NFL Rookie Contracts Are Out of Control
Aug 22nd 2007ericjhoroNFL & Football
Pop Quiz: Can you name the highest paid receiver in the NFL? Or the 4th highest paid offensive lineman? Or the sixth highest paid defensive end? I’ll give you a hint. None of them have ever played in an NFL game. (Calvin Johnson, Levi Brown, and Gaines Adams are your answers.)
The point of this little exercise is that NFL rookie contracts are completely out of control. Top 5 picks are becoming the highest paid players on their teams before they even step on the field. They’re being paid like sure things when in reality there’s a better chance they’ll be the next Trev Albert.
Take a look at this list of quarterbacks who were top 5 picks from 1996-2003 (the jury is still out on the more recent draft picks). Peyton Manning, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Michael Vick, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Carson Palmer. That’s nine players. Five have been complete busts, three have become stars, and one (Vick) is looking more like a bust.
Whenever the Raiders come to terms with JaMarcus Russell, they will make him one of the five highest paid quarterbacks in the league. The team doesn’t seem to care that based on the data from 1996-2003, there’s 55% chance that Russell will be a complete bust and just a 33% chance that he will become a star. That $70 million isn’t looking like such a wise investment now, is it?
Could quarterbacks just be exceptions? Well, let’s take a look at defensive ends. The last 10 defensive ends chosen in the top 10 have been Mario Williams, Julius Peppers, Justin Smith, Andre Carter, Jamal Reynolds, Courtney Brown, Andre Wadsworth, Grant Wistrom, Simeon Rice, and Cedric Jones. Anyway you measure it that’s a bust rate of at least 50%. Still, those numbers didn’t stop the Bucs from committing as much as $46 million to Gaines Adams. Just to recap, that $46 milliion(with $18.6 million guaraunteed) to a guy with about a 50% chance of contributing absolutely nothing to the team.
The NFL has been so successful over the last decade because it has been light years ahead of other sports in creating salary restraints. The one exception has been rookie contracts. In the NBA rookies earn more than a third less than the max for their first three years in the league. In the NHL rookies can’t make nearly as much as they deserve. Even baseball is working on the problem. Amidst all the things Bud Selig has screwed up, one of the things he’s done right is pressure teams to limit the signing bonuses they give to draft picks. Throughout all of this the NFL has done nothing to address it’s problem. Rookie salaries are continuing to grow at a much faster rate than the salary cap.
The good news for the NFL is that this problem can be solved because both the owners and the players union should be in favor of restricting rookie salaries. Smaller rookie contracts will give owners more money to keep their established stars happy, and it will make it harder for them to commit money to unproductive players. For the players union smaller rookie contracts mean there will be a whole lot more money for the non-rookies who make up the majority of the union. The NFL needs to fix this problem soon because if it doesn’t, “signability” will soon becomes a key part of Mel Kiper’s lingo.
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