2011 salary floor is 99% of the $120,375,000 cap, which means every team will be spending $119,171.000.25 at minimum. The floor drops at a pegged rate over the life of the CBA, but the cap floor will likely be higher every year regardless. Rookie salary cap is $27,312,500 per team. There's also a cap on the first year of those rookie contracts of $4,968,750. Huge win for the free agent vets here: teams can forward that money saved from their first round picks to free agents. Nnamdi is going to get paid. First round draft picks are subject to a team option, exercisable after the third year of their contract, to add a fifth year to the deal. Picks 1-10 use the franchise tag formula (paid the average of the top ten contracts at the position) and 11-32 are paid the average of the 3rd-25th highest contracts at the position. There's a projection in here that teams will save $25,000,000 immediately in 2011 by the institution of a rookie cap. That's $25m that will go toward free agents and getting to that 99% salary floor. Looking over this really quickly, I don't know what the players were whining about yesterday. The only provision they don't have is a way to designate a substitute player.
I think they were complaing about the fact that provisions were added without being discussed with them. Whether or not those provisions are something to complain about, it's still rather uncourteous for the owners to do so, IMO.
The players who were complaining about that, like Heath Evans, had never seen the CBA before. Heath Evans isn't a player rep. He was not one of the 32 team reps on the conference call with De Smith. He was speaking out of his ***. My point is that the players had nothing to ***** about, but did so anyway. I think both sides are going to be happy with this deal. Veterans are going to love it.
I think the players were complaining because basically there were a couple of issues that were still being openly negotiated between owners and players, stuff that wasn't agreed to yet. Instead of continuing the negotiations on those issues the owners just stuck THEIR positions on those issues into the CBA and voted, then put up their pens and said "we're done". Let's say you're arguing with your wife about a vacation...where to go and how long to stay. Before you've agreed on anything, she books plane tickets for her and the kids to the city she'd been arguing for on the dates she'd been arguing for, and says "book with us or don't, it's your choice". You'd be pissed, too.
My problem with that is the players who were complaining were not privy to the talks. They had absolutely no idea what was in the CBA the owners voted on. Even the player reps, or at least George Wilson, had no idea what was in the CBA. (One wonders what the NFLPA had spent the days leading up to the owners' meeting discussing with the reps, but I digress.) What I'm getting that is, at least according to what I'm seeing in this ESPN document, the players got damn near everything, if not everything, they wanted.
Is there a reason why it's sideways like that? that's what she said Didn't read it. Couldn't read it. My head just doesn't pivot 90 degrees.
hehe... i was trying to view it on my Iphone earlier, and everytime I turned the phone 90 degrees... the document flipped another 90 degrees... it was hilariously frustrating.
it should be noted that when Mort tweeted this doc earlier today he referred to it as how things stood on WEDNESDAY prior to the owner's getting together and voting on their deal. It is NOT a current outlook of the "new deal"... The interesting thing I found is on page 25... entitled League Demands Rejected! -no massive pay cut, NFL initially demanded 20% cut in players share -no sharing in future revenue growth -no 18 games -no rookie & veteran wage scale -restricting players with 4 and 5 accrued season in 2011 who otherwise would be unrestricted -broad forfeiture of bonuses already earned this is the strangest list of items I've ever seen, in totality... we knew about the 18 game thing taken off the table how long ago? If I had to compare each side national military force, I would say the league is the USA and the NFLPA* is... (insert third world country here)