Salaries getting out of hand?

[Rastak]

No cap next year.

Maybe. I will be surprised (but not shocked) if the NFL plays a year without a cap.

I wouldn't be at all but I would be shocked if the players took the field in 2011 without a new deal with a cap.

2010 has some nice free agency/tag changes which mitigate the lack of a cap. I doubt the owners would want to go into the following year with a free for all.

[pbmax]

It takes more than one nutjob contract to set the market that much higher. After Edge James, Marshall Faulk and finally Shaun Alexander, teams stopped paying huge money to older, established backs.

The market also swings back the other way. Many RBs have found that out.

I begrudge the players none of the money they collect (well, OK, I might begrudge Cletdius Hunt some of his money). Its a short career, takes years off your life and can impact your health in other, numerous, negative ways. The league makes enormous sums of money. And no one, not even on the management side, is claiming that teams are losing money. I believe Forbes estimated one team might have (Lions?).

Its about profitability, that debt service and the cost of new capital is draining profitability. Jerry is also having a hard time finding a taker for $20 million per year for naming rights.

It will be a tough deal, because the high revenue clubs have common cause with the lower revenue ones. Many high revenue clubs have incurred sizable debt from stadium construction or on their loans to buy the team (Miami, Washington, Dallas, Giants) and that debt is has gotten costlier. Lower revenue clubs don't like the current CBA because new local-revenue sharing did not cover the higher player costs, which comes right off their bottom line. And with no CBA, there is no salary floor, or minimum. Arizona and Cincinnati can go way cheap should they wish to.

Its going to be tough for the middle to hold.

[bobblehead]

As I said in the past, if the NFL allows an uncapped year I hope TT and the packer brass do a protest and sign 53 bums for 50k a year and ruin the quality of the game to prove to the other 31 teams that this is a group effort.

[Patler]

No cap next year.

Maybe. I will be surprised (but not shocked) if the NFL plays a year without a cap.

I wouldn't be at all but I would be shocked if the players took the field in 2011 without a new deal with a cap.

2010 has some nice free agency/tag changes which mitigate the lack of a cap. I doubt the owners would want to go into the following year with a free for all.

I think it will be a mistake to play a year without a cap, even if the special provisions make it less than horrible for owners in 2010. I think that is a horse they don't want to let out of the barn. They may never get it back again.

[texaspackerbacker]

[quote="Patler"]

No cap next year.

Maybe. I will be surprised (but not shocked) if the NFL plays a year without a cap.

I wouldn't be at all but I would be shocked if the players took the field in 2011 without a new deal with a cap.

2010 has some nice free agency/tag changes which mitigate the lack of a cap. I doubt the owners would want to go into the following year with a free for all.[/quote


I think it will be a mistake to play a year without a cap, even if the special provisions make it less than horrible for owners in 2010. I think that is a horse they don't want to let out of the barn. They may never get it back again.

That would seem inevitable. What are they going to do? Have a bunch of super-inflated one year contracts? If players sign long term and a team goes way over what would have been the cap, then the next season you go back to a cap, you have chaos. Some teams/GMs might have good sense and not get carried away, but there's always some who would sell the farm to "win now" and be in cap hell from the next season on.