krsone21
Footballguy
Duh, because we are talking about players on their rookie contracts. Not veterans.
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums
This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Did you all know about this part of the CBA deal? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Ministry of Pain
- Start date
SSOG
Moderator
I've just never seen anyone make the argument that we should somehow limit the bargaining power of vested veterans, because a lot of veteran free agency signings are complete busts. But I frequently see people say we should limit the bargaining power of rookies, because a lot of rookies are busts. I'm pointing out the logical disconnect. Rookies were underpaid even under the old system. They're ludicrously underpaid in the new system.As for the second point... If the salary cap is $120m, and insurance costs $X dollars, then in situations where players can bargain (and therefore are not required to get insurance), the players get compensated $120m. In situations where players cannot bargain and are forced to buy insurance, the players get compensated $120-X. That's a loss for the players. Anytime an agreement bars one party from doing something they would prefer to do (such as renegotiate early for the players), that party loses.
Last edited by a moderator:
GregR
Footballguy
The owners have a contractual obligation to pay a certain 89% of the cap. Every dollar they don't pay a rookie is a dollar they have to pay some non-rookie. So they don't win for not having to pay money to players.The league wins because their money goes to employees who are likely to contribute more. You'll have a higher hit rate of good investments in players if you can judge them on 3 years of NFL play than if you're just judging them on college play. Their investments have less waste, but don't decrease in size.
Amongst players, in general the rookies who are successful players should make more over the course of their career, while the rookies who are not NFL caliber players will make less. Just think about it for a moment... you take money from all rookies, bust and NFL-worthy alike. You distribute it back only to players who showed over 3 years of play they are NFL worthy. So successful players as a group make back every penny taken from successful rookies by the CBA change, plus get the extra money taken from the bust rookie players.
A specific individual may make less money. If this new system was in place in 2007, then Calvin Johnson and Joe Thomas might have made less money as individuals. But their money (if they did make less) would likely be shifted to other capable players so isn't a loss to the group of good players. And so would a large chunk of the money paid to busts like Jamarcus Russell and Gaines Adams. Overall the capable players as a group would receive more money and the busts would receive less. I don't think most people are going to have a problem with that outcome.
Last edited by a moderator:
ghostguy123
Footballguy
Pretty much sums it up. What do some of you want, a guy like Wilson to be upset that he is playing great or something?
The system is a lot better than it was. It's better for the sport. The young players actually have to prove themselves to get that large 2nd deal. Oh no, the horror you say
Hooper31
Footballguy
Found this at PFT
This means that the guys in the 2012 season received performance based pay. Example cited from the 2009 season: Vikings center John Sullivan picked up an extra $397,555. His base salary that season was $385,000.
Kool-Aid Larry
Footballguy
so, you're telling me rookies had no reason to buy insurance under the old cba?
Chicago Hooligan
Footballguy
Ayn Rand for commissioner.
Hooper31
Footballguy
Perhaps I misunderstand, but the crux of this argument seems to be here: Which should be the backbone for determining how players get paid?A. Compensation for what they did during last season.B. Compensation for their perceived potential in next season.Might make an interesting poll.
Kool-Aid Larry
Footballguy
I think the crux of the argument is that mop woke up a couple days ago, found out rookies work on cheap contracts, and got indignant about it.I'm sure next week it'll be something else.
renesauz
IBL Representative
I like the idea, and we need to remember that Kap and WIlson are the exceptions....not the rule. In the past, many rookies and young players tended to be paid too much. Those who were dramatically underpaid were able to hold out...and almost always got paid.That said, there should definately be something put into the system allowing players to get an early raise when they dramatically out-perform their contracts. An independant review of some sort. This system is much better than the one it replaced, but it's not perfect.
Last edited by a moderator:
12punch
Footballguy
BUTOMGGREG.......Iread on the internetz that most of these guys bust out of the league after only 3 years!!!How will they survive without stealing millions from the league, and their fellow players, before they go???21!
12punch
Footballguy
You mean some mechanism that would allow guys lik gronk, or hernandez, to cash in if they tear kt up their first couple years?Yeah, that would be pretty awesome - i wonder if we could get an online petition going on this independent review thing.
GregR
Footballguy
By the way I disagree with the above. I think with the role that passing plays in the league now, that inside pass rush is more important than it ever was because it gets to the QB the quickest. Which means I think the importance of guards and centers is growing, not declining. Perhaps not as important as the tackle still, but the gap is shrinking, not growing.
Last edited by a moderator:
Ministry of Pain
Footballguy
How many DTs are racking up double digit sack totals? Since Sapp retired, who is the best DT in the league now? Teams at times go stretches without DTs even being on the field. I understand I am going to be criticized, that's fine. I guess I just disagree with your disagree so we maybe we can agree to just disagree here.
GregR
Footballguy
Think about the meaning of what you said. More teams are taking DTs out from the inside on pass plays. Why?It isn't because the inside pass rush is less important. They do it to move DEs inside so they have a stronger inside pass rush, because they realize it is more important than ever to get to the QB quickly. Which was my exact point.
How do you combat the Giants moving Justin Tuck inside and bringing in another pass rusher, or the Texans using Watt and Antonio Smith as DTs in nickel and dime, as two examples? You need better guards and centers who can handle having better pass rushers in front of them and keep the defense out of the QB's face.
Last edited by a moderator:
Hooper31
Footballguy
Holy ####. Its like I'm talking to my shadow. Scroll up a bit and look at the provided links. There is a system in place.
SSOG
Moderator
Is the money going to people who contribute more, though? I would argue just the opposite. First off, everyone likes to talk about the rookie busts, and rookies do bust at a high rate. The problem is, so do veterans. Albert Haynesworth, Javon Walker, Nnamdi Asomugha, Adam Archuletta- all of these were guys with years and years of film who got colossal contracts and then proceeded to bust spectacularly. Do rookies bust at a higher rate than vets? Probably a slightly higher rate, but they also exceed their contract at a hugely, hugely, hugely higher rate. Go look at the top 50 most underpaid players in the league and see how many are still on rookie contracts. If all of the most underpaid players are on rookie contracts, that suggests to me we should allocate more money to rookies, not less.
The simple fact that free agent bidding is essentially a common value auction while rookie contract negotiations are not pretty much guarantees that people getting contracts through free agency as a group will certainly be far more overpaid than people getting rookie contracts as a group. It's based on a concept called the "Winner's Curse", which in its simplest form boils down to this- if 31 teams correctly calculate a player's true value, and one team overrates his true value, the player will wind up on the one team that overvalued him, not any of the 31 that accurately valued him. As a result, we should expect the result of free agency to be that the players who enter it, taken as a group, will wind up overpaid. Shifting more money away from the rookies and towards the free agents, while simultaneously creating a spending minimum, is only going to exacerbate this effect. It will not allocate resources to the people who are most deserving, it will take a group that is already overpaid and give them even more money, making them even more overpaid.
Or, another way to look at it is this: if there were no draft, if rookies were free to negotiate and sign with any team just like free agents, would they make more or less money? Because if the answer is more, they're certainly underpaid. I think, even under the old system, the answer would be more. Under the new system, the answer is many orders of magnitude more. I think it's pretty much an article of faith in America that the free and open market is very good at accurately pricing assets given the information available. We should expect, then, that any regulations on the free market (such as bans on open negotiation for rookies, or bans on renegotiation for young players) would produce a distorting effect on the marketplace that would reduce the accuracy of pricing. If our goal is to give the most money to the players whose play is worth the most money, we should let the teams decide what the players are worth rather than barring them from negotiating.
No, I'm not. Do you think rookies buy more or less insurance under the new CBA compared to the old one? If the answer is more (as I think it clearly is), then that results in less money going to the players and more going to the insurance companies.
mr roboto
Footballguy
Chase Stuart
Footballguy
This is a pretty good idea; I think we're getting closer to the best of both worlds. The real ideal if there was some invisible hand that pushed the desire for the owners to pay X and the desire for each player to receive Y closer together, until an amount was realized.
The Winner's Curse doesn't apply when total spending is a fixed amount, which is what the salary cap & floor scheme approximates. The auction in that situation is only for distributing money among free agents, not for deciding how much will be spent on free agents. It therefore can't cause overspending on free agents as a group.
Do you mean in a particular given year, or do you mean in their careers taken as a whole? If the former, why is that the more relevant question? If the latter, can you explain your reason for thinking they'd earn more?
Last edited by a moderator:
SSOG
Moderator
At first I was really resistant to the idea of axing the draft, but I've come around to it over the years. I think if you want to give worse teams an advantage so they can catch up to better teams, you could accomplish the same effect via rigging the salary cap, giving more cap space to the bad teams and less to the good teams, and then still allowing all rookies to negotiate on the open market.
SSOG
Moderator
Let's say that players on their 1st contract contribute 50% of the wins in the NFL, while players on their second or later contract also contribute 50%. Let's also say that the collective bargaining agreement stipulated that players on their first contract could only receive 25% of total player pay, leaving the remaining 75% for players on future contracts. In this scenario, veterans as a group make three times as much money per win share provided when compared to rookies, which means veterans as a group are overpaid. In fact, if one group is underpaid (as I would argue rookies are), and total spending is fixed (as it is with the salary cap and floor), then it stands to reason that the group including all other players must be overpaid. They are getting a disproportionate share of the money relative to their on-field contributions.
I posit that the current system of allocating rookie rights and contracts has the following effects:1. Since rookies have drastically reduced bargaining power, contracts they secure are less lucrative than what they would receive on the open market. 2. Players who receive a second contract can recoup that loss, since players on second contracts are, as a group, overpaid. 3. Players who do not receive a second contract will never recoup the financial losses. 4. Because rookie players are so much cheaper than veterans, many end-of-roster veterans will lose roster spots to cheaper but less talented rookies. 5. Creating rules that increase the lag between when a player performs and when a player receives a big payday reduces the chances that a player's pay will match his performance. 6. Creating rules that increase the lag between when a player performs and when a player receives a big payday incentivises the purchase of insurance, which reduces the share of funds going to players and increases the share of funds going to insurance companies (under the assumption that insurance carries a positive EV for the insurance company and a negative EV for the players).1 seems pretty self-explanatory to me. 2 and 3 also make intuitive sense- if players are generally underpaid on first contracts and overpaid on subsequent contracts, then players who get subsequent contracts benefit at the expense of players that don't. Which suggests that the real losers in this system are not the Wilsons or Kaepernicks or Watts, who will get theirs eventually- it's the end of the roster guys, the special teamers and quality depth guys. 3 and 4 also fit with conventional understanding- it is nearly universally acknowledged that successful teams need to build through the draft because that's the only way they'll get enough cheap labor to fill the holes in their roster. 5 seems intuitive enough, as well. If all rookies signed massive lifetime contracts when they entered the league and those contracts could never be renegotiated, the odds would increase dramatically that those players would be either massively overpaid or massively underpaid. If every player signed a one year contract every season, the odds of them being dramatically overpaid or underpaid falls dramatically- if a player's play shoots through the roof, he only has to labor one season before his compensation matches his production. If a player's play falls through the floor, then within a single season his compensation would drop to match. The more frequently a deal is renegotiated and the closer compensation is to production, the more that compensation is going to actually correlate with production. Finally, 6 is just simple math if you assume that insurance companies are both profit-seeking entities (meaning they will not offer products that they don't perceive as a positive EV for them) and efficient at evaluating risk.On the whole, this system produces winners and losers. Under this system, insurance companies are winners. Likewise, this system opens the door for cheap rookies who might not be among the 1696 best players on the planet (32 teams * 53 roster spots), but who are cheaper than most of the players ahead of them and therefore get an opportunity over a better/more deserving player. It allows a greater number of people to experience the dream of playing in the NFL. What this system doesn't do, however, is create a meritocracy where compensation matches production or value to the greatest degree possible.
greggorymac
Footballguy
roadkill1292
Footballguy
I thought you always took the position that an open market for rookies would have to result in higher salaries for them. If you'll remember, I took the position that, because of the ridiculous slotting custom, rookies in some years would actually earn less than in prior years (in an open market system).
That's because of the 25% cap on money devoted to players on their first contract. It has nothing to do with the Winner's Curse.
The major effects are #1 through #3. But it's the money that a player makes over the course of his career that matters, IMO, rather than how it's divided up within the course of his career. It's not very meaningful to categorize people as "rookies" or "veterans" for that purpose because those labels are so transitory. Every rookie aspires to be a veteran, and every veteran used to be a rookie.The major effect of the new rules is to shift earnings from earlier in a player's career to later. This hurts players with very short careers, and helps players with longer careers. It hurts Jamarcus Russell (i.e., highly-touted players who suck) and Robert Edwards (i.e., highly-touted players whose careers are cut short by injury), and helps everybody else.(I don't think #5 is true, and I think the effects of #4 and #6 are fairly negligible.)
"To the greatest degree possible" is a pretty high bar. If you wanted to match compensation and production as closely as possible, salaries should be determined strictly in hindsight — players should be paid only for past production rather than for expected future production. Past production is much easier to measure. The new system doesn't go all the way in that regard, but it is a step in that direction. If you compare career-long productivity with career-long earnings under the previous system and under this system, I suspect the match will be closer under this system. Eliminating the Jamarcus Russell-type errors is a pretty big effect.
Last edited by a moderator:
Only during their rookie contracts, not during their careers as a whole.
Last edited by a moderator:
Kool-Aid Larry
Footballguy
and I thought my sarcasm was too over the top.you guys really haven't heard about the new deals gronk and hernandez signed?
GregR
Footballguy
MT nailed it at usual.The issue is not "rookies are underpaid because a lot of underpaid players are rookies". The issue is good players are underpaid and bad players are overpaid.It doesn't matter if the good player makes his appropriate money as a rookie or after year 3. But if you're going to distribute it to all rookies as you advocate SSOG, then money that should have gone to a good player went to a bad player.Half of NFL rookies don't make it past 4 years in the NFL. They weren't deemed as having played at a level that warranted even a minimum salary contract when it came time to renew them.Throwing more money to all rookies when half were deemed to have not played at a level to earn even what they already made doesn't help matters. It's just taking even more money from the good players pockets.The Robert Edwards of the world who are lost to injury are the only ones who deserved more and could have lost out. But that is a matter to be solved with the injury settlement program the NFL and NFLPA have, not by throwing more money at every player so you can catch the small number in that situation.
SSOG
Moderator
Yes, true. I never really thought of how the salary cap short circuits the winner's curse (there are X dollars to spend, and Y wins to be had, so no matter how you allocate you're always going to average X/Y dollars per win over the whole group).
I think the timing of the money matters more than you suggest. First there's the time value of money. Second, there are diminishing marginal returns- a player is better off signing a $6m rookie contract and $60m second contract than if he signed a $4m rookie contract and $62m second contract, even if both scenarios yield $66m over the life of the two contracts. But I don't think any of this is relevant to how meritorious the NFL's compensation proves to be, so it's not really relevant to this discussion. I also would like to know why you don't think #5 is true. Imagine team A signs a player to a 6 year contract, and team B signs his clone to a 2 year contract. Which player do you think is more likely to be over or underpaid in the final year of his contract?
Again, everyone focuses on the rookie busts while ignoring the veteran busts or the rookies who radically outperform. Jamarcus Russell does not exist in a vacuum. He exists in the same world as Albert Haynesworth and Russell Wilson. Eliminating Jamarcus-type errors is only a big effect if it doesn't create Wilson-type errors and exacerbate Albert-type errors. I don't know. You think this system will more closely match compensation with production. I think it will do the opposite. When you restrict the bargaining power of a class of players, I think it will be impossible for that class to be fairly compensated, and the more you restrict their rights, the more unfairly they will be compensated. I fail to see how a system where a large class of players is more unfairly compensated can create an end result where all players, on the net, are more fairly compensated.
ghostguy123
Footballguy
I would rather see a veteran who has actually shown to have success in the league get overpaid with a FA contract and be a bust for that team, than to see a rookie who has never set foot on an NFL field get paid a ton and be a bust for that team.I would have to say a player with several years of NFL service should earn more in his career than someone would get for their rookie contract.Many of the same problems still remain as far as guys being overpaid and sucking, but there is nothing that can be done about that. It will happen in one form or another. One thing I would like to see is something where if you sign a guy to a huge deal and then cut him, that salary won't count against the salary cap. Maybe have a rule where you can cut ONE player per season where this applies. This would allow the players to make a bit more on average. After all, dead salary cap money is money that they could be paying someone else. I heard someone mention about players careers lasting about 3 years on average. Does this even apply to the guys we are talking about that have severely outplayed their contracts? Or are a lot of those guys who played 3 years or less out of the league cause they weren't any good.
roadkill1292
Footballguy
Why is it again that we wish to prevent teams from exercising poor judgement?
SSOG
Moderator
IIRC, this was pretty thoroughly debunked. The NFLPA was tossing this around during the lockout, but what they were doing was taking every current NFL player and averaging how long they had been in the NFL to that point. For example, this method would say that JJ Watt's "career" was only two years long, which is disingenuous- we all know his career will be much longer than that when all is said and done. I believe that if you only look at players who retire and count their total career length at the time of their retirement, the average NFL career is more like 6 years. For whatever that's worth.
ghostguy123
Footballguy
Right. I also don't know of all that many players who's career only lasted three years for health reasons. Some sure, but not that many.The vast majority of the guys that last 3 years or less just weren't good players, and they weren't going to be able to hold out for more money anyway.Also, I don't mind that some rookies that start hot will have to wait a couple years for a big payday. After all, they will certainly get their opportunity to become one of those veterans who signs a big deal and then busts.
Last edited by a moderator:
GregR
Footballguy
I don't think anyone is ignoring veteran busts. But we're talking in terms of the general outcome, and the general outcome is there are a lot more rookies who don't deserve more money than there are veterans. On top of the numbers, veteran high contract busts generally got their high contract for having played at a high level in the NFL. Rookie busts never play at a high level.But let's put that aside for the moment and focus in specifically on veteran busts. How would we go about making it perfectly equitable for them? As MT said before, we'd only decide pay after results are known. Which means if you want to move towards a system that deals perfectly with veteran busts, you have to move further away from the old system you are supporting... moving in the direction the new system took things but going even further.The new system isn't perfect, but it addresses your own stated issues better than the old system does.
renesauz
IBL Representative
That "system" is both weak and failing...miserably. Changing a 350K base salary into 700K for a guy performing at a 5 million dollar ++ level is quite obviously not meeting the point.
Last edited by a moderator:
renesauz
IBL Representative
This is the crux of it SSOG. If mistakes are to happen...make them with players who have done SOMETHING at SOME point in time.Also, part of your argument seems to revolve around the theory that players on their first contract contribute 50% to a teams W/L record...an idea I find ludicrous.We can all agree that this system is unfair to WIlson and Kap, and talk about the best way to fix that part of the unfairness, but many of us would still contend that this is a HUGE improvement over the systemt that paid Jamarcus Russell 50 million dollars. Why? Because eventually WIlson and Kap are almost certain to get paid what they are worth...and partly because of the system, they are likely to get paid more on contract #2 than they would have under the old system....their lifetime earnings might be lower, but not an error measured in tens of millions, like the error with Russell.
A veteran bust is nowhere close to as bad as a rookie bust when lifetime earnings are measured against lifetime production. Which I guess was kind of MTs point above.
cstu
Footballguy
RB's are the ones who get hurt the most in this. They tend to start their rookie year and could have a large number of carries by their 3rd year. Doug Martin for example could get hurt at the end of his 3rd year and have trouble renegotiating his deal in his 4th. If he does become a free agent he'll already be 27.
ghostguy123
Footballguy
I think they could throw in a wrinkle for RBs. Like years 3 and 4 of the initial contract are subject to negotiation or something due to the shorter productive shelf life of rbs.
Or a clause paying them a bonus when they hit a certain number of touches like 200, 225, 250,275....and so on.
Or a clause paying them a bonus when they hit a certain number of touches like 200, 225, 250,275....and so on.
Hooper31
Footballguy
Outrage! Harumph harumph harumph. I didn't get a harumph out of that guy...Seriously though. Do you have any idea how much a single player earned in extra performance pay this past season? I don't. I've done some searching and came up empty. I'm going to choose to keep my outrage locked up until I have some actual numbers to look at. I recall seeing a number somewhere in the $3 million+ range allotted per team, but I'm not sure where I saw that figure.'renesauz said:
GregR
Footballguy
Old system no longer in use, per PFT:Under the performance-based pay system, a player obtains an index, based on the total number of plays in which he participated, divided by his total compensation. The players having the highest index numbers (i.e., those who worked the most for the least) received the largest slice of each team’s allocation under the program.
New system as best as I can tell from CBA:
Doesn't seem to be based on a set pool like the past one that I can see, instead it's just a formula for players who qualify. Proven Performance Escalator is paid in 4th year. To be eligible have to participate in 35% of offensive or defensive plays in any 2 of first 3 seasons, or in 35% cumulative over first 3 seasons. Only available to rookies from rounds 3 through 7 because their contract don't have performance incentives based on play time, while round 1 and 2 rookies already can have such in their contract.
Amount paid for the round 3-7 rookies is difference between an RFA tender and his paragraph 5 salary for year 4 of his rookie contract (i.e. salary not counting signing bonus proration).
Other CBA tidbits:
Drafted players can't renegotiate until after their 3rd season is done. Undrafted rookies it's a year earlier, can renegotiate after their 2nd season is done.
A big chunk of the money redistribution from the rookie salaries changing goes into the "Rookie Redistribution Fund". It's $25m in 2012, $50m in 2013, $100m in 2014 and grows at same rate as rookie cap after that. That money can be used for payment of Legacy Benefits, to fund a Veteran Player performance pool, or for any other new benefit for current or retired players agreed upon... and the distribution of the money within those categories is at the sole discretion of the players (NFLPA).
So one thing we missed is that a big chunk of the money saved from rookie salaries is not just going into free agent contracts, but is actually being funneled directly to retiree benefits and to veterans who outperformed their contracts. I don't know what would be considered "Veteran" as it doesn't spell out in the CBA what that performance compensation program was decided to be by the players. It conceivably could be restricted to players who are done with their rookie contract, or it could include any player after their rookie season is complete. No clue.
Tau837
Footballguy
teamramrod
Footballguy
Mike Trout says HIPeace
cstu
Footballguy
I didn't know who this was but ouch:
cstu
Footballguy
Another quirk of the CBA is that 1st round picks give teams a 5th year option. The interesting thing about that is players drafted 1-10 will receive an average of the top 10 players at the position while picks 11-32 receive only an average of the 3rd-25th players at the position.
I think this does two things:
- makes the #11+ picks more valuable because they will get the player cheap in the 5th year. This gives teams more leverage in long term contract extensions.
- makes late 1st's (#32) more valuable because teams with early 2nd's would be more likely to trade up, not only to get the player they want but to also get that 5th year option.
I think this does two things:
- makes the #11+ picks more valuable because they will get the player cheap in the 5th year. This gives teams more leverage in long term contract extensions.
- makes late 1st's (#32) more valuable because teams with early 2nd's would be more likely to trade up, not only to get the player they want but to also get that 5th year option.
