SaintsInDome2006 said:
Is Gordon being paid through all this?
No, what that article is doing is discussing his contract structure. He's got a shot to be a Restricted Free Agent after this year, but only if he gets back soon enough.
There are 3 stages of Free Agency, defined by how many "accrued seasons" the player has played.
ERFA - exclusive rights free agent - fewer than 3 accrued seasons. Player may not negotiate with other teams and basically takes whatever the team offers.
RFA - restricted free agent - 3 accrued seasons. Player may negotiate with other teams but original team maintains right of first refusal to match all terms. If original team does not match the offer they may be subject to draft pick compensation from the new team. The threat of this compensation can put a real damper on the offers the player may get
UFA - unrestricted free agent - 4 or more accrued seasons. Player is full free to negotiate and sign with any team with no compensation to the original team (aside from Franchise Tag system).
An accrued season is one in which the player has been on full pay status for at least 6 games. Gordon accomplished this in 2012 and 2013, but in 2014 he was suspended for the first 10 games for drug policy violations and then after playing 5 games the team suspended him for week 17 for behavior - missed meeting, missed flight, I forget what. So 2014 was a lost chance at an accrued season even though the contract year was completed. In each of 2015 and 2016 he was suspended for the entire year so his "last year" tolled - was pushed back - and 2017 should be his "last year" of his contract. If he doesn't get reinstated, the contract will toll yet again:
2012 - accrued season
2013 - accrued season
2014 - non-accrued season
2015 - suspended, no season (contract tolls)
2016 - suspended, no season (contract tolls)
2017 - suspended, no season (contract tolls)
2018 - "final" contract season
If he doesn't play in 2017, his contract will toll again, and 2018 will be his "last year" of his contract. Even if he does play in 2017 though, if he is not full pay status for at least 6 games, he won't get an accrued year out of it. So even if his contract does complete, he'll be just an ERFA and have zero contract leverage so he'll get screwed.
2012 - accrued season
2013 - accrued season
2014 - non-accrued season
2017 - non-accrued season
2018 - ERFA
If he can reinstated in time, he can at least get enough games in on full pay status to accrue the year and push himself to RFA status. At least in that case there will be some heat on the team
2012 - accrued season
2013 - accrued season
2014 - non-accrued season
2017 - accrued season
2018 - RFA
Cleveland (or whoever has his rights) would have to offer him a
1 year guaranteed deal for about $2M to retain matching/compensation rights and he would also be able to go negotiate with teams to
try to get a better offer, If he's an ERFA they can offer him
veteran minimum of about $600K and he can't do squat about it.
Note: full pay status is pretty much anything that he's getting paid for. IR, PUP, inactive on game day, playing - whatever. NFI is the only one I'm not sure about, because the team is not required to pay players on NFI status (although they usually do for the sake of a positive relationship). Practice squad is the most common non-full pay status.
Very rarely there will be "partial pay" status when a guy is on IR or something, but that's something that would have to be negotiated into the contract and Gordon's rookie deal has no such provision - no rookie deal can, according to the CBA. It's generally done with veterans with injury history that the team is willing to take a small risk on - "OK Harvin, we'll sign you, but if you go on IR we're only paying you 1/2 salary for those games".