Holy Schneikes
Footballguy
The first part is all that matters to me (that allowable != reasonable or "fair"). I've already acknowledged that there is no perfect analogy. If swapping out UDFA for a 6th or 7th round pick changes the typical contract status, that's fine - the point would be the same.You talk about Jackson's situation as if it happens every day and there is a standard already set for those conditions. Where is the list of 6th year RFAs who have drastically over-performed on their previous contracts? Let's compare them to Jackson's situation to see what is reasonable for him. Wait, there IS no such list, because there have never BEEN (as far as I know) 6th year RFAs, let alone 6th year RFAs who have drastically over-performed on their previous contracts. Every other RFA in recent memory has completed three years of service or less, and Jackson has completed five. How is that the typical RFA situation you seem to be suggesting should apply here? As you keep pointing out, it was agreed to in the CBA, so it the situation does apply. But that certainly doesn't mean the same reasonable expectations in terms of an offered contract should apply. It's a VERY different situation (that has never happened before).Maurile Tremblay said:You're quite right that what is reasonable is not determined simply by what the rules allow. It's also determined by common custom and standard patterns of past practice. If a team made the worst allowable offer to its first-round draft pick and then didn't budge, that would be completely unreasonable.You're also quite right that the analogy isn't perfect. Part of the reason teams are expected to make serious offers to their draft picks is that, by drafting them, the team is indicating that those players are in their long-term plans. (Otherwise, why draft them?) There's no such indication with RFAs. Also, it would not only be unreasonable to lowball a first-round draft pick, but quite stupid as well. It would be a complete waste of a first-round pick since the team would lose its rights to the player after a year; and teams do not become winners by throwing away first-round picks. With an RFA, a team typically does not lose its rights to the player if it makes a qualifying tender offer. (Although in Jackson's case, it may.) Moreover, the penalty for losing the rights to a player who's not in the team's long-term plans, as an RFA might not be, is not as limiting as the penalty for losing the rights to a player who is in the team's long-term plans, as a draft pick presumably is. (Of course, things could change between the time that a player is drafted and the time that he is offered a contract. He might get two DUIs, for example, which might cause a team to change its mind and not worry about losing his rights and letting him go back into the draft the following year.) But with RFAs, unlike with rookie draft picks, there is no common custom or standard practice dictating that a team should offer them more than the qualifying tender offer (in Jackson's case, the highest tender available). It is simply not unreasonable for a team to offer the highest qualifying one-year tender to a player who's not in its long-term plans in the same way that it would be unreasonable for a team to refuse to make an offer to a draft pick in line with the slotting system. (And note that when a team does make an offer to a draft pick in line with the slotting system, it is not paying him what he is worth, as measured by what he'd make on the open market. Other than the top few picks, rookies are substantially underpaid by that criterion. And yet nobody thinks it's unreasonable for a team to offer its second-round pick what second-round picks normally make, even though it's far less than his "market value" assuming he were an unrestricted free agent. By the same token, I don't think it's unreasonable for a team to offer a restricted free agent what restricted free agents normally make, even though it's far less than his "market value" assuming he were an unrestricted free agent. In both cases, the terms of the CBA state that the player is not an unrestricted free agent. Jackson was not offered the vet minimum; he was offered the highest tender amount for RFAs, not the lowest tender amount. Which you might say is kind of like offering a draft pick the highest amount allowable under the rookie cap, not the lowest amount allowable.)The whole "It's within the rules so it's all good" thing is a major oversimplification.
It would be within the rules for a team to offer it's #1 overall draft pick a 200k, 6 year contract (or whatever the min/max values are). I know top draft picks are generally considered over-paid, but I think we can all agree they'd be "worth" more than that offer (unless it was Russell).
So this draft pick would be ineligible to negotiate with any other team, and unless he wants to sign that awful contract he would basically miss an entire season in his career (at least). Of course in the mean-time all of the rest of the first rounders have already been signed to the typical mega-contracts. So is that player getting hosed? Would he sign the deal? Do you think he might take it personally, or feel slighted in any way? It's within the rules, right?
Or let's say some random UDFA QB through some miraculous series of events leads his new team to the Superbowl and wins. He's the team's new starter, and his efforts were a very large part of their success. He had signed a 5 year deal at some very low price. The former starting QB, now backup QB is making $10M/year. The team has plenty of room under the cap to rework the contact. But they aren't obligated under the rules to pay the UDFA an extra penny or let him out of the deal, so they don't. They play hardball and say you signed the deal, and that's what you will play for. Yeah, he signed it, so in some ways it's "fair" that he honor it and continue making league minimum for the next 5 years. But is that going to happen? Or is he going to call BS and sit down? Would he feel slighted by the team in any way?
Neither of these are perfect analogies, but my point is that just because a situation is allowable under the rules doesn't mean that it's going to be agreeable to all parties. OR that one party can't be getting "hosed" by something essentially out of their control. Some offers (or lack thereof) ARE BS in certain circumstances regardless if they are "allowable" or not.
The UDFA analogy is also imperfect because, as far as I know, UDFAs never sign five-year deals. They usually sign one-year deals; they occasionally sign two-year deals. (At the end of their initial deals, they become RFAs, and are negotiated with as RFAs.) If a UDFA did sign a five-year deal for some strange reason, and it didn't have any incentive clauses that paid him reasonably if he performed well, he's in a really tough spot. The team might re-work his deal if he's in the team's long-term plans and it wants to keep him happy; but if it decides not to, I don't think it's acting unreasonably if it's willing to live with the consequences.
You also keep talking about the team's long-term plans as if that's the only consideration. I have said repeatedly that I do not think it is completely unreasonable for the team to NOT offer Jackson a huge long-term deal if he wasn't in their plans. But the other obvious option is to pay him what he is worth on a one year deal. That's not $3M, despite the fact that that's all they HAVE to offer him. Like I said before, a team doesn't HAVE to offer a high rookie pick anything over the league min, but it wouldn't make sense to do that. It wouldn't be a "reasonable" offer, just like the $3M is not a reasonable offer to Jackson given his circumstances.
All you really need to know about how reasonable SDs offer was, is that Malcom Frick'n Floyd HELD OUT over that exact offer. If Floyd and his agents didn't think it was reasonable for him, what should Jackson and his agents think about how reasonable it was for Jackson?
Forget the fact that he has been underpaid by the team in the past for now. I know a lot of folks think that shouldn't matter anyway (I'm not one of them, but I get the line of reasoning). Let's just look at what he should be worth right now. According to the FA market, he's worth more than $7M plus incentives according to "reports". I say more than, because in addition to the salary, the team getting him is going to have to give up substantial draft pick compensation as well. So if that weren't a factor, it is altogether possible he'd be worth a lot more to that team. So how often do you see very successful RFAs, EVEN THE TYPICAL, 3 OR FEWER YEARS OF SERVICE KIND, be expected to sign contracts worth less than half (possibly a lot less than half) of their market value?
I think the offer would have been fairly unreasonable even if that very limited regard, but then when you combine it with the five years of service instead of three, and the obvious over-performance in the previous couple of years, and it becomes that much MORE unreasonable.
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I think your post clarifies the areas where you and I think differently. I think prior years of service and previous underpayment mean more to you than they do to me. The fact that he's restricted rather than unrestricted means more to me than it does to you.
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I think your post clarifies the areas where you and I think differently. I think prior years of service and previous underpayment mean more to you than they do to me. The fact that he's restricted rather than unrestricted means more to me than it does to you.
