Going into the CBA negotiations we knew that the there would be changes to the rookie scale contracts. It was a major issue. Every news outlet has covered these negotiations ad nauseum yet somehow after it was all done I've seen VERY little coverage of what was actually done and the implications moving forward. It looks to me like the biggest change (not necessarily financial, i'm talking real impact on long term franchise success) is this rookie scale. People can talk all they want about how no one wanted the top picks in the past but even with the enormous risk and financial burden, those top picks never traded for less than a boat load of assets (usually a couple 1's and some late picks). CAM NEWTON JUST SIGNED A 4 YEAR $22MM CONTRACT!!! Compare that to the 6 year deal signed by Bradford with $58MM guaranteed. How valuable are those picks now? How much would a top Super Bowl contending team with little cap space for free agents be willing to give for a franchise top 5 player that fills a hole with a VERY low cap number? How much is Andrew Luck worth now? I think the NFL just made a MAJOR change to long term parity for the better. Bad teams will have a harder time staying bad long (unless they're the Phins) and consequently good teams might lose dominance earlier in the cycle. With the new minimum salary floor, overall money spent will go up ... along with less money spent on rookies means there will be significant inflation in the salaries of veteran players. Contrast that to the low salary of rookies and those picks become even more valuable. If a team has the #1 pick they can trade down a few times and acquire a bounty that makes the Herschel Walker trade or the Ditka offer pale in comparison. A couple years of such value would quickly propel the bad teams (along with the negligible financial impact of making bad picks), while the good teams will find it harder to pay veterans as those salaries increase. Impact for the Phins: I've long been on the Suck for Luck wagon. I think we are a 7-8 win team and 2 wins gets you Luck. Those 5 meaningless wins are just not worth throwing away the chance to finally be a dominant team that can compete for a championship rather than hoping we might accidently trip into the first round of the playoffs. However, anyone thinking we should just give up picks next year to move up will be shocked at what it will take to move up in the draft moving forward. Either way, things have changed and I think the impact will start being felt strongly in the win/loss cycles for teams.
Yeah combine this and the Kolb trade I believe you could very easily see all the top qb's in next years draft all go very high and the price tag to trade for them sky rocket.
What's new is Cam's contract is fully guaranteed. Yes, it's a lot less than SB last year, but it's guaranteed in full.
Bradford got 6 year $78MM with over $50MM guaranteed. Newton got 4 year $22MM fully guaranteed. HUGE difference
It's going to be ridiculously hard to trade up now. This Draft was really the last opportunity Miami would have had to trade up under the old costs according to charts, etc. The market still had not digested the ramifications of the money that top picks are losing. If Blaine Gabbert pans out, good time to be a Jags fan. What they pulled off there moving to #10 for the price they did, won't happen next year.
I understand what your saying, Im just saying that MAYBE, the new tatics for agents is to use the full guarantee.
it wasn't an agent tactic. the full guarantee is a locked in part of the rookie scale. no negotiating on rookie contracts
next year's draft will definitely be interesting....... or even more exciting. Imagine not having a QB and getting Luck for $23 million?
That's assuming every team will need a QB, is it not? If the Panthers are picking top 8, I'm not sure they'll take Barkley just because the price is good.
The cheaper price tag is going to make the question of "need" a lot more blurry. There are teams that pass on quarterbacks they view to be better than what they have, simply because of the money they have to pay them. That won't happen as much anymore. Imagine the Arizona Cardinals end up with the worst record in the NFL this year. They just gave an arm and a leg for Kevin Kolb. Normally you'd say there's no way they're taking Andrew Luck. But for the Cardinals, they'll simply ask...is Andrew Luck better? Is he a franchise QB? Because of the much, much, much smaller price tag, the risk is taken out of the equation. They can be free to take Luck and have the two compete. Or better examples being the 49ers and Bengals. Both took QBs at the top of the 2nd round, Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton. Under the Sam Bradford salary amounts/structure, both teams might actually refuse to draft Andrew Luck if they were picking #1 overall. Or if they're picking #2 and Matt Barkley/Landry Jones grade as true franchise QBs, just maybe not with the same mystique as Andrew Luck, either team might find themselves taking that player. Normally, you'd say they don't have a need for the position, they just took guys at #34 and #37 last year. Now, that won't be true. Well, unless they're dumb. Admittedly, they might be.
Well as I remember there used to be alot more movement in the draft on those top 5 spots. When the salaries became ridiculously bloated for those top 5-10 picks it killed any chance of trading out and gaining more picks, which by the way used to happen. This restores real value to those picks and removes the curse of owning that #1 pick and the salary burden associated with it.
That makes perfect sense. IMO it'll make the top 5 spots extremely interesting to watch (along with what teams give up in any bidding war to move up).
In the GM league, I tried to get as many top 10 picks as possible bc the contracts were so cheap. I think you aren't going to see any trades out of the top-10, because those players are now going to be underpaid.
I really think its going to help the teams that are more middle of the road than anything. Your going to have teams that are taking players based on the value they get for the position. Thats going to let some good talent drop down into the middle of rounds. It also really free's you up to take some chances on players. As it was if you got a 1st round pick that didn't work out you were stuck with them for a while ala Jason Allen. Now you might be stuck, but at a much lower number.
