The Ringer NFL Show - How the New CBA Affects the NFL | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: March 15, 2020

After 10 months of negotiations, the NFL Players Association has approved a new collective bargaining agreement, which will administer its relationship with the league for the next 11 years. We clarify what the deal entails, including a rise in player minimum salaries, an extra regular-season game, a padded practice limit, and much more (0:35). Then we discuss the Ravens' trade for Calais Campbell, and Ryan Tannehill’s extension with the Titans (13:50).  Host: Kevin Clark Guest: Danny Heifetz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Emergency Pod Time. New CBA has been struck. Danny Hype. It joins me. Danny, how you doing, buddy? I am fantastic.

How are you? I'm good. We're recording the least serious emergency pod of the month for anybody. Yeah, it's probably accurate. Producer Craig just referred to a quarantine as a teen. Teens these days. I will not be stealing that, although I'd like to. A new CBA has been struck and, quite frankly, news in the NFL starts.

The offseason has essentially started within a couple of hours of the vote, which was razor thin, 1,119 yeses to 959 knows. Cleas Campbell's been traded to the Ravens. Ryan Tannehill has struck a deal to stay with the Titans, thereby limiting Tom Brady's market. And so this is what we expected. There's certainty for the next decade in labor. and, you know, getting to that point was quite contentious.

We'll get to that in a second. But now teams understand what they're going to do. You know, there were teams out of Mike Sando's point in the athletic. Last week was so interesting about teams like the Falcons or the Steelers or the Vikings or the Saints who are always up against it who don't have a lot of cap space and they didn't really have much direction. They were kind of handcuffed by the 2020 rules is currently put in place. And so now those teams know what to do guys like Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson.

they know that they'll be negotiating kind of with the wind at their back because of TV deals. Danny, when you think about this CBA passing your first initial, okay, your area of focus is what? I mean, it's so complicated because in reality, I think it's weird to just see business as usual in any business right now. I think that is the first thing. I think just sports are paused and, okay, wow, the NFL might not pause. We don't know as of this moment if free agency is going to continue tomorrow. It's technically set to open on Wednesday the new league year. But in reality, free agency begins on Monday.

But we'll see if that happens. So I think my first thought is, okay, is this going to be the only thing happening this month? But in terms of the actual bargaining group? Free agency and UFC? Yeah. Yeah, it could be like the UFC. Like, we don't know where it's going to be. We're going to do it from somewhere.

Yeah, we're just going to say, Dana White's on a memo being like, if anyone can fight, let's fight this weekend. That's what the NFL is doing with free agency. Yeah, find an alley. And do, do team medicals there. Yes. So that is the debate now. So let's set the table for everybody.

So the league meetings in late March have been canceled. That seemed obvious to everybody. It was essentially, you know, it was not all that important. You can do the meetings that were to be held on a conference call or whatever or just have every, at this point, everything that was going to be voted on will be tabled until May when those meetings happen in Los Angeles. But whether or not that happens, there's a long way. until that. The draft is scheduled next month in Las Vegas.

Seems very unlikely that in its current form it will happen then, whether that it gets pushed back and they still try to make it a public event or they have it on the day it's scheduled for and make it a non-public event. I mean, that's to be determined as well. And then obviously, as you said, for agency, you're supposed to start this week. The hurdles that are there seem small. team medicals wouldn't be able to take place. Visits wouldn't be able to take place.

A lot of facilities are closed. By the way, the Ravens facility was closed and they were still able to swing that trade. So that's a, if you have an excuse for why you're not productive working from home, Eric Takasa just dunked on you. And so I think that I can understand either way if they want to keep it going, but there will be challenges if they start free agency this week. Absolutely. I mean, I think most of the big money deals are not really.

really signed with those in-person visits. But I think it's more important for, as we get less, you know, out of the top 20, out of the top 40 free agents, but the next 60, the next 100 guys that get signed, I think there's a lot more visits to the process. The people, the Patriots are signing two weeks after free agency begins, those guys, it's more important for the visits and all those medicals and stuff, especially obviously guys who are coming back from injuries who part of their deals are contingent on health. Yeah, medicals are a big deal, but I think that there can be some workarounds or maybe the

second wave of free agency is just delayed, just kind of unofficially, or they move it back. I don't know. Sean Payton's was at a horse race on Saturday? Is that correct? A horse race? He was at some sort of event on Saturday. And he said that his guess was it gets pushed back, but we're kind of up against it. And same deal with the draft as well. All draft visits have been pushed back. And excuse me, draft visits have been canceled. And all pro days have been canceled as well. And so it's a weird time, but I think, I think if the NFL was totally devoted to doing business as usual, as weird as that sounds, it could possibly be fine. It could possibly be from just a logistical standpoint. I think that I think they should probably delay everything or make the draft non-public event.

But if they're really committed to this whole business usual thing, it can happen. All right. So let's get to the CBA. So bullet points here, extra playoff game for each conference, which. you know, changes the way kind of middle tier teams will think about competing. I mean, think about the Matt Castle Patriot, 2008, of the 2012 bear, some of those teams that would have made it. And really, I mean, Levy Smith was fired after they didn't make it at 10 and 6 in 2012. So this changes a lot about just how middle tier teams will look and how they'll build or whatever, whether or not they'll go for it in the offseason or whatever.

More teams will think they're in it because more teams are in it. So there's that. there's the 17th game which cannot be added this year like the playoff games it will start at the earliest next year tv deals will be negotiated from that um and and there will be more money 48% of revenue will go to the players up from 47 in the last deal if the deals increased 60% it goes up if it goes up 120% it goes up further to 48.8% and so there's going to be more money for players now whether or not players got enough in this deal to add the 17th game is what guys like Aaron Rogers were upset about,

JJ Watt, Russell Wilson. Who won this deal, Danny Hyfitz? I don't know and I don't think that, I don't think that framing works for this because we're talking about a union of almost 3,000 people, or sorry, almost 2,000 people, but then almost 3,000 players during training camp rosters around 90. And then you also have that group of 3,000 turns over like more than half every three years.

And then you have, you know, pension groups for people who retired 25, 30 years ago, you have people who are going to retire next year who might get disability benefits cut 30 years from now. I think it's too complicated to fit into that. I mean, in a nutshell, you can just say the owners? Well, in the sense, in the sense that owners pretty typically win every, and this was a point made by a lot of smart players early on. Owners are just winning all labor negotiations in sports right now. In the last decade, they were able to roll back some of the gains, especially football players have made. It's just kind of a new reality. Minimumum salaries for for for all players will go up about 20% starting this year and 60% around 60% of

NFL players are on minimum deals which is actually quite shocking but as you said there's no blanket statement for anybody and that's what I was hoping you would say is that it's it's a complicated issue and there aren't really all that many winners and I can say that guys who are negotiating right now for big money deals where that's DAC or mohomes or watson or somebody else I think those guys are going to get paid a lot of money just because they're they know the certainty and they're going to negotiate once those media deals kick in, and the cap that goes along with it. The cap increases to go along with it. By the way, cap came out today $198 million per team, which is $10 million more than last year, not as much as it could have been, but still interesting,

nonetheless. I agree with that. There are so many different types of NFL players. If you're a minimum guy, you're obviously like those 20% increases. There were some players who probably cared about drug testing. I think older players probably care about the 16 padded practice limit in training camp down from 28. Is there anything that you look at in this deal, Danny, and you say, let's circle this from a competitive standpoint because it might change the way teams approach the season or approach for agency or whatever because I think nothing was bigger.

Obviously, we talked about this way, Andrew Brando during the week. Nothing was bigger last year, last CBA than the quarterback or the, the cheap, quarterback thing, which is essentially an extension of the rookie salary cap. Is there anything you're looking at competitively? You're saying, okay, smart teams might exploit this loophole. Well, the biggest one is, again, like the rookie contract thing did not change. That's a continuity. I think the one that didn't change and that's a foundational.

It's a tectonic that will not move. I think the most interesting one I saw is this veteran salary benefit, which is the idea that two veterans per team every year, they can have basically a million, I think it's a million and a half for a million and a quarter, like $1.3 million of their salary won't count against the cap. I think it's basically the mid-level exception from the NBA, but for the NFL. So the nitty-gritty of it is every off-season NFL teams go to their veterans and they're like, hey, you're great, but we're going to fire you and not pay you anything unless you take a like a salary cut. And I think now you're going to see certain veterans be able to stay

around because, you know, someone's slated to make six million bucks. And actually, they're only count 4.8 million against the cap. So I think you've been, I mean, look, you've been writing about how the NFL's middle class, like, you know, in every other industry and every other country, the middle class is shrinking. The NFL's no different. And I think this will help those kind of middle class veterans stay on rosters. And I'm curious to see if that changes the actual makeup of certain teams. I wonder if teams get older. I wonder if starting units get older. And I wonder if savvyer players can stick around longer. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's part of that.

I think that the franchise tag staying in place and kind of structure is not changing will hurt. There's probably a large percentage of players that that will still hurt. I mean, even though Mahomes is about to make a trillion dollars, it doesn't matter because he'll never reach for agency, what kind of free market he'd actually have if he ever was able to have teams like the Cowboys bidding on him or whomever. And so I think that what's interesting to me is I remember doing a lot of reporting kind of the middle of last CBA about the practice time and how teams were innovating that. And so last training camp essentially, excuse me, last CBA, teams were prohibited from having more than I think 14 padded practices during the season and then limits on OTAs and then training camp obviously. This rolls that back even further. It was only 16 training camp practices from 28. And I think you're going to see a real difference with really smart coaches and just

what they think they can do, how they implement things, how they teach. You're going to have to adapt. You're going to have to realize that you can't have pad of practices and out tough guys. There was a little bit about that in the last CBA. But I think that's going to be a huge point of emphasis. How do you practice when you cannot practice? That's virtual reality, quite frankly. That is just understanding how to do.

walkthrough is better. That's better teaching in the classroom. That's just being smarter about schemes. I mean, one of the things Bill Belichick is really good at. I remember him in 2011, he knew there wasn't going to be enough practice time after the lockout. And so he went back to an old defensive playbook essentially because he wanted the guys to be able to do what they were comfortable with because he knew they weren't going to be able to install certain things. It was really interesting. It was kind of overlooked at the time. But that's the kind of stuff you're going to have to do. Go with what guys are comfortable with. Maybe that favors. a little bit more of the college style thing because you're not going to be able to teach quote unquote

pro style or more concepts whatever do what these guys are comfortable with coming from college that sort of thing and there's a lot of competitive offshoots of this limited practice time i don't think we're discussing enough no i mean i completely agree with that because in a nutshell like what is the job of a coach and it's to get the whole to be more than some of the parts and how do you do that and it's we make people's jobs easier not harder that's so much of what you talk about these scheme wars it's how do you make players jobs easier? And part of it, what you're saying with those padded practice being less, coaches kind of literally have to pick and choose their battles about the toughness.

And so they get the 14 padded practices during the season. I believe they can use those whenever they want. They can disperse those whenever. During season, yes. Yeah, during the regular season. And I believe some teams were kind of saving those up to the end of the season. And I mean, you've mentioned how the Eagles did like that training camp of sorts. Yeah, during the biweek.

I think you're going to see more of that. think that you're going to see more teams reminding players to hit, you know, kind of around December. Obviously, that's a team, the time we traditionally think about teams preserving themselves and getting healthy, but I also think there might be some rewarding practice for teams who save up 10 padded practices after Thanksgiving to remind players ahead of the playoff race, like, to just get your fundamentals because it's hard to practice, you know, so much a defense, sometimes it's just teams just aren't tackling well. It's really hard to practice those kind of things. It's really hard to practice shedding a block in the run game or just getting really basic

things down when you only have 14 padded practices from September 5th on. So I think teams might just start rejuvening that in December, especially with the playoffs stuff coming up in the added playoff games. All right. Let's quickly talk about some of the news here. Raven stole Colais Campbell from the Jaguars for a fifth round pick, which they actually got for trading a training camp kicker to the Vikings. This is Eric DeCosta, just being smart still. This is what smart teams do, eh, Danny? Yeah, I'm going to be honest.

I don't understand what just happened. Well, he had a big cap number, and then they're going to sign him to an extension. So from that perspective, that it would be the kind of dumb teams justification for why you wouldn't trade for him, why you'd go for a fifth. I'm surprised he didn't fetch more than a fifth from the ratings.

But. Well, if they weren't. bidding against anybody. Well, I think it's also an amazing move because the Ravens have been, it's so amazing to watch a team like the Ravens adapt, right? Because what they've been doing is they're the only team, the only team more obsessed with compensatory picks than the Ravens or the Patriots. So obviously when you let, well, it's not obvious.

When you let your free agents leave, you get compensatory picks back a year later. But if you set up your system right, you're drafting or developing a lot of picks. Eventually, some of them are good, and then they leave and they replenish the whole system. The Ravens let all their guys leave. They let Zedarius Smith go last year. year. They let C.J. Mosley go last year. They let Terrell Suggs go last year. And we're like, well, who are they going to replace them with?

They get Matthew Judon. Judon becomes a stud. They tag Judon, so they still have them on board. And then they sit a fifth for Callais Campbell. And now they have, like, they're bringing back most of their defense from last year, except they're adding Callas Campbell to a team. And now they have a healthy secondary, because they didn't even go into last year with a, like a super healthy secondary.

And now they've got that Marcus Peters and Earl Thomas. and Calais Campbell. And that defense is... Marcus, by the way, who they got for another fifth round pick. Yeah. And they didn't even mess up their... So, I mean, meanwhile,

they didn't even mess up their compensatory picks because they traded for Clay's Campbell. So they didn't even mess up the process. So it's unbelievable how they're building that team. Yep, it's wild. All right. Ryan Tannahill signs an extension.

So the reports come out now, and this is, you know, this is only logical that they wanted to keep Brian Tannahill. And they signed him before Freightoncy ever began, and this allows them to, tagged Derek Henry if they so choose. But I think that

I think that this is two things. Number one is I think the Titans will be pretty good next year and I think they'll be able I told the story before about how emotional that Titans locker room was after they lost to Kansas City. There were a lot of people crying. Derek Henry was one of them. We actually talked about that when we filmed Slow Newsday because I think

they thought that the core was going to leave and they are going to lose some guys. They already cut and then Jack Confin is going to leave. Again, what's not re-legislate them, decline in the fifth-year option on Jack Conklin, but they will lose some guys. But it looks like if they so choose to have Derek Henry as their tag and keep Ryan Tanna Hill, that's fine. And then Tom Brady's market looks smaller and smaller. The Niners, according to reports, are not going to offer him anything. Even, you know, by the way, they have a quarterback, something we've discussed many times. The Titans now have a long-term solution. Right

now, it's Patriots, Chargers, and Bucks. First of all, let's start with the Titans. Anything. stick out to you about this deal, Danny? I just like any free agent or any frequent signing or any kind of contract extension, the numbers are fake when you look at and zoomed out. It's really a two-year deal for $42 million. And then assuming he doesn't play awful this year, it'll become basically a three-year deal for $71 million or $72. It's really reasonable because, I mean, the cap, as you said, $198.

The cap is $200 million. He's going to get paid roughly $21 million each of the next two years on average. So they're getting him 10% of their budget. That's really reasonable for a quarterback. And if he's a disaster, they really don't have to do that third year. And if he's long as he's serviceable, serviceable, those three years, it's super reasonable fits in the budget. I think it's, you know, they just backed butt first into a competent quarterback with

this trade from Miami last year. And I mean, this is a reasonable deal. All right. Tom Brady. Does he feel like he has to stay in New England now? He doesn't have to do anything. But I think the important thing to note, again, is that, We have no idea what Tom Brady wants.

And I think so much of these reports, have you heard anything about Tom Brady wanting to be with the Los Angeles Chargers? Or is it people just connecting dots? Because I haven't heard anything about Brady wanting to be with the Chargers. I haven't really understood any of this connection between him and the Raiders. We don't know what he wants. Yeah. I mean, let's, I want to be careful on that.

I mean, there's, yeah, there are, there have been a lot of, there's been a lot of talk about what Tom Brady wants, right? And I think that, and I think that these are educated. And I think that some of the things that have come out have been a reflection of that. And so I think that Tom Brady's market is not as robust as you would think for a player like Tom Brady. I think that he is 43 years old. I think that teams probably think there are better solutions that either they have in house or whatever. I think that what's happening here that's really interesting to me is, okay, you have Tampa.

I guess you're going to make a run at them according to reports. The chargers will definitely make a run. And then the Patriots will obviously offer him a contract. I think what's interesting to me is the weaker the market gets, the more there's a chance that something Simmons and I talked about two weeks ago on his pod, the more there's a chance that some owner says, wait, Tom Brady's possibly available. I'm just going to go make a run at him. some wild card team we're not even thinking of to make an upgrade.

I'm plucking this out of thin air, but a team like the bears. You know, just make it work somehow where you can just sit, when an owner one day wakes up and says, wait a second, why are we letting Tom Brady choose between a team in L.A. with no fans or a team in Tampa that, you know, has struggled for relevance. Why can't we just go get them? And I think that that's what you start to see. No, I agree.

And I think the most underrated part of the whole Brady thing. By the way, just to be on the record, I think he's going back to the patients. I do too. But I think the most underrated part of this of if he leaves, why would he leave? And I think the underrated part is he's very proudly of a six-round pick with his chip on his shoulder, even the Patriots passed on him five times. He has seen how many players get cut a year early or rather than a year too soon, or a year too soon rather than a year too late.

Hundreds, right? Like, he's seen hundreds of people get discarded like that. And how on earth could Tom Brady see that hundreds of times and not every time think one day that will be me? One of my favorite quotes from Tom Brady is he told this to Sports Illustrated in 2009 after he missed the 2008 season with that ACL injury. And he was explaining to SI that when he was walking off the field at one point he turned around and he watched and he saw Matt Castle, like take a snap and hand the ball off. And he remembers thinking, wow, they just play without you. And I think that a part of this, if he does leave, might be he wanted to be the person who leaves the Patriots rather than the Patriots dumping him. And I think that's an underrated aspect of why, or at least the idea that he could if he wanted to, but he comes back.

Yeah. All right. I think we're both in the same page. I think that it has to be the Patriots. I don't think there's just a, barring this sort of scenario we're talking about where some really viable franchise comes out of the woodwork that we're not expecting. I just don't see Tampa or Los Angeles as options. All right. Let's wrap it up here.

Any other CBA thoughts? I think the interesting thing to watch is just what happens with this gambling revenue. I believe there is a lot of discontent between players about how the gambling-related revenue over the next 10 or 11 years will be split. Basically, the last CBA, one of the things players were very upset about is that there's the pile of revenue, but what is the actual revenue that gets split? And basically, and correct me if I'm wrong, but owners were basically allowed to take stadium credits, money to build stadiums off the top, and it wasn't counted in the revenue they split. This year, this CBA, the players, that no longer is a thing.

The owners don't get to just take stadium credits off the top of the revenue pile. But I'm curious to see how the gambling money is split because I believe that there might be some not exactly. Like the gambling revenue coming in might not be part of that 51.40 or 51.5. 48 and a half split as it's not as neat as it seems. And I'm curious to see how the gambling revenues actually split. Something to watch for. Danny Hyphitz. Thank you for joining me. Enjoy the teen. Love the teens. Thank you, Kevin.