't increasing like in years past, many say how the owners screwed the players. The players get 50% of total revenues. Not profits, but revenues. Show me another business model besides the NFL that does this. The cap will go up, and therefore the players salaries will with it, once revenues increase. New TV money doesn't kick in until 2015, so the cap will remain relatively flat until then. Who here gets an automatic raise when their employers revenues go up? (regardless of whether profits increase or not).

The players got concessions on full contact practices. They got a guarantee on 50% of revenues and got "revenues" defined. And they not only raised what was a soft cap floor, they made it a hard floor. They did just fine.

 

[NSPF]

Even if this preposterous claim was true, what exactly were the teams colluding to do? Were they colluding to spend more money on their low/mid-tier players? That's such an atrocity. Do they think Wes Welker should have gotten 100 mil per year from the Patriots while they forced all of their other players to play for free? NFLPA looking out for the little guys, as usual.

 

[Rob0729]

I don't agree in the least. Just because the salary pool isn't increasing like in years past, many say how the owners screwed the players. The players get 50% of total revenues. Not profits, but revenues. Show me another business model besides the NFL that does this. The cap will go up, and therefore the players salaries will with it, once revenues increase. New TV money doesn't kick in until 2015, so the cap will remain relatively flat until then. Who here gets an automatic raise when their employers revenues go up? (regardless of whether profits increase or not).

The players got concessions on full contact practices. They got a guarantee on 50% of revenues and got "revenues" defined. And they not only raised what was a soft cap floor, they made it a hard floor. They did just fine.

A few things:

• The players are not getting 50% nor guaranteed a 50% share. I think they are getting 48.5% right now and the CBA only really guarantees that the percentage cannot average less than 47% per year of the revenues.
• The players HAD 50% revenue share model in the last agreement, but it was reduced to a 47% guarantee. The model has shifted a bit so in theory they could get 50% or more (since they get 55% of the media revenue and smaller percentages of other revenue streams), but right now it is under 50%.
• As for a business model that does this, all you have to do is look to other sports. Players in the NHL, NBA, and MLB get a higher percentage (although MLB isn't defined and there are teams that give much less in low revenue markets).

Smith's deal is gambling on the TV revenues going up exponentially. The problem with that is that it won't pay dividends for the players until 2015 or later. For many of the players who voted for Smith, it will be too late to benefit them and they were screwed over for future players to get cashed in. Look at a guy like Welker. He would have made a ton of money in the same situation in 2011. Now he took a value contract in his early 30s with no chance of cashing in.

By all accounts, the players and NFLPA were blindsided by the fact that the cap would not grow until at least 2015 which is more than a quarter of the way through the CBA deal.

 

[Silver Blue&Red]

Why dont they get over with already and blame it on the evil Kraft family?

 

[Ivan]

The owners outsmarted the players, plain and simple. There is no way the players are going to be able to prove collusion when Mario Williams got 100 million and guys like Harvin and Wallace are getting much more than their production deserves. There really isn't any correlation between "worth" and pay, only between perceived value and the deals it engenders. Welker was far more productive than either Harvin or Wallace and got peanuts compared to them, that was based on perception, not production or verifiable reality. He's worth more but won't get paid more, that's just the way it is. The owners created several mechanisms to drive down salaries and sold it to the players so it's on the NFLPA for agreeing to the deal. The owners convinced the players that a rookie cap with essentially slotted deals for top picks would leave more money for veteran players, when in truth what they were doing was stopping the explosion of player salaries by curbing the rookie deals that were setting new bars for veterans to use as benchmarks for their new deals. They also kept the cap from going up substantially the first few years which contracted the money available and created a situation where it made more sense for them to use their resources on younger players than on the guys over 30, which is why Welker and others faced a completely new market this offseason. Is there collusion, probably in a general sense where the owners have the same mindset about what they are going to pay the veterans but not in any defined way with any kind of trail that would allow the players to prove it in court.

Bottom line, both sides had the lawyers in the room and the owners lawyers basically won out in the end. They hold the pursestrings and they are going to dictate the market and the players are going to have to accept that reality as it isn't going to change unless some owners get together and do something really really stupid and blatant.

 

[Ivan]

Why dont they get over with already and blame it on the evil Kraft family?

Imo Kraft was 100% full of it when it came to Welker but he's going to the HOF, and deservedly so, for his role in getting a deal done between the players and owners.

 

[patfanken]

Imo Kraft was 100% full of it when it came to Welker but he's going to the HOF, and deservedly so, for his role in getting a deal done between the players and owners.

Your previous post was outstanding. This one...not so much. Kraft WAS sincere about Welker and the fact that he was upset enough to break the Pats "cone of silence" only proves it.

You still seem to be upset that Welker chose to refuse the Pats better offer, and instead take what amounts to the Bronco's 1 year $6MM deal. In what warped reality can you possible blame Robert Kraft for that outcome.

You and I can both make legitimate arguments about the impact of losing Welker to the Broncos all day. No question that it will a continual topic of discussion that will go on all year, both here and across the league. BUT...there is no question with what we know now that the following is true

1. The Pats offered Welker what turned out to be better than market deals during all of 2011 and 2012.

2. They paid him well over the market deal in 2012.

3. Welker CHOSE to take what amounts to a one year $6MM deal instead of a 2 year deal from the Pats that easily could have paid him over $12MM, and up to $16MM over 2 years

4. No matter how you want to pose it, Welker is in Denver because, ultimately, that's what HE wanted. And most likely he will have to go through the same process next off season.

 

[Danger Zone]

Imo Kraft was 100% full of it when it came to Welker but he's going to the HOF, and deservedly so, for his role in getting a deal done between the players and owners.

Thank you Ivan for once again using those psychic abilities you mysteriously developed after falling into a vat of radioactive green goo at the same time as Wes Welker.

Without you reading his mind and telling us what you found there, the world would never have suspected the duplicitous, backstabbing hypocrisy of Robert K. Kraft.

That grandfatherly, kindly, philanthropic bastage almost had me fooled!

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

By all accounts, the players and NFLPA were blindsided by the fact that the cap would not grow until at least 2015 which is more than a quarter of the way through the CBA deal.

The Owners must have had better talent for crunching the numbers (or only they knew the numbers) as they had pretty much said (well a few of them) that the cap would be what it is today.

If it is based on TV sales and there's no new contracts to negotiate, then it would have seemed fairly simple (relatively) to calculate.

 

[VinnyPatrollie]

A few things:

• The players are not getting 50% nor guaranteed a 50% share. I think they are getting 48.5% right now and the CBA only really guarantees that the percentage cannot average less than 47% per year of the revenues.
• The players HAD 50% revenue share model in the last agreement, but it was reduced to a 47% guarantee. The model has shifted a bit so in theory they could get 50% or more (since they get 55% of the media revenue and smaller percentages of other revenue streams), but right now it is under 50%.
• As for a business model that does this, all you have to do is look to other sports. Players in the NHL, NBA, and MLB get a higher percentage (although MLB isn't defined and there are teams that give much less in low revenue markets).

Smith's deal is gambling on the TV revenues going up exponentially. The problem with that is that it won't pay dividends for the players until 2015 or later. For many of the players who voted for Smith, it will be too late to benefit them and they were screwed over for future players to get cashed in. Look at a guy like Welker. He would have made a ton of money in the same situation in 2011. Now he took a value contract in his early 30s with no chance of cashing in.

By all accounts, the players and NFLPA were blindsided by the fact that the cap would not grow until at least 2015 which is more than a quarter of the way through the CBA deal.

Sue me for 1.5 to 3%. Talk about nit picking.

So the issue boils down to the player's union not anticipating that the rich new TV deal wouldn't show increases until a few years in, rather than from day one. Big F'n deal. They've guaranteed themselves a far bigger slice of that larger pie at the ''cost'' of delayed gratification. Yeah, they got hosed.