Rookie wage scale not a sure thing

[townes]

The rookie pay scale will happen and the 18 game season will happen, the
latter just not in the next couple of years. That will be the concession the
NFLPA will get for accepting the rookie pay scale, nothing more. Someone
needs to tell the NFLPA that they are moments away (figure of speech) from
all out insurrection when the players start losing their pay checks and some
of them will see what's left of their career being flushed down the toilet. It's
going to get ugly real quick in the trenches.

All the more reason for the union to decertify rather than collapse.

 

[townes]

Come clean, you're an agent, right?

Actually I would like to see a new deal and i favor a rookie cap but that doesn't blind me to the fact that there is a reason players wouldn't completely favor a rookie cap.

 

[townes]

If top draft rookies weren't being paid exorbitantly, teams wouldn't throw the bank at Brady or Manning? Or even at proven pass rushers or high performing wide receivers or shut down corners? I tend to think, ultimately, that teams in need of players will bid what they can afford -- and sometimes even bid what they can't afford -- which will set market price. As long as being successful equals more franchise value, large rookie contracts will have little long term impact on the market rate. One need look no further than Baseball to see how organizations will outbid each other to land players that can add franchise value.
A player's ultimate contribution, or perceived contribution, to franchise value -- franchise value in all its forms -- along with many teams bidding for those contributions will quickly drown out any (if there is any) small and temporary loss from scaled back rookie wages.










The only real wage scale dampener is the salary cap. It is a way to save owners from themselves and keep wage rates from going much higher (and rookie wages would have no affect on that).

I can't tell if you agree or disagree. The first part of your post seems to argue against what I said, but the last part is exactly what i'm talking about, rookie deals drive the pay scale up that's why many players oppose a rookie cap. When a rookie signs a deal making them highest paid it sets the bar for the top free agents to exceed, which is what we saw after the Stafford deal. I'm not saying teams wouldn't go high to pay their stars because they always do, but every time a player becomes highest paid it establishes the new scale, and that goes for rookies as well as veterans. it didn't matter to mankins agent who got the deal for the highest paid interior OL, simply that there was a bar for him to put mankins over. If a team had given a rookie interior OL the Jahri Evans deal Bauer would have used that as his baseline for Mankins deal.

 

[Wolfpack]

The Borges article is silly because when you're negotiating, you make every single concession sound like a tremendous hardship in order to get the most in return for your concession.

AFAIC, the rookie wage scale is a virtual certainty. Owners want it really bad and the NFLPA generally doesn't care. I am sure a lot of current players would in fact support a rookie wage scale because they are not rookies anymore and they want to leave more money in the pot for themselves.

In fact the only people who really would strongly oppose a rookie pay scale aren't even members of the union currently.

 

[Miguel]

It isn't the top veterans who get underpaid. It is the older veterans who skills are declining who get cut or forced to take major pay cuts because of their salaries to get the team under the cap.

Getting under the cap has become easier over the years so easy that teams are using more cap space on the phony LTBE move than on their rookie class.

It is the Pats cutting a Willie McGinest when he still has value because his cap number is prohibitive. Here is my list of players just from the Pats who were hurt because of the cap which included the need to have a signficant enough rookie pool:

Willie McGinest (cut because of a roster bonus)
Rodney Harrison (forced to take a $700k pay cut)
Mike Vrabel (traded because of a $1 million roster bonus)
Ty Law (cut because of his salary, but he might have been cut anyway since his cap number was huge)
Lawyer Milloy (Considering the amount of room the Pats needed that year, a smaller rookie pool might have made it easy enough to keep him with a few minor moves)

McGinest - 2006. LTBE moves done with Spann, Brown, and Koppen to the tune of over $5 million.
Harrison - 2007. LTBE move done with Kyle Eckel to the tune of $5.6 million.
Vrabel - After trading Cassel the Patriots were way under the cap and could have afforded to keep Vrabel. LTBE move done with Redd to the tune of $2.8 million.

If after paying for all their players the Patriots have enough cap space at the end of the year to do the LTBE move for such large amounts, I think that it is reasonable to conclude that the players were cut not because the Patriots needed the cap space to account for rookie contracts but because the Patriots felt the player was not worth his cap number. See A. Thomas in 2010 who was released in an uncapped year.

 

[TheBostonStraggler]

I can't tell if you agree or disagree. The first part of your post seems to argue against what I said, but the last part is exactly what i'm talking about, rookie deals drive the pay scale up that's why many players oppose a rookie cap. When a rookie signs a deal making them highest paid it sets the bar for the top free agents to exceed, which is what we saw after the Stafford deal. I'm not saying teams wouldn't go high to pay their stars because they always do, but every time a player becomes highest paid it establishes the new scale, and that goes for rookies as well as veterans. it didn't matter to mankins agent who got the deal for the highest paid interior OL, simply that there was a bar for him to put mankins over. If a team had given a rookie interior OL the Jahri Evans deal Bauer would have used that as his baseline for Mankins deal.

Fair enough. I wasn't precise in my view. Precisely, I believe a rookie wage scale could have a small and temporary effect on top end wages. However, that possible effect will be so minimal as to be unimportant. Guaranteed player salary expenditures and optimal free agency rules is the sweet spot for the NFLPA. And as I indicated in my previous post, there are obvious comparisons to other professional sports to prove that the competitive bidding process will, ultimately, set player contract values extremely high.

Again, it's about franchise value and owners wanting to maximize it (by winning). The rookie wage scale is basically irrelevant. If team A, Team B and Team C don't pay rookies exorbitant amounts, you can bet your last dollar they will be putting that extra cash towards out bidding each other for the services of Brady, Manning, pass rusher X, wide receiver Y and shot down corner Z. Of course that is provided the salary cap has a spending minimum.

The rookie wage scale will be good for the game. The fewer big money contracts given to non performing players, the better the product will be. Players over performing then being highly rewarded for it is good for the game. While the rookie wage scale is far from a panacea, it is a good step in the right direction. And that doesn't even touch on the subject of fairness in regards to rookie salary versus veterans.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Getting under the cap has become easier over the years so easy that teams are using more cap space on the phony LTBE move than on their rookie class.

McGinest - 2006. LTBE moves done with Spann, Brown, and Koppen to the tune of over $5 million.
Harrison - 2007. LTBE move done with Kyle Eckel to the tune of $5.6 million.
Vrabel - After trading Cassel the Patriots were way under the cap and could have afforded to keep Vrabel. LTBE move done with Redd to the tune of $2.8 million.

If after paying for all their players the Patriots have enough cap space at the end of the year to do the LTBE move for such large amounts, I think that it is reasonable to conclude that the players were cut not because the Patriots needed the cap space to account for rookie contracts but because the Patriots felt the player was not worth his cap number. See A. Thomas in 2010 who was released in an uncapped year.

Getting under the cap became easier when the cap imploded because of the revenue sharing formula change that resulted from the 2006 CBA. Before that the phony NLTBE was more often employed. And cuts aren't always about the cap so much as cash. When you're handing rookies $15-20M signing bonuses or guaranteeing them upwards of $40-50M on a 6 year deal, the chickens eventually come home to roost as they say. Because it's not all about the space they take up on the cap in that rookie year, because that is engineered to be limited. It's what happens to their cap hit in years 2-5 or 6 as it relates to their performance vs. veteran players. And what happens via cash over cap and dead cap if they can't or won't perform at elite level. And using the NEP Patriots as an example of the impact of the existing rookie system is probably not representative of the core problem, which is the picks in the top ten to half of the first round. An area we seldom find ourselves selecting in and have largely avoided dabbling in for the most part in favor of better value based selections in the later part of that round.

Drafting college players to play in the pros remains as much art and luck as science. Which is the common sense logic behind the calls for a rookie wage scale. As Bill often says, you simply cannot know what you have until you see it perform, if not in your system at least in one at the pro level. I don't see the need to put half the rookie wage scale savings essentially in escrow to be paid back to the top performing rookies. I think if half the savings is going into the veteran money pool those players will see it if they show not only flashes of elite talent but performance consistency beginning in year 3 when their deals can be revisited. Talent in this league is only as valuable as it's ability to not only get on but stay on the field.

 

[townes]

Fair enough. I wasn't precise in my view. Precisely, I believe a rookie wage scale could have a small and temporary effect on top end wages. However, that possible effect will be so minimal as to be unimportant. Guaranteed player salary expenditures and optimal free agency rules is the sweet spot for the NFLPA. And as I indicated in my previous post, there are obvious comparisons to other professional sports to prove that the competitive bidding process will, ultimately, set player contract values extremely high.

Again, it's about franchise value and owners wanting to maximize it (by winning). The rookie wage scale is basically irrelevant. If team A, Team B and Team C don't pay rookies exorbitant amounts, you can bet your last dollar they will be putting that extra cash towards out bidding each other for the services of Brady, Manning, pass rusher X, wide receiver Y and shot down corner Z. Of course that is provided the salary cap has a spending minimum.

The rookie wage scale will be good for the game. The fewer big money contracts given to non performing players, the better the product will be. Players over performing then being highly rewarded for it is good for the game. While the rookie wage scale is far from a panacea, it is a good step in the right direction. And that doesn't even touch on the subject of fairness in regards to rookie salary versus veterans.

As I said before I actually favor a rookie pay scale I simply think the assumption the players favor it is wrong because they know it has driven up salaries over the years, so they will use it as a bargaining chip and not simply give it to the owners without getting something in return.

The other factors that will come into play is earlier free agency for players as the league already had to reduce the time before free agency in the last deal because asking players to sign 6 year deals for careers that generally last four was patently unfair. If they are going to reduce the pay for first year deals then they will have to allow players to become eligible for free agency at an earlier time, unrestricted free agency afte 3 years for players who aren't on first round deals is a strong likelihood imo, and a fair resolution, and players drafted after the 3rd round could well see free agency after two years, and once again that would be fair if their share is as small as it likely will be. the league cannot have it both ways, they can't cut rookie money and expect the players to remain locked up as long as they currently are.

 

[Miguel]

Getting under the cap became easier when the cap imploded because of the revenue sharing formula change that resulted from the 2006 CBA. Before that the phony NLTBE was more often employed.

If you say so. I have been covering the cap since 2001. The phony LTBE move has been employed more often AFTER the 2006 CBA.

 

[Miguel]

G And using the NEP Patriots as an example of the impact of the existing rookie system is probably not representative of the core problem

I brought up Tom Brady of the Patriots because he is the player that was most often brought up as being underpaid. Robo brought up the other players who were all Patriots.

I am confident that I could do the same thing for most, if not, all of the teams.

 

[TruthSeeker]

As I said before I actually favor a rookie pay scale I simply think the assumption the players favor it is wrong because they know it has driven up salaries over the years, so they will use it as a bargaining chip and not simply give it to the owners without getting something in return.

They could well use that reasoning and essentially be wrong. Unless the total pool of money being spent changes, you can only drive up (some) salaries by driving other salaries down.

 

[jczxohn1]

From Jeff Howe:

The rookie salary scale has also been agreed upon, according to multiple league sources, and it's something both sides really wanted. If the CBA is reached before April's draft, the salary scale could be in place in time for the 2011 season.

 

[The Boston Patriot]

From Jeff Howe:

The rookie salary scale has also been agreed upon, according to multiple league sources, and it's something both sides really wanted. If the CBA is reached before April's draft, the salary scale could be in place in time for the 2011 season.

There are a lot of agents sobbing hysterically in each others arms right about now.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

I think the concept of their being a rookie wage scale has been agreed on. It was near impossible for the union to fight it because the majority of rank and file players have as many issues with what has transpired at the top of the draft over the last decade as fans and management do. What remains to be determined is not whether it will happen this year, because it will and a CBA before or after the draft has nothing to do with that timing wise since in the absence of one those players aren't getting signed anyway and if the union decertifies they will not become a party to it until it recertifies to enter a collective bargaining agreement that covers all it's members going forward. What remains unsettled are the terms of the wage scale and who gets the savings.

Initially the union said it would oppose any rookie wage scale unless the saved money went to veteran players and not into owners pockets. Then they offered to screw the 2010 rookie class by offering to implement a wage scale in 2010 in exchange for the league agreeing to maintain the status quo of the 2006 CBA (where players had achieved windfall revenue gains). Then the league proposed a split between veteran players and the pre 1993 retirees, a group the NFLPA has long paid lip service to but refused to collectively bargain to benefit. Recently the NFLPA counter proposed that a rookie wage scale be implemented that limited contracts to 2-4 years and half of the (any...) savings be residtributed to those rookies who were outperforming their deals...because they were in fact veterans in the unions opinion since half of the workforce has less than 5 years service.