spacecrime said:
Are you serious? They cut each player rather than live up to the last year of the contract.
WMG's contrtact called for him to receive about $8 million dollars this year. Instead the pats cut him.
For Ty Law, it was about $12 million last year.
This year they also cut Dwayne Starks and Tyrone Poole, preferring not to pay them the rest of their contracts.
I'm puzzled. What don't you get about how the Players Association negotiated the contract structure that is in use ?? ?? ?? The CONTRACT consists of a signing bonus which is paid immediately in total and can't be taken back unless the player violates terms in the contract such as getting injured in contract proscribed dangerous extracurricular activities, taking dope, or the like. The tradeoff to that guaranteed up front money is that the length of the contract is at the total discretion and control of the team. They can cut a player at any time - all perfectly according to the contract that the Players Association negotiated as the standard contract structure. For the years that the team keeps the player on the roster, the contract spells out that they must pay him the agreed upon salary for that year - they have no choice about that. For the Pats to decide to exercise their sole option to terminate the contract at any point is absolutely 100% their contractual right. The years of the contract are not even considered in the slightest by ANYBODY to be a 'commitment' on the part of the team or something they have to 'live up to'. The only commitment the team has made according to the contract is, if they chose to keep the player, they must pay the salary agree upon for that year in the contract. So from what viewpoint do you talk about 'not living up to the contract' ??
Maybe I am guessing wrong, but if you think there is some 'moral' commitment that the team is supposed to live up to, that has nothing to do with it. Maybe you would want the contracts to be structured differently, but that's not how the contract structure was negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement - and that structure totally defines what is fair and owed or not owed.
Furthermore, that's why you hear so much discussion, including many threads on this board, about how the total value of the contracts that the agents and players like to throw around for status and ego is fairly meaningless in many if not most cases. Typically, in order to get the 'status' of large total money, the agent negotiates a contract which includes large salaries in the last years of the contract which, as is completely understood by all parties, makes it almost a 100% certainty that the team will cut the player before having to pay out those exorbitant salaries. There is no misconception on the part of the agents - whether any players have been led to believe that they will not be cut before reaping those windfalls is anybody's guess I suppose.
Ty Law's contract, for sure, was a perfect example of one of those contracts with ridiculous backloaded salaries. Who would ever pay $10M salary (or whatever it was to be) to ANY cornerback ?? The surprise wan't that the Patriots cut him before that last year, but probably that they would pay him something like $7.5M the last year he did play. Willie McGinest was perhaps not so clear cut because of numerous restructures, but his backloaded salary for that last year also put him into that same category.
PS There are certainly other mechanics such as roster bonuses, incentive bonuses, option bonuses, etc. that are in the picture, but not necessary to include in this discussion.