Good ol' John Clayton.
I like the article because Clayton tends to use his knowledge and not his opinion. On television, ESPN probably encourages him to do more opinion journalism which takes away from his value. Isn't they what they have
First and 10,
Around the Horn and
PTI?
Interesting facts:
- The teams in the conference championship will not be able to participate in free agency until they lose a player in free agency.
- Teams will be provided both a transition tag and franchise tag. This allows them to keep two of their free agent players.
- Players cannot be unrestricted free agents without six years of service (instead of four).
What do we make of all this?
I don't think we need to get ahead of ourselves. While the lack of a CBA presents a ton of clouds on the horizon (end of the college draft, uncontrolled spending, death of the NFLPA), I think assumptions are getting out of control. First, I wonder how many teams will be the "Yankees" of the NFL and which will be the "Marlins" of the NFL. I'm not looking for names, but I am making a point that not all teams are going to blow up the market with obscene contracts because there is no cap. A team like the 49ers, Lions and Cardinals may decide on a individual-team cap that is drastically lower than the current minimum. Then you have the Cowboys who might just shoot their payroll figures to the moon.
A correlation with MLB will be evident and it might not be all bad.
Tom Brady should be paid like ARod is being paid by the Yankees. Instead, Matt Ryan is going to make more than the three time Super Bowl winner. And before we get ahead of ourselves and worry that some team will swoop in and steal him with a load of cash, the fact is that the New England Pats would have no excuse (because there is no cap) to not spend the money on him if they wanted him on the team. And then there is the obvious situation that a player can go where there is interest and not only where there is money.
I look at a guy like Javon Walker who signed with the Raiders. I wouldn't think he wanted to go to the Raiders, but the Raiders had the cap room (I don't know how) and Walker needed to get paid. Many other teams lacked money, which made them lack interest.
And hold outs?
I will venture to guess that contract hold outs would be more of a thing of the past. This should be especially true for veteran players that stand to lose the most by this uncapped situation. This is only a guess as the teams will still have the franchise and tranisition tags that will cause havoc for the team/agent relationship. Then again, wouldn't the value of each tag go up?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/michael_lombardi/05/27/uncapped.strategy/1.html
