Well, well, well... Here we are, the start of August, the long-awaited start to NFL training camps in preparation to the new season. After nearly five months, the decertification and recertification of the NFL Players Association, multiple lawsuits in federal court, false hopes and bitter war or words through the media, we can all cheer a new collective bargaining agreement, a 10-year CBA with no opt-out clause for either side, and presumed labor peace throughout all the land for 32 teams, 32 team owners, approximately 1,700 players filling up 53-man active roster spots, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith.
Okay, perhaps this year’s league-wide Secret Santa roll call may have more than a bit of awkwardness, especially for guys like Steelers linebacker James “Don’t Rely on my Bladder in case of fire” Harrison. However, today’s column is not about the nasty rhetoric between players and the owners, or players and the league, or players and other players (geez, there sure are lots of nasty players in the NFL, aren’t there?). Today’s column is about harmony, especially fiscal harmony.
Did I say “fiscal harmony”? Yes, I did, and boy do I regret using such terminology! Let’s face it, if there’s fiscal harmony between players as this wild and wooly edition of free agency takes place, then everyone’s singing “Kumbaya” on Capitol Hill in Washington while debating what to really do about our nation’s debt ceiling.
What has me so grouchy and cynical? Hmmm... Perhaps I can boil it down to one position on the football field, defensive cornerback, and two cornerbacks immediately come to mind and put a major burr in my saddle (I’m in New Jersey, so perhaps it’s aggravating my hemorrhoids): Former Oakland Raiders cornerback (now a Philadelphia Eagle) Nnamdi Asomugha, and perhaps former New York Jets cornerback (destination still unknown) Antonio Cromartie. What has me all grumped up? Their free agent salary demands for 2011 and how those demands compare to the paycheck Darrelle Revis collects playing cornerback for the New York Jets. In case you didn’t know, there ain’t much free about free agents.
Let’s go back to last summer and Revis’ holdout, seeking a new and improved contract from the Jets. Oh, we all remember those fun days of summer 2010? Revis, who unquestionably outperformed his rookie contract, wanted more money, for many reasons, and rightfully so. However, one reason ultimately stuck out more than any other, to be the highest-paid cornerback in the game. While that seems a reasonable demand for arguably the best cornerback in the game, Revis took on the ridiculous stance that he wanted to be paid one more dollar than the current highest-paid cornerback in the league, Nnamdi Asomugha. For those who can’t remember, Asomugha was signed to a 3-year contract that paid him $15.1M per season. Naturally, Revis wanted more and felt he deserved more because he was the better cornerback. While that seemed a fair self-assessment (with lots of help from his agents and his uncle, former Washington Redskin and Carolina Panther defensive lineman Sean Gilbert), the fiscal reality was that the Jets were not going to pay Revis $15.1M plus an extra dollar. After Revis’ holdout and lots of haggling, Revis agreed to a new contract that would pay him $11.5M this season.
And what became of Asomugha? Raiders owner Al Davis released him at the end of the 2010 season as part of a fiscal purge with a lockout approaching, and the $15.1M man became a man without a team.
Fast forward to a few days ago. Asomugha the free agent was interested in joining the Jets, the Dallas Cowboys, the Houston Texans, and one team in the shadows, which turned out to be the Eagles. Anyway, at some point of this past week, Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum backed out of negotiations and decided Asomugha’s price tag was simply too rich for the Jets and their overall roster needs and fiscal constraints. Asomugha signed a 5-year contract with the Eagles that would pay him an average salary of $12M — not Al Davis-type money, but certainly a higher paycheck than Revis earns.
How does Cromartie fit into this story? The Jets obtained Cromartie in the final year of his previous contract in a trade with the San Diego Chargers. Cromartie was supposed to be the counterpart to Revis in a Batman-Robin cornerback tandem the NFL had not seen since the early 1980s when Mike Haynes and Lester Hayes tormented opposing receivers while manning the corners of the Raiders defensive backfield. When the Jets set their sights on Asomugha, Cromartie was left in the wings to wait or explore his options. After all, Asomugha is considered by many NFL pundits to be a far superior cornerback to Cromartie, and it seemed just about everyone drooled at the prospect of a Revis-Asomugha tandem, making the Jets virtually impossible to pass on in 2011.
Now that things didn’t work out with Asomugha, Cromartie is back on the Jets radar. However, Cromartie, who strongly desires to play for a team with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations (as did Asomugha), now wants the Jets to pay out in excess of $10M per season, because the father of seven children to six different women in five different states (I hope I have these details all correct) doesn’t give “hometown discounts” to his most-recent employer, the team willing to take a cornerback with financial and legal problems, not to mention a damaged reputation for “playing soft” and “locker room bitching” when with the San Diego Chargers, the team that came within one game of an AFC championship title for the second straight year. In addition to the Jets, Cromartie reportedly has interest from the San Francisco 49ers (6-10 in 2010) and the Raiders (8-8 in 2010, and starting 2011 with a new head coach, new defensive coordinator, and new defensive scheme to learn).
Let me go on the record — and you can check my entire archive of columns as well as all Twitter postings since the NFL lockout started — I had no opinion about the Jets signing Asomugha prior to or during this free agency period. Would I love to see a Revis-Asomugha pairing? Sure, who wouldn’t? It could be intriguing. It could be exciting. But I would’ve been equally happy if the Jets simply re-signed Cromartie and he and Revis had a full training camp and season to work together as Batman and Robin. In other words, I didn’t and still don’t see Asomugha as the be-all and end-all of the Jets defensive success. In fact, when someone asked me last week on Twitter if I thought the Jets could sign Asomugha in addition to other free agents like Santonio Holmes, I responded: It depends on available salary space and how greedy [these players] want to be.
And that’s what this free agency period has boiled down to, available salary cap space, player greed, and the ensuing fiscal insanity, as opposed to harmony. Have these players learned ANYTHING from this 136-day (give or take a day) lockout? Have these players understood ANYTHING about the establishment of a cash-only $120M payroll (let’s round off to the nearest million) to pay the collective salaries of 53 men on each team’s 2011 active roster?
Consider some basic statistics I looked up about the 2010 New York Jets from espn.com. In 2010, the Jets offense, defense and special teams units were on the field for a total of 2,439 plays (including all punting, kickoff, and field goal/extra-point plays). The offense was on the field for 1,067 plays (approximately 44%), the defense was on the field for 979 plays (40%) and the special teams unit was on the field for 393 plays (16%). If you look up the 49-man active team roster for game days, offensive players account for 22 roster slots (approximately 45%), defensive players account for 26 (53%) and the specialists (kicker, punter, long-snapper) account for three slots (6%). So for all intents and purposes, let’s assume an estimated 40-40-20% split between offense, defense and special teams.
Now let’s translate this to a rounded-off $120M payroll for 53 players, 49 who will likely be in uniform on game days. Since the offense and defense each account for 40 percent of the team plays, that means each unit has a theoretical payroll of $48M; the special teams unit has a payroll of $24M. Perhaps there could be some shifting of payroll funds between units depending on needs (no to mention the fact the Jets aren’t spending $24M on a kicker, punter and long-snapper), but for argument’s sake, let’s work with these numbers.
Since cornerbacks seem to be making big fiscal news of late, let’s focus on a hypothetical Jets defensive roster of 25 players — 5 defensive linemen, 9 linebackers, 7 cornerbacks, and 4 safeties. That means GM Mike Tannenbaum needs to build the best, most-dominant defensive unit he can on $48M, a unit that can play up to the standard head coach Rex Ryan sets and a unit with quality players and sufficient depth in case of injuries or situational substitutions.
Right off the top we have Darrelle Revis commanding $11.5M. Now you have $36.5M to take care of 24 other players. Along comes Asomugha and his desire for $12M, which the Eagles were happy to pay. Now you have two players accounting for $23.5M, leaving Tannenbaum $24.5M to pay the other 23 defensive players. You prefer a better bargain? Let’s have Cromartie and his $10M demand instead. Now you’ve left Tannenbaum $26.5M to pay the other 24 guys.
No problem, you say? Each player gets slightly more than $1M? Fine, now try explaining this to linebacker David Harris who’s patiently waited for his long-term contract. Take care of Harris and all is happy, you say? Fine, now what about important veterans like linebackers Bart Scott and Calvin Pace, defensive end Shaun Ellis, safety Jim Leonard, and the list goes on and on? If you keep taking care of all the top players you won’t have anything left but crumbs for half the defensive roster. No problem, you say? The league’s minimum salary is around $400,000? Fine, and how many high-talent players do you think you can get to play for that salary? Suppose you are lucky enough to find 15 guys to fill out the defensive payroll earning the league minimum, how dominant do you think your defense is going to be? There’s a good reason why so many NFL players earn the league minimum: they aren’t as talented as the superstars they back up on a team’s roster. Yes, these players are indeed far more talented than the roster you see for any college football program, but guys making around $400,000 aren’t on the same level as Revis, Harris, Pace, Scott and many other Pro Bowl caliber stars.
And guess what happens when your team puts a K-Mart roster on the field when the regular season opens the weekend of September 11th? Your team won’t play like world beaters and you’ll be the first one to whine to your local sports radio station how your teams stinks and everyone should be cut and the head coach should be fired and the general manager is an idiot. And this is exactly why New York Daily News columnist Bob Raissman refers to such fans as the “Valley of the Stupid.”
If you go back and read my columns during the 2010 summer you’ll see that I was already scolding Darrelle Revis over his contract demands as early as June 15, then really took him to task August 15, when I wrote the following:
Memo to Darrelle Revis: Let me get this straight... No matter what the Jets offer you, you won’t settle for anything less than $16-million per season. Fine... And when next year and the year after come, and other defensive players exceed your salary, are you going to hold out again and hold your team hostage? Just a thought…
If Revis EVER holds out again as a New York Jet, demanding to be paid at least one dollar more than Nnamdi Asomugha, don’t say I didn’t forewarn you long beforehand.
This is what this Revis-Asomugha-Cromartie dynamic boils down to, greed — pure, unadulterated, uncompromised, unmitigated greed. Chutzpah to the max. A maddening narcissism focused on getting mine now while the getting’s good and damn the rest of the team. Yeah sure, these guys all want a Super Bowl ring, but not if it takes one extra nickel out of their piggy banks. Look at the list of players willing to renegotiate their contracts in order to help their teams fit the best players possible under the $120M salary cap... Well, aside from Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, we don’t see too many players coming forward with such generosity. Look to Seattle and now ex-Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu. When he balked at restructuring his contract, Seattle cut him, hence the cold reality in today’s NFL and a hard salary cap. Where’s the leadership? Where’s the commitment to win? Hell, where’s proof these players have taken some math and basic economics courses while in college?!
Again, I don’t begrudge these guys from earning as much as they can while they have an NFL career. However, when players all ratify a new CBA that calls for a $120M salary cap, that should tip players off to know that revenue sharing isn’t merely something between owners. Players also need to know how to share the wealth in order to make sure everyone is well-rewarded on the best team possible in terms of talent. If that sounds like socialism to you, as I’ve said time and time again over the years, color me Karl Marx, Harpo, Groucho, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo too. If you want to put together the best team possible, all teammates need to be willing to work together within the system, be it schematic or financial. If you truly are committed to being a champion, you need to put your money where your mouth is and put team over yourself, your personal agenda for wealth over the collective goal of 53 men playing for a common goal while everyone makes a fair salary. Would it be nice if NFL teams had salary caps of $150M or $200M? Sure, but that’s not the negotiated salary cap and players need to make more realistic demands.
Are the 1,700 players on NFL rosters the best athletes in their sport? Yes, they certainly are. However, both they and we need to appreciate that there's a broad spectrum of talent among these 1,700 players and only a select few are truly superstars worthy of top-5 salaries at their positions. As talented as these players are, there are simply too many, even at the top level of the player pool, who have slightly warped and over-inflated opinions of themselves. These players, and their agents, have overvalued themselves, much like the housing market before the bubble burst in 2008. Not everyone can be best or one of the top 5 at their position. Not everyone can be paid accordingly. In some ways, this need to be the highest-paid or top-5 level paid gets as silly as grade inflation in our nation’s educational system. In a nation as intellectually mediocre as ours, how is it that more than 60 percent of all high school and college students boast an overall grade-point average of at least a B? If the average student in our nation is graded as either good or excellent, shouldn’t we expect to see better production and achievement? Imagine what we might expect of every NFL player demanding at least a top-5 level salary — perhaps an annual performance worthy of Canton enshrinement?
Somewhere among the NFL’s 1,700 players there needs to be the acceptance that you’re among the top 32 people in the entire country who play a given position for an NFL team. Somewhere along the lines there needs to be acceptance that even among the top 32 people in the country to play your position, you’re still paid quite well compared to the majority of your fans — fans who are schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, manual laborers, office workers, waiters, waitresses, busboys and restaurant cooks, just to name a few occupations. Somewhere along the line there needs to be acceptance that NFL players, even at the lowest levels, earn a decent wage. One need to be piggish about salary demands in a country where so many football fans are struggling just to make ends meet. I don’t just say this stuff off the top of my head. I know of what I talk about. Prior to my academic career I was one of those young men aspiring for an NFL roster spot, when there were only 28 teams, fewer roster spots on each team, and the minimum salary was a lot less than $400,000. Contracts were no more guaranteed then than now. Greed existed back then too, before salary caps and free agency rules were put into place, but the perspective and lifestyles were somewhat different.
When players like Nnamdi Asomugha and Antonio Cromartie start demanding salaries that show they understand the concept of a team salary cap and salary structure, then I’ll believe these guys truly want to be champions. As for football fans who demand their teams sign this player and that player, then agonize over how their teams fail to sign top-level players for top dollar, perhaps it’s time to take a step back from playing fantasy football and realize that NFL general managers are not playing with Monopoly money and there are limits to building the best 53-man roster. Although it’s relatively modest compared to today’s top-level salaries, consider that winning the Super Bowl gets you a big shiny ring and a bonus check in excess of $80,000. If you’re really interested in winning a Super Bowl, perhaps a willingness to sacrifice a little on your salary demands will pay off six months later with the ring and check that goes with being a champion, and being a champion beats being super-rich any day in my book.
Reminder — Don’t forget my new eBook!
Philosophy of “Packer” Pedagogy:
Vince Lombardi, critical thinking and problem-based learning
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/DavePushkin_PackerPedagogy
No comments:
Post a Comment