The Ringer NFL Show - The Wentz Deal, the Dak Deal, and the Future of Player Contracts, With Joel Corry | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

The tampering allegations by the Patriots, the Texans' failure to build around Deshaun Watson, and the Raiders on ‘Hard Knocks’ (0:35). Then, Joel Corry on deciphering Carson Wentz’s confusing new contract, the Eagles' future, the Cowboys' path forward with the Dak extension, and the way contracts will be looked at in the future (15:00). Hosts: Robert Mays, Kevin Clark Guest: Joel Corry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I just wanted to remind you guys that every Sunday night after each episode of Big Little Lies, the ringer's Amanda Dobbins and ESPN's Mina Kimes break down everything we just saw in our new after show called Big Little Live in partnership with Buick. And after you check that out, make sure to subscribe to the Mina Kimes show featuring Lenny, a weekly NFL podcast with frequent contributions from her beloved dog and sidekick named Lenny. You can subscribe to the Mina Kimes Show with Lenny on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, Make sure to watch Big Little Live every Sunday night on Twitter. It's the Ring around NFL show.

I'm Robert Mays. joined as always by a flu game-esque Kevin Clark. How you doing, buddy? Well, I just got back from Mexico City. It's an amazing place. I'm quite sick. And if I have any bad takes here, it is because of that. So we're doing the next show in our kind of big picture series.

We're doing this off-season. We're going to do a deep dive into player contracts. Joe Corey of CBS, who I know we, both Revere in terms of his knowledge. It's a really interesting conversation. That'll be coming a little bit later. But before we do that, we're going to talk about the news of the day,

which just broke while we were on this podcast. And that is that the Patriots have reportedly filed tampering charges against the Texans for their pursuit of Nick Casario, according to Adam Schuster of ESPN. I got to tell you, it's just the Patriots making sure everyone follows the rules. And they've been following the rules for a long time now. They never have any public problems with following the rules.

And I'm just glad that they're holding other teams to a standard of not breaking the rules. I'm sorry, I don't say anything wrong with this. So I'm confused about what this could mean because it's an open secret for the how, I don't know how long, essentially since Brian Gain was fired that the Texans wanted to hire Nick Casario. Right. So what does this tampering mean? Is this a Jack Easterbee and Nick Casario talking at the ring ceremony deal?

Is this a Bill Bryant shooting? shooting off texts. Like, what does this actually entail and what could they get in trouble for? Because we all know this was happening and it always happens. It always happens. So there's a couple of dueling reports here

that all seem to job together. So Schaefter reports to start this that there is a tampering investigation being opened, okay, by the NFL. And then in a rap report says the Texans firing Brian game the night after the Patriots ring ceremony set off some alarm bells.

Ooh. Okay. Oh, I like this. Alice intrigue is great. I'm so into this. All right, connect the dots for me. Okay, so I don't actually know, to be honest with you. I don't know what the connection is. Bill O'Brien would not have been at the Patriots ring ceremony.

I mean, obviously, Bill O'Brien worked in New England. He was the offensive coordinator there. He obviously has a lot of friends in that building. There are a lot of Patriot people who have made their way to Houston in the past. Again, I'm with you. I mean, you think about, okay, so Mike McKeough, McCagden gets fired and immediately we basically know that Joe Douglas is the top candidate. In fact, there were reports that Joe Douglas was maybe tied there before the firing of McCagden.

So this sort of, I wouldn't call it tampering, but backdoor communication seems to happen all the time. So we talked about this a little bit when we were discussing just what teams should be looking for. Nick Casario's name came up. I think we both talked about how he's not super motivated to leave New England because it's a really good job. and that's one of the things I'm running about this for tomorrow, which is kind of the diminishing appeal in some ways of general manager jobs

throughout the league. And one of the reasons for that is that we have these coaches that have so much more power than they did probably five, 10 years ago, especially these coaches that are the offensive play callers the Sean Payton's, the Andy Reads, those guys have a say in personnel

and they can wield some of that power. And Houston now becomes that situation. Because if Casero had gone in there, I would much rather have Andy Reid or, I mean, you know, Lesson is obviously very powerful GM, but someone like Sean McVaghan, I'd rather have a good coach have all that power than give all the power to Bill O'Brien for some reason. Well, whether Bill O'Brien deserves or not as entirely different conversation, but he seems to happen. And I just think that if you're looking at jobs that have come open or jobs that could come open in the near future with NFL GMs, a lot of them had the same drawbacks.

Because when we used to think about GM jobs in the past, I think that the number one factor, of whether you want to take a GM job is, do you have a quarterback? Is that position settled? Now we've come to a point in the league where so many teams are settled at that position, or at least they have a plan there. So now there are different factors

that kind of determine whether these jobs are good or bad. And I think that whether you have a coach in place that has a certain monochum of power is one of those factors you have to consider. And that's true with the Jets that just happened with Joe Douglas. It's true with what's going to happen with whoever takes the job in Houston. And I think the most logical next job to come open GM-wise is probably either in Arizona or Tampa Bay,

and both of those teams have first-year head coaches that are most likely going to be their next year. So you have teams that are, you have GMs that in their first season if they take over next year, won't get to pick their head coach. So it just seems like there aren't that many cushy jobs right now. So if you're Casario, I don't know if there will be a perfect job as the league currently exists. So the fact that he didn't take that Houston job is interesting to me. Well, I mean, he hasn't, they haven't hired anybody. So it's possible.

I want to delve into another report here. This from Mike Florio. Evidence of potential tampering come from photos, videos, and other proof of interactions between Texan's exec, Jack Easterby, who, as we know from reports over the past couple days, has become more of a force inside Houston. He obviously was the Patriots character coach, I guess, was just his phrase. Between Jack Husebe and Casario, last Thursday's Patriots ring ceremony, which happened the night before the Houston, the Houston GM job became vacant. So the, the suggestion there is that Jack

Easter being Nick Casario had a, had a talk. Maybe Casario said he was looking for a change. Remember, Houston was blocked from Casario last year when game was hired because their season was still ongoing and you can do that then. And so I guess that suggestion is that they had an interaction and that the Patriots did not enjoy that. So if you're Houston, And you assumed that if you fired Gain, you were just going to get Nick Casario. You got to be sitting there right now and not being very thrilled.

I mean, even if Bill O'Brien, the relationship had deteriorated to the point where he didn't want him there anymore and it had nothing to do with Concerio. It still feels like the timing is strange. Brian Gain did not do a bad job. I feel like he had very limited resources when he took that job over,

a lack of draft picks. Essentially had 12 months. Yeah, and a lack of draft picks. I mean, there weren't that many picks, and I think they did a pretty good job in kind of filling out that roster with what, they had. You could say they didn't chase offensive line talent enough, but we've seen what it's

like to overpay for offensive linemen and free agency. It's never a good idea. Just because you lost out on the Nate's shoulder sweepstakes last spring, is that the worst thing in the world? I don't know if it is. So I think objectively, Brian gained a fine job. So you just fired a GM who did a decent job after a year in that position. And now you don't have an answer if Casario can't come. And I think that that is a concern. So obviously, they do try to address. the offensive line in the draft. And some of the sort of Twitter chatter was that maybe that those guys, guys like Titus Howard, who was seen as a reach, maybe those guys didn't look so good in workouts over the past

couple weeks. That's certainly possible. I think the scariest outcome for the Texans fans is, number one, is that their attempts to address the offensive line have been an unqualified disaster. And number two, there is no plan here to get a guy like a Serio. You know, I think beyond that, we've seen how much leverage a guy like Casario gets. It's not like Jack Easterby was going to negotiate terms. This happened with Joe Douglas.

I don't know if you saw the Manish meta report, Robert, but Joe Douglas essentially doubled the years in money because he knew he was the favorite. And Casario could have just said, cool, give me $4 million a year and a five-year contract. And he could have basically held that team ransom. So I think that when you're firing a guy in midstream like this and you don't have a plan, remember, think about this. Okay. The Panthers fired Dave Gettleman kind of midstream and they brought in the old GM, Marty Herney. That's fine.

That plan was obviously, you know, he wasn't employed by a team. Everything was fine. The Kansas Chief just promoted Veach. It's not like they had to go out and poach a guy. If you're poaching at this time of year, you're going to have to pay up. And I think that unless you have it all really nailed down, and that includes by the way a lot of tampering. It's a really uphill battle to get a guy like Nick Casario on June 11th,

12th, whatever today is. Especially because, I mean, this is the second power struggle that Bill O'Brien has won in the past two years, less than two years. If you're somebody that is a prospective GM, is that a place you want to wind up? Again, with a coach that has not necessarily been that successful, but seems to wield the same amount of power as the league's most successful coaches? I'm with you.

And the plan around Deshawn Watson has has me scratching my head. It bordered on football malpractice at times last year. Obviously, we know that he had to ride a bus at one point because he couldn't fly commercial. And a lot of people,

I want to address this real quick. A lot of Texans fans were like, you should stop bringing that up because it was early in the season and then things got better. I have a rule. And the rule is if your quarterback can't fly commercial, or sorry, can't fly in an airplane,

then I should, bringing up all the time. Yeah, bruised lungs deserve mention constantly. I think that's a good podcast rule. Yeah. If you can't get on an airplane, I'm going to bring it up. All right, before we get to Joel, who we'll be discussing the Carson Wend's contract with, by the way. I know that's kind of the biggest news, but we want to talk to someone smarter than us about that deal. So I want to say real quick, before we get into it, because we're going to get him with Joel and he's obviously a lot smarter than us in everything, not just contracts and everything. But I do think it's fascinating because Hallie Roseman made his bones in this league as a salary cap expert. And to have a

a contract negotiated by him is really interesting to me. There's a lot of lessons we can learn from that. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So there are a ton of lessons. It's a fascinating contract. It's really complex. So we'll talk with Joel about that.

But one more piece of news we do want to hit is that much to my delight, the not the Detroit Lions, the Oakland Raiders will be the Hard Knocks team this year, which I, this is just excellent. It's excellent news. I could not be more excited to watch it. It's everything we could possibly want from a Hard Knocks team. It's amazing. And there's a couple things we get to find out.

There's been a tension in my mind between what John Gruden says and what he does. Yeah. And okay, he's saying, is it data or data? He's saying, I hate analytics, which I don't even think is true. He's saying, we're going to bring back to 99. All of these things are obviously two years old. But he's said some wild things over the past two years. Or the past, yeah, 2018 and 2019.

And now we get to see how he actually operates in his office. What is he telling players? What is he telling his coaching staff? that to me is going to be the biggest piece of evidence. It'll be a Rosetta Stone for the John Gruden era, just sort of unfettered access to his players, his conversations, and how that organization is run. You can hide behind press conferences and say crazy things,

and we can say, oh, that's just Gruden being Gruden. But now we get to find out what actually happens behind closed doors and if John Gruden is the coach we think he is in 2019. It's the best possible outcome. If it had been the Lions, I don't know what I would have done. As a Arden Hawks, Hard Knocks fan. I know what I would have done. I would have not watched Hard Knocks.

I would have watched it just out of curiosity. We had a conversation in the office a couple weeks ago, and I wrote something kind of connected to it about the teams. They're just kind of sputtering and spinning in their wheels. But the Lions are probably the most boring team in the league. Like, there is nothing particularly intriguing about the Detroit Lions. And if I had to watch what is an incredible piece of documentary filmmaking every single year about that team, it just would have been so, so tedious.

but now we get the exact opposite of that. What about Matthew Stafford's chugging, which I found to be quite thrilling? I mean, that was fun, and that's a good thing. But, I mean, Matthew Stafford is not a particularly interesting person, nor a particularly exciting one. He is, Matthew Stafford is kind of like, you know, there's a certain baseline of NFL quarterbacking

where it's like Matthew Stafford, Andy Dalton, that group of guys. And they are what they are, and there's not much to be said about them at this point. How would, if you had to name just Matthew Stafford facts, just outside of his play and his sort of career biography, what besides him being high school and youth ball friends with Clayton Kershaw could do a thing I know about him? He went to Georgia. Yeah.

He was the number one overall pick in the draft. That's it. That's what I have about Matthew Stafford. I met a guy one time in Argentina who was his high school receiver. He gave me a whole breakdown. It was so weird. It's the weirdest thing I've ever been to. I was at a party and the guy was like, I was this high school receiver.

You were at a party in Argentina? Yeah, it was very strange. And the guy was like I played wide receiver for Matthew Stafford. He gave me a full scouting report. How did you end up at a party in Argentina? I don't know. Why was I in Mexico City the other day? That was a vacation with your wife.

Yeah, my wife was at this thing. My wife was at this thing. We have a friend in Argentina and she invited us to this thing. You have a friend in Argentina. That makes sense. Ending up at a random party in a city or in a country. No, no, no, no. No, no.

It was my wife's friend. We lived in Argentina and she took us and it was all a bunch of American action. I was concerned if this was like a never go with a hippie to a second location sort of situation. No, no, no, no. All right. All right. That makes more sense. All above board. Before we continue with Joel, let's take a quick break. Father's Day is around the corner and a subscription to Golf Digest Schools is the perfect gift with more than 350 video lessons on every part of the game featuring golf's leading teachers from Butch Harmon to David Ledbetter to Michael Breed. It's like

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He writes columns for CBS Sports. And I think he's one of the smartest people on player contracts and team building. Joel Corey, Joel, let's start out with the topic contract-wise. Everyone's talking about today. I feel like I have to have a graduate degree to understand Carson Wentz's contract. I feel like I understand the salary cap. I feel like I am on top of this and I understand most player contracts, but Hallie Roseman, who is basically made his bones, a salary cap expert,

finally gets a quarterback mega deal here. Is there something that sticks out to you about this deal that makes this better than most mega deal contracts? And when you look at the structure, what just jumps out for first thing? It's more complicated than most contracts. There's something called the 30% rule, which comes into play, which limits your salary increases from the last year in the CBA on a go forward basis to 30% of that year. So it's structured in a way where they can kind of circumvent the 30% rule,

kind of like the old contracts on the rookie system would circumvent the 25% rule, where you'd have these huge salary escalators or incentives, which were based on doing next to nothing to increase salaries. So you've got these escalators in Wintz's like 2021, 22, and 23 years where basically if he does more than what he did the year before, any of those years, it's going to trigger an increase in those salaries. That's one thing, which makes this deal a little unique compared to other ones. There's been some misconceptions splitting a $30 million option bonus means

in his contract that is due next year. First, it's to exercise a 2024 contract year. That's not that unusual. In a contract, several teams use that structure besides the option. Right now, Wynce's 2020-based salary is $31.383 million, and it's fully guaranteed. And if you fade out his cap number, it's a shade over $42.65 million for next year. They're not going to carry him at that. Plus, if you don't exercise the option, you don't get the last year of the contract.

So there's no way they don't exercise the option. And when you exercise the option, it's $30 million. It reduces the base salary down to $1.383 million. You can prorate the signing bonus on a go-for basis from 20 through 24, so it's going to count on the cap, which is $30 divided by $5, $6 million for each of those years. So this is not the run-of-the-mill typical contract. track. There's $16 million in escalator max value to $144 million, as opposed to $128 million. And they're based on what it wants does individually in what the team does in terms of

their performance. It's a graduated amount depending on MVP's and offensive player awards. And also there's another component, which is based on how many times if it wins a Super Bowl. So the max value isn't going to be that easy. Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me, I saw a list the other day. I think Field Yates put it out of the veterans in Philadelphia now signed through for at least three more seasons. That includes Wence, Ertz, Cox, Kelsey, Lane Johnson, Brandon Graham, Alshon Jeffrey. This is a team that won the Super Bowl with no one really being over, I think, 8% of the caps, something like that? And certainly Carson Wence wasn't. Is this team kind of going to have to go forward with this core or with the rising cap? Is there going to be more flexibility than we think? Is there a complication with the lockout coming in a couple of years? What is the future of just the Eagles team building because of the deals they have in place now, including Carson West? Howie Rosem is doing something which differs from his predecessor and former boss, Joe Banner.

Joe, for the most part, would leave contracts alone. Howie's playing the Dell. The game gets cap room today, whereas about it tomorrow. That's all well and good, provided the cap. keeps going up. It's a pretty safe bet to make because you're going to have new TV deals coming

into play, and I have never seen a situation where rights fees have gone backwards as opposed to forward. The question will be, how do they get phased in with the new CBA? This CBA phased them in gradually, unlike the NBA, CBA,

where it was all dumped into one year, where you had that huge spike, and then it's leveled off. That's what used to happen. with the NFL whenever there was a new TV money. But you can outrun to a degree kicking the can down the road if you're going to have a pretty healthy cap increase each year. One thing it doesn't account for, and there's some sort of variable in the equation you don't expect.

Like Dallas, they restart your Tony Romo's contract twice, thinking that he's going to be there for the long haul, back injury, Dak Prescott comes into play. All of a sudden, you've got a ton of dead money is almost 20 million associated with,

by dead money, I mean, for people don't know. That's a salary cap charge for someone no longer on the roster. And then Pittsburgh, it probably wasn't in their

wildest dreams that they're going to be trading Antonio Brown when they started almost $13 million into signing bonus in 2018. So when they trade them,

they have a cap charge of slightly over 21 million form. So that's where you really get into trouble, kicking a can down the road. First, you've got to pick the right guys with that you know will be there for the long haul. And then if for some unforeseen reason, you have to release someone, it does potentially create a cap headache. Yeah. So that's with once right now, that's the problem with converting that $30 million into that bonus, correct? Because then you're looking at whatever's guaranteed. You can't carry him at almost $43 million next year.

That's probably not going to be feasible. This is a team that was roughly $20 million over the cap going into this offseason how he had to use his cap magic to get under the cap and then create a room. So you're going to have to pick up the option and convert it. The thing is, doing the deal two years early, you get a better way to manage the cap on a go-for basis of this particular deal because you're going to be out. allocating over these two years, some of the money, which would be new money, backwards to the existing contracts. So you're going to have lower cap numbers and would have otherwise if you

weighted. So that's one of the benefits for doing an extension two years early because you get to plan the numbers better. We haven't seen a cap number at 43 million. We did see last year in San Francisco do something unusual, stick a huge roster bonus in first year, Jimmy Garapolos contract because that's so much cap room, they wanted to eat some of it up and lower the cap numbers in the future years, but I haven't seen a cat number be carried more than 37

million, so that's why they definitely get excess the option, plus they want the 20-24 year, and you don't have the 20-24 year if you don't exercise the option. So it's really there from the agent's standpoint to ensure that they exercise the option. That's what it's really there for.

It's interesting to me, Joel, because a lot of the smartest teams in the NFL over the past couple of months or a year have signed their quarterback to a mega extension. The Seahawks are always ahead of the curve. Eagles now, knowing kind of the lessons of the last few months, I guess you could say, what do

the Cowboys do with DAC from a creative standpoint? Is there anything they can do you think that will alleviate that huge hit, especially when they have all those other guys to pay? Is there a path forward for the Cowboys, I guess is the question? Yeah, the Cowboys' path forward is when in doubt restructure Tyron Smith's

contract. That's their path for it. They haven't done it yet, but typically they size, particularly their first round picks to five, six, seven-year deals. I'm an extension. So you have the extra year or two where there's no proration. And then when you restructure the contract, years that had no proration, now have a little bit of proration. Dallas doesn't do anything really creative. I would imagine he's getting a bigger signing bonus.

then DeMarcus Lawrence. The question is going to be if he beats Wince, does he come under Wince, Dallas missed the window of opportunity to potentially get him for $130 million per year, in my opinion. If you wanted to do that,

you should have been aware the fact that Philadelphia is like you in the fact that they do first round picks earlier than most teams, so it could have been a possibility if not Wins. It could have been, Jared Goff because the Rams also do deals really early.

And one of the biggest mistakes they made was Dave on Austin, which I still to this day don't understand why you'd let up extend him, let alone pick up the option here, but that's neither here nor there. So if you wanted to get that at a cheaper price, that day is gone. Todd France is the agent. Todd France is going to drive a hard bargain. He's one of a good luck with that. And Jerry's also done some things which,

It made me scratch my head from the standpoint that any time you had a team when I was an agent, say something overly flattering about a client. I either taped it or I printed it out and I called it my version of Miranda. Did anything you say positive about my client can and will be used against you when negotiation starts? for some reason, middle of last year before they're playing Atlanta, Jerry unsolicitably says, if I had, I wouldn't trade Dak Prescott for two first round picks, including the first overall pick in the 2019 NFL draft.

Todd Francis is probably thinking, thank you. Now, all you've done by saying that is, well, what's two first round picks? Hmm, that's the compensation for an unmatched offer sheet for a non-exclusive franchise player. So automatically, Todd Francis is starting point for discussions is the franchise tag numbers. And that's going to be 27 million for DAC. And then you franchise them again, you're like at 32.

So automatically putting a neighborhood in 30 million per year by just that one simple statement. So Kerry sometimes says things wrong like, do you realize what you just did by doing that? Hey, that's kind of where we are. That even before Wince, we're probably going to be looking at 30. Now it's just, is he over or under? I personally think it comes in between Matt Ryan's $30 million per year and Wynce's 32. Because don't forget, once when he's healthy, was an MVP candidate. Has anyone ever said at any point during that Prescott's three seasons, he's in the running to be MVP.

peak. So the ceiling for Wince, what we've seen so far, and it was borne out by where they were drafted, and how they played, is much higher for Wince than there is Prescott. So that's, that interests me so much because I feel like there was a spot maybe, you know, five years ago or so where there were those mid-tier quarterback contracts that kind of had those trap doors in them. I think about Andy Dalton's deal, Colin Kaepernick's deal, and it seems like those have kind of gone by the wayside. And if we're talking about DAC as a guy who's in that second tier, you'd figure that maybe that sort of deal is more fitting for a guy like him.

Do you just not think we'll see those types of contracts anymore? Are we just in the era of the 30 million or bust quarterback if they get extended? Most likely, you've kind of seen the closest thing to that was Nick Folles didn't get anywhere near that neighborhood. He's at 88 over 4, which maxes out at 102, when he's really a two-year deal because they can exit after two years. Alex Smith last year, a great structure for him. him because of the way the guarantees best early was 92 over, I think 94 over 4, 23 and a half million

and maxed out like it 105, I believe. If he hit the performance bonuses, he won't, that's now what's considered your middle tier. I don't think you're going to see anything like the Andy Dalton contracts and something which really caught my attention earlier this year was one of the Browns, I forget which one, came out and said, we won't be extending Andy Dalton's contract this year. He's got two years left. And I'm like, really? I don't think anyone thought that Andy Dalton was a candidate for a contract extension.

I think the consensus would have been he's more of a candidate to be released than for you to re-up him. So if that's the mindset in Cincinnati, I'm like, hey, that's why you have problems. I would have loved to have seen Andy Dalton's reaction if they sat down and offered him an extension. They're like, what? Me? Are you sure? I would sign it before they change their mind. Not that these contracts are worth to pay for the credit on,

but it's not fully guaranteed. But I would have in my mind said, win and where. So, Joel, we talked about it a little bit in regard to the Eagles and the Wenz contract. You said the Cowboys don't do anything that's all that creative. When you're looking at just sort of the teams around the league that do kind of the smartest, most innovative stuff with contracts to give themselves flexibility,

are there franchises that maybe don't come to mind? for us that you look at just their backlog and their track record and say they're just really smart at knowing how to do this. First of all, nobody does anything overly creative because teams try at all cost to avoid setting a new contractual precedent, even though to me you should be able to distinguish one situation from another, their blanket responses. If we do it for you, then it's going to open the floodgates for everybody coming and asking for the same thing.

But there's a difference between, we'll say, you're Tom Brady, if he's ever going to try to assert and get the highest paid contract like he used to, getting something unique as opposed to one of those replaceable, fungible defensive players that Belichick brings in every year on a rotating basis. But teams don't really operate that way. The team, which to me does the best job from a contractual standpoint, and doing a great job, contracts, he doesn't necessarily translate into success on the field. The San Francisco 49ers, they have the most team-friendly contracts in the league. I told Brian Cap Hampton, who's there, who does the day they manage for the cap, that if I was still an agent and I had a free agent, I would never send him to you because I don't like how you do your contracts, which to me is the best compliment. I can give someone

because you're supposed to do stuff an agent doesn't like. But this team has the latest festive date for guarantees in the league. It's April 1st. Everyone else is typically first, third day of the league year. By that, I mean the injury guarantees turn to full guarantees and that's in future years.

They don't guarantee anything it's signing past the first year. And they have these huge per game roster bonuses and contracts which were the bane of my existence as an agent. Tom Kaepernick had two million in annual per game roster bonuses in his contract. There's one year that, I don't know, he missed about half the season.

So that was basically every game you're not on the 46 million active roster. You don't get that money. So he lost, I think, close to a million dollars that season because of the amount of per game roster bonuses. So San Francisco is head and shoulders above the crowd in protecting themselves contractually. Because how they were able to get D-4 this year to sign for 17 million a year, When Frank Clark is over 20, Trey Flowers is at 18, and DeMarcus Lawrence is 21 plus, I don't get that one.

In terms of quarterback pressures last year, and by pressures, I mean combined hits or he's and sacks. D. Ford had more than any of these guys. So the fact that they were able to get him at that amount, and there's fewer guarantees in the contract than these other guys, they're doing your job. So I have to give them a lot of credit. There are three teams which are very inflexible contracts, which is great for them. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Green Bay. They don't have anything guaranteed in the contract at all after the first year, except Green Bay treats Aaron Rogers like it's a conventional contract

where you have base salary contract guarantees. Cincinnati does not make an exception for anybody. Pittsburgh has injury guarantees for Rafflesberger for his base salaries, but no way from to come fully guaranteed. Now, what they do is they'll give you a bigger signing bonus. It'll stick the first, third, fifth day of the league year roster bonus in year two and year three, which is supposed to substitute for the lack of guarantees. But if they want to, they can still get rid of you before the roster bonuses do.

So you are exposed a little bit. And one more guy, I love what he does that I dealt with when I was an agent. Rob Brzezinski in Minnesota is excellent at his job. So except for the Kurt Cousin's contract, which is fully guaranteed, nobody else, anytime they do a contract extension or a deal, has money fully guaranteed at signing after the first year. Signing bonuses are kept pretty modestly. So he has maximum flexibility to get out of deals. And what he did with Daniel Hunter is almost criminal.

Because that guy, 24-year-old pass rush, you're going to your contract year. All you have to do is do what you did the year before, to franchise you. He signs for less than $14.5 million per year. There are escalators of $1 million per year that he could earn. But still, any competent agent should have been able to see that once you had the $20 million per year pass rush,

was on the horizon. Because any idiot should have known that if Aaron Donald was doing a deal, it was going to be over $20 million per year. And if Kaleel Mack was doing a deal, same thing. And once you got those two in that club, somebody else was going to join it.

And you've had two other guys join it so far. And Frank Clark and DeMarcus Lawrence. Hunter, is it $14.5 million per year? And went out and had a great year. So he is, and he gave up five new years. If you're going to do that, do a bridge deal where you give up two, three new years. Because the idea is to get as many bites of the apple in your prime and not rely on the team's good graces to correct a deal, which is so out of whack with the marketplace, which is what they've had to do of Adam Thielen, which is another great contract that Brasinski did. I will be surprised if DeNeil Hunter at some point

isn't a holdout candidate where he goes, wait a minute, Joe, he's most of the $25 million, Miles Garrett's in that neighborhood. I'm a 14. I'm producing like they are. Whoa, we got a problem here. So, Rob Resinsky is just great in his job. Hey, Joel, you know, we're two years out now from a potential lockout, and I can't believe

it's been 10 years since 2011, CBI. was struck and time marches on and we'll be dead soon. However, I would like to address, and obviously there were so many huge changes in the 2011 CBA. The rookie cap changed the way

that teams are built. I don't think that's an overstatement. Veterans in a lot of ways, got screwed for the first five, six years of that deal. It started to become a little more normalized last couple of years, but it was a tough time to be

29 or 30 in the NFL during the CBA. When you look at the different types of, of contracts or types of things that will be addressed, maybe that no one's talking about right now, what do you see happening going forward with sort of the way, from a team-building standpoint, contracts are looked at in this CBA going forward for the 2020s?

Well, I think it's going to be status quo. I don't think the players are going to get any significant gains out of the new CBA. One thing that people always talk about is, if you need to boss the franchise tag, hell's going to freeze over before that happened. that's going to be in the next seven CBAs. You're not getting rid of that.

So players can hope to try to get marijuana relaxed. I wouldn't make Goodell's commissioner discipline some sort of major that you need to have one. That's only playing in the owner's hands. You knew really to focus on increasing your share of the pie. You're basically 47%. I don't think you get over. 50, maybe you get to 49 is the baseline, and making sure gambling revenue is included in that pie. Try to increase the amount you get from the TV money, maybe roll back the Ricky Wade scale a little bit.

The 50-year option is killing, to me, the leverage of players, because it used to be the last year, your contract under the old system, was there's no way that a player could play under it. So a team would do the deal early and the player had him at their mercy, or if you had the guy to play out, you couldn't franchise them like in Dominican soon. You get the over market and got some deal which reshaped the market in ways nobody really saw coming. That's how Calvin Johnson got the deal he got because he wanted to make a franchise. And his franchise number was so huge. He was in your mercy.

That doesn't happen anymore. So, yeah, I think you have to modify that. Now, in terms of contractually, there's one of the thing they really should focus on. I don't think they would. there's an archaic provision in the CBA where you have to fund any future skill and injury guarantees and put that money into escrow. To me, that's one of the reasons you don't have fully guarantee contracts en masse. Because what owner wants to tie up money in escrow that he could use for other purposes,

these are smart rich people, so they don't have an inclination to do that. Get rid of the funding requirement because it was put in a long time ago when you had to worry about whether a team was going to make payroll or whether they could afford to keep a team afloat. That's not the case in the NFL by and large anymore. The only team you could even potentially raise that has been whether Mark Davis has had enough cash.

And I've always been skeptical that that was even a real consideration. I don't think the union is going to really pursue that. Now, in terms of what you could see creatively in contracts, One thing that a lot of people have been trying to push for an advocate is tying salaries to a percentage of the cap. Yeah. Is since teams hate establishing a new precedent,

Jordan Rogers needed to die on that hill in 2013 when he was younger. Not last year. I know Russell Wilson tried it and failed this year. One thing you could try to get instead of with Eric Allen's agent, and our boss was under our motto who represented Shaq, Kakeem, and Ronnie Lott and he suggested to

my immediate boss who was Eric's agent to get one of these NBA type clauses in the contract where there's an adjustment where you always have to be either the third, fifth, or highest paid guy

at your position. Ultimately it was agreed upon that Eric was the average of the third highest paid cornerback if he hit certain performance milestones, which he did. This is pretty salary cap. A lot of college football coaches have that as well, where they have to be the top paid coach in their conference or whatever. Exactly, exactly.

And where Leonard got that from was David Robinson and Patrick Ewing had that in their contracts. And it's something he was, he tried to get in a Hakeem extension. I was helping him on, but ultimately couldn't get. So he made that suggestion. I'd like to see somebody try to go that route. I don't think anyone has. I've never heard of it publicly being something which gets leaked or has been leaked

is an agent pursuing that. So I'd like to see someone go from that standpoint. I think you got a better shot at that than kind of 10% to the cap. All right. Mays anything else? That's all I got. Joel, thank you so much for doing this. I can't even tell you how much smarter I am just about every single day

reading what you write and seeing what happens on your Twitter feed. So thank you very much. I will say I'm going to try that that I have to be the highest paid sports writer thing. I'm going to try that my next deal. It's a great. I get 5% more than Schifter every time he re-ups.

Well, all I try to do is just whatever wisdom or knowledge I have, I try to impart it to people. My big pet peeve is when people value contracts and conflate or what is the new money with what was

left on the contract because every negotiation I ever did was over the new money. So if you want to get blocked on Twitter, start talking to me about Carson Wince's deal being 25.8 million, is it average, as opposed to the new money being 32. I've gotten to the point. I don't argue with those people who try to tell me how a contract is valued. I just block you automatically. It's probably the right move. You come with the salary cap king, you best not mess. Joel, Thank you so much. Exactly. Thanks for having me, guys.

Talk to soon. All right, guys. Thank you so much. As always, listening to the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Great news. We have a set schedule now here

for the off season. We're going to be coming to you weekly with our big picture shows until further notice. So please check back next week. We have yet to decide the topic. I would tell you now if I wasn't a little bit disorganized,

but we'll be back next week either way. So as always, thanks for listening the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network.