motife
04-14-2008, 04:52 PM
Today’s NFL free agents trace their good fortune to White
Published April 14, 2008
I vividly remember my first day with the Green Bay Packers in mid-February 1999. As I walked in the office, I held the door open for a larger-than-life, raspy-voiced man who walked past me out the door.
It later occurred to me that at the moment I began my nine-year career as vice president of the Packers, Reggie White was ending his six years with them, freshly signed retirement papers in hand as he exited the building.
How ironic it was that after being the marquee free agent in the NFL six years earlier, the man whose name became synonymous with freedom for NFL players was walking out the Packers’ door on the eve of free agency in 1999. White was retiring (he would later return to play for the Carolina Panthers) and clearing cap room for the Packers to re-sign a couple of their prospective free agents.
Operating system
The operating labor system in football, a collectively bargained codification of the Reggie White v. NFLsettlement, can be boiled down to four words, two each for the bargaining parties.
For the owners, the two words are “salary cap,” a league-imposed mandated maximum on player costs that, despite creative maneuvering by teams around it, promotes and protects the competitive balance the league so desperately seeks.
For the players, the two words are “free agency.” After watching the windfalls of baseball players since the 1970s and basketball players since the ’80s, NFL players in 1993 could finally shop themselves and enter the previously forbidden world of bidding.
With the new system in place, the first weekend of March has become the NFL version of March Madness, the mother lode for those skilled players who have reached the end of their contracts.
Reggie White was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that
led to the NFL’s free agency system.Whether being active in free agency actually helps a team’s performance is subject to debate. Three of the four teams in the conference championship games this season (the Packers, Chargers and Giants) had little to no activity in free agency a year ago, and little to none so far this year.
Spending and winning
There is an axiom that some teams apply toward the profligate spending in early free agency: that winning in March has little to do with winning in January. To each his own, though, and philosophies differ.
This offseason is illustrative of the process. Before the opening bell of free agency, teams pruned their rosters of players previously at the top of salary scales whose worth had not equaled their recent performance.
Interestingly, some of these players (Jevon Kearse, Mike Wahle, Rosevelt Colvin, Fernando Bryant) were the marquee, first-day free agents a couple of years ago. Two or three years later, they are agate transactions of terminated contracts.
After the terminations came the windfalls: the free agent class of 2008 (Asante Samuel, Alan Faneca, Calvin Pace, Gibril Wilson, Bernard Berrian, to name a few). These are certainly not the best players in the NFL, yet due to scarcity of the market and cap room aplenty, they are paid as such.
Just below these free agents are those at the precipice of free agency (Flozell Adams, Dallas Clark and Tommy Kelly), the most leverage the players will ever have, who are re-signed by their incumbent teams.
And this year, with more teams flush with cap space, there was a third group of fortunate players: those traded to new clubs with a contract extension as part of the trade terms, whether implicit or explicit. These players (Corey Williams, Shaun Rogers, Kris Jenkins, DeAngelo Hall) used the leverage of expiring contracts to their full advantage while receiving fresh starts with new teams.
Watching all the preceding activity were players taken off the market due to the application of the franchise tag, the tool in the CBA that clubs use to maintain rights to an otherwise top-of-the-market free agent. This group is highly compensated in guaranteed money for one year but misses out on the blockbuster contracts that were negotiated for the above fortunate few.
These players (Albert Haynesworth, Jordan Gross, Terrell Suggs and Karlos Dansby among them) can only watch and wait, their spirits certainly buoyed by the new market standards set by their freer brethren.
Guaranteed contracts
A disturbing trend for the management side in this free agent flurry of 2008 is the slow creep of guaranteed contracts. What has previously separated NFL contracts from MLB and NBA pacts has been the lack of appreciable guarantees beyond signing bonuses.
Now, however, many NFL teams are flush with cap room and desiring a pay-as-you-go model rather than loading future signing bonus proration. With that combination, there appears to be a willingness to spread guaranteed money over future years, previously hallowed ground immune to NFL contracts.
In judging NFL free agent contracts, it is less instructive to view the total value of these contracts (which often represents money never realized) than it is to analyze the guarantee numbers. That money is fixed and loaded regardless of whether a player, like the ones mentioned above, ends up in an agate termination transaction in a couple of years.
Free agency took a new turn in 2008, but with the same result since Reggie White started it all in 1993: wealth for the chosen few who find themselves in high demand.
Every year since White’s name appeared in the settlement that led to this system, the players who have profited from their free agent status — now armed with this new trophy of guaranteed money — are a testament to that large, dignified man who passed me on his way out the Packers’ door in 1999.
Andrew Brandt (andrewbrandt2@gmail.com) was vice president of the Green Bay Packers, where he negotiated all player contracts, managed the salary cap and handled football-related legal matters.
Published April 14, 2008
I vividly remember my first day with the Green Bay Packers in mid-February 1999. As I walked in the office, I held the door open for a larger-than-life, raspy-voiced man who walked past me out the door.
It later occurred to me that at the moment I began my nine-year career as vice president of the Packers, Reggie White was ending his six years with them, freshly signed retirement papers in hand as he exited the building.
How ironic it was that after being the marquee free agent in the NFL six years earlier, the man whose name became synonymous with freedom for NFL players was walking out the Packers’ door on the eve of free agency in 1999. White was retiring (he would later return to play for the Carolina Panthers) and clearing cap room for the Packers to re-sign a couple of their prospective free agents.
Operating system
The operating labor system in football, a collectively bargained codification of the Reggie White v. NFLsettlement, can be boiled down to four words, two each for the bargaining parties.
For the owners, the two words are “salary cap,” a league-imposed mandated maximum on player costs that, despite creative maneuvering by teams around it, promotes and protects the competitive balance the league so desperately seeks.
For the players, the two words are “free agency.” After watching the windfalls of baseball players since the 1970s and basketball players since the ’80s, NFL players in 1993 could finally shop themselves and enter the previously forbidden world of bidding.
With the new system in place, the first weekend of March has become the NFL version of March Madness, the mother lode for those skilled players who have reached the end of their contracts.
Reggie White was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that
led to the NFL’s free agency system.Whether being active in free agency actually helps a team’s performance is subject to debate. Three of the four teams in the conference championship games this season (the Packers, Chargers and Giants) had little to no activity in free agency a year ago, and little to none so far this year.
Spending and winning
There is an axiom that some teams apply toward the profligate spending in early free agency: that winning in March has little to do with winning in January. To each his own, though, and philosophies differ.
This offseason is illustrative of the process. Before the opening bell of free agency, teams pruned their rosters of players previously at the top of salary scales whose worth had not equaled their recent performance.
Interestingly, some of these players (Jevon Kearse, Mike Wahle, Rosevelt Colvin, Fernando Bryant) were the marquee, first-day free agents a couple of years ago. Two or three years later, they are agate transactions of terminated contracts.
After the terminations came the windfalls: the free agent class of 2008 (Asante Samuel, Alan Faneca, Calvin Pace, Gibril Wilson, Bernard Berrian, to name a few). These are certainly not the best players in the NFL, yet due to scarcity of the market and cap room aplenty, they are paid as such.
Just below these free agents are those at the precipice of free agency (Flozell Adams, Dallas Clark and Tommy Kelly), the most leverage the players will ever have, who are re-signed by their incumbent teams.
And this year, with more teams flush with cap space, there was a third group of fortunate players: those traded to new clubs with a contract extension as part of the trade terms, whether implicit or explicit. These players (Corey Williams, Shaun Rogers, Kris Jenkins, DeAngelo Hall) used the leverage of expiring contracts to their full advantage while receiving fresh starts with new teams.
Watching all the preceding activity were players taken off the market due to the application of the franchise tag, the tool in the CBA that clubs use to maintain rights to an otherwise top-of-the-market free agent. This group is highly compensated in guaranteed money for one year but misses out on the blockbuster contracts that were negotiated for the above fortunate few.
These players (Albert Haynesworth, Jordan Gross, Terrell Suggs and Karlos Dansby among them) can only watch and wait, their spirits certainly buoyed by the new market standards set by their freer brethren.
Guaranteed contracts
A disturbing trend for the management side in this free agent flurry of 2008 is the slow creep of guaranteed contracts. What has previously separated NFL contracts from MLB and NBA pacts has been the lack of appreciable guarantees beyond signing bonuses.
Now, however, many NFL teams are flush with cap room and desiring a pay-as-you-go model rather than loading future signing bonus proration. With that combination, there appears to be a willingness to spread guaranteed money over future years, previously hallowed ground immune to NFL contracts.
In judging NFL free agent contracts, it is less instructive to view the total value of these contracts (which often represents money never realized) than it is to analyze the guarantee numbers. That money is fixed and loaded regardless of whether a player, like the ones mentioned above, ends up in an agate termination transaction in a couple of years.
Free agency took a new turn in 2008, but with the same result since Reggie White started it all in 1993: wealth for the chosen few who find themselves in high demand.
Every year since White’s name appeared in the settlement that led to this system, the players who have profited from their free agent status — now armed with this new trophy of guaranteed money — are a testament to that large, dignified man who passed me on his way out the Packers’ door in 1999.
Andrew Brandt (andrewbrandt2@gmail.com) was vice president of the Green Bay Packers, where he negotiated all player contracts, managed the salary cap and handled football-related legal matters.