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By Pete Dougherty
pdougher@greenbaypressgazette.com
Ryan Grant was one of the best bargains in the NFL this season.
The Green Bay Packers’ halfback, picked up just before the start of the regular season in a trade for a sixth-round draft pick, gained 1,189 yards and averaged 5.4 yards per carry in the final 12 games of the season (playoffs included), and he did it while making the minimum salary for a first-year player of $310,000.
His rights belong to the Packers for two more years before he’ll become a restricted free agent, but the Packers might consider rewarding him sooner for outperforming his contract and becoming their primary halfback, perhaps this offseason or sometime during the 2008 season.
The NFL’s salary landscape has changed in the last couple of years, and teams, including the Packers, have taken to extending core players’ contracts and giving them raises even when the player has multiple years left on his deal. Grant appears to be a good candidate for such a move, though his agent, Alan Herman, said he hasn’t yet talked to the team about it.
“I’ll discuss it with Ryan,” Herman said. “A player that’s accomplished what he has, I don’t think there’s any secrets what he’s brought to the Packers this year. It’s clear around the league (for) anyone who’s astute in terms of football that it wasn’t a fly-by-night type of thing. He changed their offense and enabled them to have a running game. Since he’s an exclusive-rights free agent, it’s up to the Packers to decide how they want to approach the situation. You have leverage situations in this business, and right now Ryan’s under contract. We’ll sit back and see what position the Packers take.”
In the past couple years, General Manager Ted Thompson and vice president of player finance Andrew Brandt have upgraded contracts of a few players who outperformed their deals but had multiple seasons remaining on their contracts. Most notably, they signed cornerback Al Harris and receiver Donald Driver to contract extensions to modest raises last offseason, and added weekly roster bonuses to tackle Mark Tauscher’s deal in September.
Thompson wouldn’t address Grant’s contractual status in particular, but he would not rule out signing an exclusive-rights players to long-term deal in general.
“We look at every situation,” Thompson said. “We’re always focused on the immediate, how to be good today, but we’re always looking at stability down the road. We’ve spent a lot of effort and time addressing some of the fellas that are a little bit more veteran in terms of doing contract extensions, but as we grow as a team and these young guys move through their initial contracts, we’ll address those as we go along, sure.”
The urgency for Grant to sign a long-term deal and gain financial security probably is greater than for most first-year players, because he’s been out of college for three years and is 25. Grant signed with the New York Giants as an undrafted rookie in 2005 and spent the season on their practice squad, so he did not gain an accrued season toward free agency. In the following offseason, he suffered a severe cut on his hand and arm that landed him on the nonfootball injury list for all of 2006, which again prevented him from gaining an accrued season. Thus, he remained a first-year player — but not a rookie — when the Packers traded for him at the end of training camp, and made the first-year minimum salary of $310,000.
If the Packers want, they can tender him a one-year contract for 2008 at the second-year minimum of $370,000. His only options would be to sign it, or withhold his services in hopes the Packers made a better offer. And he’ll be in the same position in 2009, when the minimum for a player entering his third season will be $460,000.
But Grant was productive enough to perhaps warrant a long-term deal soon. Over the last 10 games of the regular season, he was the NFL’s second-leading rusher, behind only San Diego’s LaDainian Tomlinson.
The difficulty is determining Grant’s value relative to his lack of contractual leverage.
For comparison, Pittsburgh halfback Willie Parker was in a somewhat similar situation in 2006. Parker, like Grant, was undrafted out of college, but unlike Grant, he played in enough games as a rookie in 2004 to gain an accrued season. In 2005, he became the Steelers’ primary halfback, gained 1,202 yards in 15 regular-season games, and had a 75-yard touchdown run in Pittsburgh’s win over Seattle in the Super Bowl.
He remained an exclusive-rights free agent going into 2006, though he had two accrued seasons instead of Grant’s one. That offseason, the Steelers signed Parker to a four-year deal worth $13.6 million, including a signing bonus of $3.75 million.
However, salaries have gone up considerably even in the two years since then, so it probably would take a far bigger bonus than that to convince Grant to sign a long-term deal.
“We’ll see what happens,” Herman said. “We’ll see if the organization is aggressive and wants to do the right thing, then you certainly reward a player and try to lock him up for the future. If they’re going to entertain that thought process, we’d be more than happy to listen. Do you hope for something like that? Sure, every player would.
“The contribution he made this year and the way it appears he can continue to help this team, you’d hope the club would recognize that and you see what position they take. Are they going to move forward and say, ‘Hey, he’s our guy for the next five years, and let’s get something done?’ That would be a wonderful thing.
“The key point is Ryan has been out of college for three years. He’s been on the practice squad, obviously he sustained the injury, those things have impacted on what he can earn. For a minimum-wage player, to say he outperformed the contract is an understatement.”
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