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Pablo Torre investigation discussion (2 Viewers)

bro1ncos said:
Will the players care?
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From a union standpoint, this will be something that never gets forgotten and comes up during every negotiation from this point forward.

Collusion is always big. The concept of an open market yet they're colluding is awful.

I don't think the owners are all that wrong here and someone that's done business deals would need to chime in. Didn't everyone think Watson's contract was absurd? So then (other than above vague) why is it so wrong if the owners all think the same?

Prior two comments. I get lost in the hypocrisy. Can they both be true?

Every athletic QB that gets injured at a rate similar to Lamar will probably have some pause.

There are Falcons fans that bring up Lamar versus Cousins in a "we could have had him" light.

I don't understand the totality of Murray's issue. I haven't read the 100 page document completely. People question his commitment and were talking of him playing video games and all that back then.
 
I didnt read the entire doc, but from the article

"and one star quarterback being called a word that rhymes with his name."

Has to be Romo right? Or maybe Penix?
 
menobrown said:
Russ "Wuss" Wilson
Click to expand...

for him to be complaining is absolutely absurd!

I really liked him before and with Denver (my team), despite the fact that he was an idiot when he was here. I forgave it all, but now, I hate the dude because he's a scumbag thief. Local radio said 4% of donations actually went to the end users... the absolute worst, by far, of all professional athletes with charities...

Russell Wilson's Why Not You Foundation faced scrutiny over its spending practices. A USA Today report indicated that the foundation allocated a significant portion of its funds to employee salaries and benefits rather than charitable causes, with only a fraction of each dollar going directly to aid programs.
 
isn't that how charities work? Maybe I just don't know the inner workings but I just assumed that charities paid whatever expenses they had and then donated the rest. :shrug:
 
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
zed2283 said:
TL;DR?
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I watched a much shorter video and @Bri can correct me if I'm wrong here but basically Goodell wanted to limit the number of guaranteed money in (QB?) contracts.
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Basically any guaranteed contract, but yes 3 QBs were the focus.

Real question is why did the NFLPA union sit on this news for 5 months? This should be something that the players want out there in the public.
 
I mean isn't the finding that there wasn't collusion?

This is the same thing every sports league does. Share the salaries and decisions made across teams, show how it's gotten super high or exceeds growth in some areas, and show the teams which ones among them are being dumb.

With arbitration we used to specifically design the update decks to make it obvious that someone whose GM didn't aggressively go in arbitration cost him a bunch of money and we'd try to make sure he felt dumb or annoyed in front of the other owners.

It's not collusion. Nobody makes a deal or acts in concert, but the league office's job is to provide the facts of the situation and also protect the economic viability of the business. One good way to do that is make sure everyone knows how stupid somebody was and publicly rail their stupidity so others don't want to be made fun of by their billionaire competitors.
 
Last edited:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
 
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
I've never found a players' union that cares about the product (or any other union, but thats a whole other thing).

The union in the NFL is typically fighting for:
1. A higher % of the pie
2. More guaranteed contracts
3. Better lifetime healthcare
4. Have to work less (e.g., fewer practices, limits on offseason activities)
5. Fewer FA restrictions
 
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
The NFLPA has (IMO) a history of caring and lobbying much more for the top 5% of players than the other 95%. Many of the things they push for prioritize the wants and desires of the superstars, which in itself is "okay" and I see the logic behind it. But what bothers me is it's often at the expense of the typical player with a career length of 3 years. The rookie wage scale installed in 2011 is just one glaring example. It took 14 years for a 1.01 QB pick to come close to what Sam Bradford got contract wise in 2010. All that despite the salary cap increasing by over 130% over those 14 years. It was easy selling the current members of the union at that point to just steal out of the pockets of the faceless people who weren't yet in it, after all it's a 0 sum game: if we are paying rookies all this money, there's less of it for "you". Leaving out of course future contracts are largely leveraged based on average positional salaries, which would be getting purposefully lowered by this change. So in a roundabout way they were still losing money.

This change had further ramifications with non-star vet players getting 2nd/3rd contracts as well and wound up leading to the persistent short career lengths, which logic tells us should have actually gotten longer over the past few decades due to higher caliber of athlete, higher level of medical care and overall focus on physical wellness, and the rule changes which have greatly reduced the amount and severity of injury. But the career length hasn't. And part of that is now that rookies contracts are cost controlled, and outside the top 24 aren't guaranteed (at least this is what I think it used to be if that's changed), and regardless of what they sign for that rookie can be cut to the tune of 50% of the rookie minimum wage.... who is going to sign an average vet? Forget him, grab the rookie, the cost savings is so dramatic it compensates for losing that vets knowledge and experience.

Long story short the NFLPA is dumb, shortsighted, does terrible prioritizing, and rarely does what's good for the overwhelming majority of players. I believe that last survey showed 93% of players want to play on grass, and this is not a new sentiment. Plenty of data backing up it's more than just a player preference too, major correlations with injuries, especially career altering/ending injuries. AFAIK, it didn't even get discussed during the last negotiation. Worst players association in professional sports. And the stars of the league bear some of that responsibility as well.
 
pinkstapler said:
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
The NFLPA has (IMO) a history of caring and lobbying much more for the top 5% of players than the other 95%. Many of the things they push for prioritize the wants and desires of the superstars, which in itself is "okay" and I see the logic behind it. But what bothers me is it's often at the expense of the typical player with a career length of 3 years. The rookie wage scale installed in 2011 is just one glaring example. It took 14 years for a 1.01 QB pick to come close to what Sam Bradford got contract wise in 2010. All that despite the salary cap increasing by over 130% over those 14 years. It was easy selling the current members of the union at that point to just steal out of the pockets of the faceless people who weren't yet in it, after all it's a 0 sum game: if we are paying rookies all this money, there's less of it for "you". Leaving out of course future contracts are largely leveraged based on average positional salaries, which would be getting purposefully lowered by this change. So in a roundabout way they were still losing money.

This change had further ramifications with non-star vet players getting 2nd/3rd contracts as well and wound up leading to the persistent short career lengths, which logic tells us should have actually gotten longer over the past few decades due to higher caliber of athlete, higher level of medical care and overall focus on physical wellness, and the rule changes which have greatly reduced the amount and severity of injury. But the career length hasn't. And part of that is now that rookies contracts are cost controlled, and outside the top 24 aren't guaranteed (at least this is what I think it used to be if that's changed), and regardless of what they sign for that rookie can be cut to the tune of 50% of the rookie minimum wage.... who is going to sign an average vet? Forget him, grab the rookie, the cost savings is so dramatic it compensates for losing that vets knowledge and experience.

Long story short the NFLPA is dumb, shortsighted, does terrible prioritizing, and rarely does what's good for the overwhelming majority of players. I believe that last survey showed 93% of players want to play on grass, and this is not a new sentiment. Plenty of data backing up it's more than just a player preference too, major correlations with injuries, especially career altering/ending injuries. AFAIK, it didn't even get discussed during the last negotiation. Worst players association in professional sports. And the stars of the league bear some of that responsibility as well.
Click to expand...
If I'm Aaron Rodgers, Lamar Jackson or any number of QBs, DE that's getting 52 million dollars a year, I'm NOT giving anything up but I'm going to make sure the other 95% do. Why should I care? Well, because for all the talk they really don't. Ask any number of these superstars to take a pay cut and I'm betting 99% of them would say, "no fricking way".
 
Pablo is desperately trying to jump start his career after being propped up by ESPN for years and then being fired/let go
He clung to LeBatard and was propped up by him as well and now he is trying to pull back the curtain on sports to make fans feel bad...it was always what he wanted to do
He loves to tear down the establishment, it's his primary calling card now.

Any journalist and I mean ALL journalists in all verticals that site "Unnamed Sources" get zero credibility for me these days
I don't believe a lot of what Torres reports, he is "Dailymail" style journalist these days and not a cutting edge sports reporter IMHO
 
Instinctive said:
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
I've never found a players' union that cares about the product (or any other union, but thats a whole other thing).

The union in the NFL is typically fighting for:
1. A higher % of the pie
2. More guaranteed contracts
3. Better lifetime healthcare
4. Have to work less (e.g., fewer practices, limits on offseason activities)
5. Fewer FA restrictions
Click to expand...

And weed.
 
Ministry of Pain said:
Pablo is desperately trying to jump start his career after being propped up by ESPN for years and then being fired/let go
He clung to LeBatard and was propped up by him as well and now he is trying to pull back the curtain on sports to make fans feel bad...it was always what he wanted to do
He loves to tear down the establishment, it's his primary calling card now.

Any journalist and I mean ALL journalists in all verticals that site "Unnamed Sources" get zero credibility for me these days
I don't believe a lot of what Torres reports, he is "Dailymail" style journalist these days and not a cutting edge sports reporter IMHO
Click to expand...

All he's really done is obtained a confidential document and published it for all to read, with a bit of color added. I was shocked at the time it came out, in part due to the fact the story was and still seems to be flying completely under the radar. I thought this would be the biggest off-season NFL story in years but almost none of the big media players have picked up on it. As @Instinctive points out, the tldr is that the arbitrator found the NFL owners did NOT collude, but that finding was based on a burden of proof determination. The fact that owners were sharing salary contract negotiation strategy at closed owners meetings sure seems to suggest collusion, but I agree they would need more than the evidence in the arbitrator's findings to meet their burden on a spoke/hub collusion claim. 'Guaranteed deals like Watson's are bad for us owners and we should avoid them' - film at 11. But I also understand why Wilson, Murray, Jackson and others might be angry about this. You have the entire universe of potential employers sitting in a room together hearing a presentation from their trade organization telling them how to avoid paying employees more - meaning, with fully guaranteed contracts as is common in the NBA, MLB, NHL, European soccer, etc.
 
pinkstapler said:
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
The NFLPA has (IMO) a history of caring and lobbying much more for the top 5% of players than the other 95%. Many of the things they push for prioritize the wants and desires of the superstars, which in itself is "okay" and I see the logic behind it. But what bothers me is it's often at the expense of the typical player with a career length of 3 years. The rookie wage scale installed in 2011 is just one glaring example. It took 14 years for a 1.01 QB pick to come close to what Sam Bradford got contract wise in 2010. All that despite the salary cap increasing by over 130% over those 14 years. It was easy selling the current members of the union at that point to just steal out of the pockets of the faceless people who weren't yet in it, after all it's a 0 sum game: if we are paying rookies all this money, there's less of it for "you". Leaving out of course future contracts are largely leveraged based on average positional salaries, which would be getting purposefully lowered by this change. So in a roundabout way they were still losing money.

This change had further ramifications with non-star vet players getting 2nd/3rd contracts as well and wound up leading to the persistent short career lengths, which logic tells us should have actually gotten longer over the past few decades due to higher caliber of athlete, higher level of medical care and overall focus on physical wellness, and the rule changes which have greatly reduced the amount and severity of injury. But the career length hasn't. And part of that is now that rookies contracts are cost controlled, and outside the top 24 aren't guaranteed (at least this is what I think it used to be if that's changed), and regardless of what they sign for that rookie can be cut to the tune of 50% of the rookie minimum wage.... who is going to sign an average vet? Forget him, grab the rookie, the cost savings is so dramatic it compensates for losing that vets knowledge and experience.

Long story short the NFLPA is dumb, shortsighted, does terrible prioritizing, and rarely does what's good for the overwhelming majority of players. I believe that last survey showed 93% of players want to play on grass, and this is not a new sentiment. Plenty of data backing up it's more than just a player preference too, major correlations with injuries, especially career altering/ending injuries. AFAIK, it didn't even get discussed during the last negotiation. Worst players association in professional sports. And the stars of the league bear some of that responsibility as well.
Click to expand...

I agree with most of this, my only push back is that the Players Association is hamstrung because they can never survive a long strike. The top earners can go a year, maybe more but the little guys with no guarantees cant live on no money. Hell, a lot of the mid-tier guys are living check to check (due to their own decisions).

They have some leverage mostly due to societal changes, imo, but they need at least the threat of the ability to strike to get real leverage.
 
STEADYMOBBIN 22 said:
pinkstapler said:
BLOCKED_PUNT said:
Shouldn't the NFLFPA also not want these big mega contracts? Since there'd be less $$$ to go around? From a player standpoint it makes sense to want a ton of guaranteed money but from the NFL standpoint it could make teams not as competitive and really water down an already watered down product.
Click to expand...
The NFLPA has (IMO) a history of caring and lobbying much more for the top 5% of players than the other 95%. Many of the things they push for prioritize the wants and desires of the superstars, which in itself is "okay" and I see the logic behind it. But what bothers me is it's often at the expense of the typical player with a career length of 3 years. The rookie wage scale installed in 2011 is just one glaring example. It took 14 years for a 1.01 QB pick to come close to what Sam Bradford got contract wise in 2010. All that despite the salary cap increasing by over 130% over those 14 years. It was easy selling the current members of the union at that point to just steal out of the pockets of the faceless people who weren't yet in it, after all it's a 0 sum game: if we are paying rookies all this money, there's less of it for "you". Leaving out of course future contracts are largely leveraged based on average positional salaries, which would be getting purposefully lowered by this change. So in a roundabout way they were still losing money.

This change had further ramifications with non-star vet players getting 2nd/3rd contracts as well and wound up leading to the persistent short career lengths, which logic tells us should have actually gotten longer over the past few decades due to higher caliber of athlete, higher level of medical care and overall focus on physical wellness, and the rule changes which have greatly reduced the amount and severity of injury. But the career length hasn't. And part of that is now that rookies contracts are cost controlled, and outside the top 24 aren't guaranteed (at least this is what I think it used to be if that's changed), and regardless of what they sign for that rookie can be cut to the tune of 50% of the rookie minimum wage.... who is going to sign an average vet? Forget him, grab the rookie, the cost savings is so dramatic it compensates for losing that vets knowledge and experience.

Long story short the NFLPA is dumb, shortsighted, does terrible prioritizing, and rarely does what's good for the overwhelming majority of players. I believe that last survey showed 93% of players want to play on grass, and this is not a new sentiment. Plenty of data backing up it's more than just a player preference too, major correlations with injuries, especially career altering/ending injuries. AFAIK, it didn't even get discussed during the last negotiation. Worst players association in professional sports. And the stars of the league bear some of that responsibility as well.
Click to expand...

I agree with most of this, my only push back is that the Players Association is hamstrung because they can never survive a long strike. The top earners can go a year, maybe more but the little guys with no guarantees cant live on no money. Hell, a lot of the mid-tier guys are living check to check (due to their own decisions).

They have some leverage mostly due to societal changes, imo, but they need at least the threat of the ability to strike to get real leverage.
Click to expand...
Maybe that'll be another unexpected benefit of NIL. Still won't cover all of them, but I think a lot more college kids are going to be entering the NFL who already have a full time accountant haha. Not saying it'll completely wipe out that problem, but I think it goes a long way towards capability of surviving a strike. Realistically, while the players on strike will have to deal with "money coming in" problems, the people on the other side of the line will be bleeding it profusely. I don't think it would last long if they finally put their foot down. Especially over something like converting all play surfaces to grass. Accountants will only need a day or two to write the proposal showing revenue lost during the strike vs. cost of installing and maintaining a grass playfield.
 
Ministry of Pain said:
Pablo is desperately trying to jump start his career after being propped up by ESPN for years and then being fired/let go
He clung to LeBatard and was propped up by him as well and now he is trying to pull back the curtain on sports to make fans feel bad...it was always what he wanted to do
He loves to tear down the establishment, it's his primary calling card now.

Any journalist and I mean ALL journalists in all verticals that site "Unnamed Sources" get zero credibility for me these days
I don't believe a lot of what Torres reports, he is "Dailymail" style journalist these days and not a cutting edge sports reporter IMHO
Click to expand...
Idk him to comment on his history but this one is all court documents. I believe Florio asked him to dig into it because he didn't have time.
He's clearly a good bloodhound.

Ya know this stuff was out there as public information and we all have different timelines and alerts and such and I'm always thrown when everyone misses a big story. How did our matrix fail? I have a gazillion ways to get any NFL story. This was in court. NFLPA involved too. It's kind of odd to me
 
The new report from Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler of ESPN.com regarding the collusion case includes an interesting nugget about the things said, and not said, by executive director Lloyd Howell to the union’s executive committee. Per the report, Howell briefed the executive committee and NFLPA president Jalen Reeves-Maybin on the collusion case in the aftermath of the previously secret agreement between the NFL and NFLPA to keep the ruling quiet. "According to several sources briefed on the meeting,” the report explains, “Howell informed the [executive] committee that the NFLPA had lost its collusion grievance but did not share any details of [system arbitrator Christopher] Droney’s findings or share copies of the ruling with the players. Instead, [Howell] blamed his predecessor, DeMaurice Smith, for wasting resources on the three-year legal battle. Smith filed the grievance in October 2022.”
Click to expand...
Smith filed it in October 2022. And Howell took over in June 2023. The ruling came in January 2025. Howell could have settled the grievance. He could have abandoned the grievance. Instead, he saw the grievance through to a conclusion, and he secured a jarring finding that the NFL’s Management Council, with the blessing of Commissioner Roger Goodell, urged teams to collude. The case also generated persuasive circumstantial evidence of actual collusion, Droney’s acceptance of the predictably self-serving denials from the NFL’s witnesses notwithstanding. Why would Howell cover up something good? Unless he was protecting NFLPA chief strategy officer J.C. Tretter from criticism for the mean things he said about quarterback Russell Wilson, Howell was simply (in my opinion) trying to undermine his predecessor’s efforts — to the clear and obvious detriment of the men Howell now represents. While it’s great that someone has finally pushed the ball forward (and Van Natta and Kahler deserve plenty of credit for not sticking their heads in the sand, as many other NFL reporters have done), the situation keeps getting stranger.
Click to expand...
https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profo...e-smith-for-wasting-sources-on-collusion-case
 
The clock likely expiring on Howell’s time as executive director….
​
NFL Players Association executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. was paid $3.4 million last year to have one of the most powerful jobs in all of sports -- overseeing a 2,400-member strong labor union with assets of over $1 billion.​
​
It apparently wasn't enough money -- or enough work.​
​
Howell also maintained an outside part-time consulting job with the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that, coincidentally we are sure, holds league approval to seek minority ownership in NFL franchises, as ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler first reported Thursday.​

Why NFLPA mess should matter to football fans
 
So basically the head of the NFLPA was found to be in bed with other businesses with competing interests but they are keeping him anyway
 
Bri said:
fatness said:
Bri said:
Click to expand...
"This page doesn't exist"
Click to expand...
It works when I click so idk how to respond here
Click to expand...
Here's a writeup of the interview
www.nbcsports.com

Chris Long speaks out on NFLPA hiding the collusion ruling

When it comes to the collusion ruling that came to light this week, no current players have said a word.
www.nbcsports.com www.nbcsports.com

So...
Today Kittle and JJWatt are speaking out and the NFLPA sent a memo to their members
 
Bri said:
Bri said:
fatness said:
Bri said:
Click to expand...
"This page doesn't exist"
Click to expand...
It works when I click so idk how to respond here
Click to expand...
Here's a writeup of the interview
www.nbcsports.com

Chris Long speaks out on NFLPA hiding the collusion ruling

When it comes to the collusion ruling that came to light this week, no current players have said a word.
www.nbcsports.com www.nbcsports.com

So...
Today Kittle and JJWatt are speaking out and the NFLPA sent a memo to their members
Click to expand...
"Hey guys, crazy week. Apparently this has been on my desk for a sec but turns out the owners are colluding. Don't worry we're not doing anything
Kbi"
 
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