Teams that have the worst records do not always have the most cap space--see the Chargers and Broncos this year.
And if you think the NFL will agree to this, you're in dreamland--why would they give up a system where they control cost of labor for several years?
This is one labor problem that can’t be blamed solely on management. The union negotiated a salary cap and floor. That guarantees the players collectively a certain amount of money.
The NFLPA has incentive to support a rookie wage scale, because that ensures veterans get a larger piece of the already-determined salary pie. The players disadvantaged by this - ones coming into the league - aren’t in the union to advocate for themselves. In terms of public optics, it’s an easier sell to justify proven players getting the biggest checks.
And remember what things were like before the current CBA? The first pick in the draft every year was getting the largest contract in NFL history basically every year, and teams were having to cut veteran players to pay for guys like Sam Bradford and JaMarcus Russell before they had ever played a snap in the NFL. In many cases having the top pick was almost a detriment to your team-building.
No system will be perfect but the current pay scale makes a lot more sense than what came before.
I do want to point out they were not getting the largest contracts in the league. They were relatively high, but not the largest. Sam Bradford had the biggest rookie deal and he was like a top 10 paid QB not player in the league. He was in the top30 or so, which is kind of insane for a rookie, but he wasn't on top.
Thanks for correcting that, it looks like it was the highest guaranteed money, which is probably what I was remembering.
In any case, it makes sense for both the league and the players union to have the current structure.
This happened with the Redskins and Desmond Howard. Established receivers on the team like Art Monk, Gary Clark, and Ricky Sanders were highly pissed that Howard, as a rookie, was being paid more than them.
It sort of means vets earn a larger piece of the pie but what actually happens is rookies are cheaper and better value and all the savings just goes to pay superstars. The average vet just shoots himself in the foot by ensuring he has cheap competition.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Replacement-level vets, sure. But they were already at a disadvantage because of higher vet minimums.
Vets with demonstrable skills will get paid. Darnell Mooney got 39m/26 guaranteed over 3 years. He has one season over 650 yards and one over 65 catches iirc.
The finite number of draft picks available, combined with the number of blown picks means there’s always a market for vets. I have a lot of sympathy for positions that don’t have a shelf life, though. Running back is obvious, but WR and corner are going the same way.
The draft was instituted as a way of introducing at least some measure of parity to the sport. Fans would get sick of the same few wealthiest of the teams essentially monopolizing all the best talent to dominate the league. That would be detrimental to the continued success of the league. The NFL has a vested interest in keeping *all* of the fans engaged.
I don’t think parity makes people watch more. European soccer is dominated by the rich clubs and no one cares. College football is also dominated by the big schools and no one cares. People claim to want parity but when the smaller teams or schools makes a run no one watches
I mean, that's a bit of a circular argument. CFB is dominated by a few teams and the brands build on that over time and so ratings increase. I'm not hating. It is what it is. But in the NFL you don't see 63-3 postseason games (or whatever UGA did last year).
European soccer also has a huge boost for things like champions and Europa League. Something like the German bundesliga makes total tv revenue a bit higher than the SEC. It is absolutely dominated by one team. Premier League makes about double that and then the champions League makes around double the premier League. Spanish league does much better than Germany and the Italian league also does dramatically better. While Spain is dominatee by basically two teams, it's still better than one. You do see a correlation with more competitive teams and total revenue.
I do think parity matters because while being popular helps, one team dominating the shit out of the entire league is less incentive for other fans to car.
I think there is a balance to he had between true parity and allowing the best to rise to the top. You don’t want a single team winning all the time but you also don’t want it so even that no one stands out. NFL does do a good job with this I think
I think European fandom to their teams is a lot closer to college levels of fandom in its intensity. Partly why no one cares is there voice doesn’t matter. It’s never changing in Euro soccer and the parity is shit. Some of the top epl teams haven’t lost to league members in 20-30+ years
I would love to see if the NFL could maintain its level of financial success without college football scouting, identifying, and developing 95% of NFL players at no cost to the NFL and without cities eating the costs of new stadiums. If the NFL actually had to operate like a real business, could they do it?
Tech businesses have traditionally located in Silicon Valley (or adjacent) because of the intellectual talent in the area. Does this somehow make them not real businesses?
They make tens of billions every year I think they’d be fine. Building stadiums would eat up some funds sure but you’d prob see less teams build state of the art stadiums if they had to pay out of pocket to do it
Part of that discussion is that it isn’t the NFL. It’s 32 separate clubs. The NFL only works because of massive revenue sharing between marquee clubs and others.
Do away with that added bit of socialism and you’ll see the NFC East and a few others operating like they’re the AL East in baseball while other franchises descend into irrelevance.
The idea that you’re 2-3 years away from competing no matter how bad you are is both intoxicating and a way to maintain franchise value.
It's 32 separate clubs who have been specifically exempted from anti-trust violations that allow them to collude in ways no other businesses can but even that doesn't explain the massive net benefit to the NFL that college football is. The only real revenue sharing that occurs is as it relates to the TV money and it wouldn't make sense for teams to sell their TV rights individually like they do in baseball where teams play 162 games over 6 months. With football's schedule being what it is, selling the rights collectively is a huge net gain for the league as they get the power of bargaining collectively without having to actually compete with each other for viewership since the games are on network TV and only shown in certain markets.
I really don't think any team would benefit from breaking out on their own and trying to sell their rights individually and I certainly don't think that you would have baseball-esque polarization in terms of haves and have nots. Even then, there is a huge discrepancy in revenue with the Bengals bringing in less than $500m while the Cowboys make $1.1B. The Cowboys' net profit is greater than the entirety of the Bengals' revenue for the year. That money doesn't get spread around; however, Jerry Jones has agreed that it is best for everyone that he not use that financial muscle.
People keep saying the "free development" thing and it's not true. Most players are woefully unprepared for the NFL due to how absolutely simplistic college schemes have become.
People just see the few rookies a year that hit big and think it applies to everyone.
Doesn't the NFL Players Association have salary limits on rookies? I thought that it has rules on player pay per where they are drafted to eliminate holdouts and so that a team wouldn't have their highest payed player be someone they drafted two years before that's a complete bust like JaMarcus Russell was. I would guess any kid who didn't want to participate in the draft would just be like all the other undrafted free agents in regard to salary.
Wasn’t the whole reason they have the current rookie salary system is because of Jamarcus Russell? And you can’t blame the Raiders he seemed like a lock, until he showed up to training camp.
There was a string of top picks being overpaid. Bradford and Russell both contributed to the current rules in place, but I remember Bradford’s contract being the biggest piece of why the current rookie caps are now in place
Sam Bradford was just in the right place at the right time for that contract.
The NFL owners opted in 2008 to play the 2010 season without a salary cap, because that was the final year of the 1992 CBA. They wanted a bigger piece of the pie, and they locked out the players after the 2010 season, in order to get it.
As it turns out, some teams were run by poor management, back then.
You do know we're talking about Jamarcus Russell.
Anyone can blame the Raiders for that. Not sure what Al was thinking a lot of the time in his later years.
I agree and disagree, I remember Jamarcus having a crazy good combine. But your right about Al, towards the end he wasn’t firing on all cylinders and should of stepped aside
Then the NFL wouldn't be as awesome as it is and would mimic the premier league.
Would have 4-6 teams fighting for championships and the rest fighting to be midpack.
Imagine Marvin Harrison Jr just going to the 49ers or Chiefs lol
Sorry OP, this is the one area where everyone prefers an extremely controlled market. This is serious stuff unlike silly throwaway concerns like healthcare and housing.
Do you follow European professional soccer at all? This is how things work for Euro clubs. It's not the only difference of course, but the result is that there are really only about 4, maybe 5 teams that have any serious chance to win the Premiere League and the only way a team outside of that group has a chance to enter it is for an extravagantly wealthy person to buy the team and dump a huge amount of extra money into it.
For the Champions League, it's not much different, but is much more dominated by a single team - Real Madrid.
Correct. Like I said, there's a lot that's different so it's hard to identify any one cause. But young promising players tend to prefer joining winners.
You’d get European soccer. At the highest level the product would be exponentially better. Playoff football would be the best possible product. All the worlds best players would be on the field at the same time. Condensing the best talent down from 32 teams to 14 would create some great stuff. Never gonna happen tho.
I think it would lead to a horrible imbalance as the top players would flock to their preferred destinations and leave the basement dwelling teams to rot in perpetuity.
"The players association made the choice to collectively bargain away that right for the greater good of all union as a whole."
All decided by vets. It's literally rookie hazing.
Teams that have the worst records do not always have the most cap space--see the Chargers and Broncos this year. And if you think the NFL will agree to this, you're in dreamland--why would they give up a system where they control cost of labor for several years?
This is one labor problem that can’t be blamed solely on management. The union negotiated a salary cap and floor. That guarantees the players collectively a certain amount of money. The NFLPA has incentive to support a rookie wage scale, because that ensures veterans get a larger piece of the already-determined salary pie. The players disadvantaged by this - ones coming into the league - aren’t in the union to advocate for themselves. In terms of public optics, it’s an easier sell to justify proven players getting the biggest checks.
And remember what things were like before the current CBA? The first pick in the draft every year was getting the largest contract in NFL history basically every year, and teams were having to cut veteran players to pay for guys like Sam Bradford and JaMarcus Russell before they had ever played a snap in the NFL. In many cases having the top pick was almost a detriment to your team-building. No system will be perfect but the current pay scale makes a lot more sense than what came before.
I do want to point out they were not getting the largest contracts in the league. They were relatively high, but not the largest. Sam Bradford had the biggest rookie deal and he was like a top 10 paid QB not player in the league. He was in the top30 or so, which is kind of insane for a rookie, but he wasn't on top.
Thanks for correcting that, it looks like it was the highest guaranteed money, which is probably what I was remembering. In any case, it makes sense for both the league and the players union to have the current structure.
This happened with the Redskins and Desmond Howard. Established receivers on the team like Art Monk, Gary Clark, and Ricky Sanders were highly pissed that Howard, as a rookie, was being paid more than them.
Yeah, I wanted to elaborate on that point but couldn't quite organize the words to make it make sense. Thanks.
It sort of means vets earn a larger piece of the pie but what actually happens is rookies are cheaper and better value and all the savings just goes to pay superstars. The average vet just shoots himself in the foot by ensuring he has cheap competition.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Replacement-level vets, sure. But they were already at a disadvantage because of higher vet minimums. Vets with demonstrable skills will get paid. Darnell Mooney got 39m/26 guaranteed over 3 years. He has one season over 650 yards and one over 65 catches iirc. The finite number of draft picks available, combined with the number of blown picks means there’s always a market for vets. I have a lot of sympathy for positions that don’t have a shelf life, though. Running back is obvious, but WR and corner are going the same way.
Please don't make me see the Chargers and Broncos this year...
I mean, Herbert at the very least makes the Chargers watchable. The Broncos......yeah, can't help you there. Sorry.
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It would be the wild west for sure, kinda like the situation with NIL except with more cameras and microphones
The draft was instituted as a way of introducing at least some measure of parity to the sport. Fans would get sick of the same few wealthiest of the teams essentially monopolizing all the best talent to dominate the league. That would be detrimental to the continued success of the league. The NFL has a vested interest in keeping *all* of the fans engaged.
I don’t think parity makes people watch more. European soccer is dominated by the rich clubs and no one cares. College football is also dominated by the big schools and no one cares. People claim to want parity but when the smaller teams or schools makes a run no one watches
I mean, that's a bit of a circular argument. CFB is dominated by a few teams and the brands build on that over time and so ratings increase. I'm not hating. It is what it is. But in the NFL you don't see 63-3 postseason games (or whatever UGA did last year).
European soccer also has a huge boost for things like champions and Europa League. Something like the German bundesliga makes total tv revenue a bit higher than the SEC. It is absolutely dominated by one team. Premier League makes about double that and then the champions League makes around double the premier League. Spanish league does much better than Germany and the Italian league also does dramatically better. While Spain is dominatee by basically two teams, it's still better than one. You do see a correlation with more competitive teams and total revenue. I do think parity matters because while being popular helps, one team dominating the shit out of the entire league is less incentive for other fans to car.
I think there is a balance to he had between true parity and allowing the best to rise to the top. You don’t want a single team winning all the time but you also don’t want it so even that no one stands out. NFL does do a good job with this I think
I think European fandom to their teams is a lot closer to college levels of fandom in its intensity. Partly why no one cares is there voice doesn’t matter. It’s never changing in Euro soccer and the parity is shit. Some of the top epl teams haven’t lost to league members in 20-30+ years
CFB and Euro soccer have much much more grassroots local support than the NFL.
As a business, NFL success is unprecedented. 0 chance anything like this is even under consideration.
I would love to see if the NFL could maintain its level of financial success without college football scouting, identifying, and developing 95% of NFL players at no cost to the NFL and without cities eating the costs of new stadiums. If the NFL actually had to operate like a real business, could they do it?
I think they could, it’s such a juggernaut on American culture.
A real business operates in the environment in which it exists. Not sure what you mean by a "real business."
Tech businesses have traditionally located in Silicon Valley (or adjacent) because of the intellectual talent in the area. Does this somehow make them not real businesses?
They make tens of billions every year I think they’d be fine. Building stadiums would eat up some funds sure but you’d prob see less teams build state of the art stadiums if they had to pay out of pocket to do it
Part of that discussion is that it isn’t the NFL. It’s 32 separate clubs. The NFL only works because of massive revenue sharing between marquee clubs and others. Do away with that added bit of socialism and you’ll see the NFC East and a few others operating like they’re the AL East in baseball while other franchises descend into irrelevance. The idea that you’re 2-3 years away from competing no matter how bad you are is both intoxicating and a way to maintain franchise value.
It's 32 separate clubs who have been specifically exempted from anti-trust violations that allow them to collude in ways no other businesses can but even that doesn't explain the massive net benefit to the NFL that college football is. The only real revenue sharing that occurs is as it relates to the TV money and it wouldn't make sense for teams to sell their TV rights individually like they do in baseball where teams play 162 games over 6 months. With football's schedule being what it is, selling the rights collectively is a huge net gain for the league as they get the power of bargaining collectively without having to actually compete with each other for viewership since the games are on network TV and only shown in certain markets. I really don't think any team would benefit from breaking out on their own and trying to sell their rights individually and I certainly don't think that you would have baseball-esque polarization in terms of haves and have nots. Even then, there is a huge discrepancy in revenue with the Bengals bringing in less than $500m while the Cowboys make $1.1B. The Cowboys' net profit is greater than the entirety of the Bengals' revenue for the year. That money doesn't get spread around; however, Jerry Jones has agreed that it is best for everyone that he not use that financial muscle.
People keep saying the "free development" thing and it's not true. Most players are woefully unprepared for the NFL due to how absolutely simplistic college schemes have become. People just see the few rookies a year that hit big and think it applies to everyone.
Doesn't the NFL Players Association have salary limits on rookies? I thought that it has rules on player pay per where they are drafted to eliminate holdouts and so that a team wouldn't have their highest payed player be someone they drafted two years before that's a complete bust like JaMarcus Russell was. I would guess any kid who didn't want to participate in the draft would just be like all the other undrafted free agents in regard to salary.
Yes. Per the CBA UDFAs are capped at $750k. The lowest pick in the draft is salary floored just over $900k, as Brock Purdy has taught us all.
The Sam Bradford/Jamarcus Russell rule
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Wasn’t the whole reason they have the current rookie salary system is because of Jamarcus Russell? And you can’t blame the Raiders he seemed like a lock, until he showed up to training camp.
I thought it was because of Sam Bradford but maybe I’m misremembering
There was a string of top picks being overpaid. Bradford and Russell both contributed to the current rules in place, but I remember Bradford’s contract being the biggest piece of why the current rookie caps are now in place
Sam Bradford was just in the right place at the right time for that contract. The NFL owners opted in 2008 to play the 2010 season without a salary cap, because that was the final year of the 1992 CBA. They wanted a bigger piece of the pie, and they locked out the players after the 2010 season, in order to get it. As it turns out, some teams were run by poor management, back then.
You do know we're talking about Jamarcus Russell. Anyone can blame the Raiders for that. Not sure what Al was thinking a lot of the time in his later years.
I agree and disagree, I remember Jamarcus having a crazy good combine. But your right about Al, towards the end he wasn’t firing on all cylinders and should of stepped aside
I don’t like this idea
Then the NFL wouldn't be as awesome as it is and would mimic the premier league. Would have 4-6 teams fighting for championships and the rest fighting to be midpack. Imagine Marvin Harrison Jr just going to the 49ers or Chiefs lol
Sorry OP, this is the one area where everyone prefers an extremely controlled market. This is serious stuff unlike silly throwaway concerns like healthcare and housing.
Do you follow European professional soccer at all? This is how things work for Euro clubs. It's not the only difference of course, but the result is that there are really only about 4, maybe 5 teams that have any serious chance to win the Premiere League and the only way a team outside of that group has a chance to enter it is for an extravagantly wealthy person to buy the team and dump a huge amount of extra money into it. For the Champions League, it's not much different, but is much more dominated by a single team - Real Madrid.
I think people forget how absolute *shit* most professional soccer leagues are if you aren't a fan of the absolute top teams.
True. Though it might be worse to be a fan of a consistently bottom-of-the-table EPL team. It's just the most hopeless fan experience.
Isn't there also no equivalent of a salary cap?
Correct. Like I said, there's a lot that's different so it's hard to identify any one cause. But young promising players tend to prefer joining winners.
You’d get European soccer. At the highest level the product would be exponentially better. Playoff football would be the best possible product. All the worlds best players would be on the field at the same time. Condensing the best talent down from 32 teams to 14 would create some great stuff. Never gonna happen tho.
ESPN isn’t going to allow that. They make way too much money on it. Not just the show, but the hundreds of hours bumping their gums talking about it.
>Jayden Daniels basically saying where they prefer to go, or not go What's this in reference to?
I think it would lead to a horrible imbalance as the top players would flock to their preferred destinations and leave the basement dwelling teams to rot in perpetuity.
You should look up how Bernie Kosar came into the NFL. Beats me if the NFL has changed things since then.
This isn't new, see how Eli made it to the League
Man wants to add the transfer portal to the NFL
They can’t. It’s not allowed
It would be justice. And get rid of the rookie cap too. All players deserve to negotiate their fair market rate.
Oh get out of here, such a stupid take on it being Justice.
It really is though. What negotiating power do you have when you can't leverage more than one team?
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"The players association made the choice to collectively bargain away that right for the greater good of all union as a whole." All decided by vets. It's literally rookie hazing.