Shackled by the cap

Barry Sanders was nearly impossible to tackle as a player, but, in the end, the salary cap dragged him down

By MICHAEL LEV, Senior editor

Through statements and sources, Sanders basically has said that he doesn’t have the desire to play football anymore. I don’t entirely buy that sentiment. I believe, based on what my own sources are saying, that Sanders means he doesn’t have the desire to play football anymore for the Detroit Lions.

Sanders is frustrated with the direction in which the team is headed. The Lions took a step backward to take two steps forward last season by handing the QB job to raw second-round rookie Charlie Batch. Sanders is on the wrong side of 30 and didn’t have all that much football left anyway. He wants to win now, and the Batch program won’t be ready to do that for at least a couple of more years.

With Sanders unhappy and apparently unwilling to play for Detroit, the best-case scenario for both player and team would have been to trade him to a contender for a Herschel Walker-like package of draft picks and players. Sanders would have gotten his wish — a legitimate shot at a ring — and the Lions would have gotten something in return for one of the greatest players in NFL history.

But the salary cap prevented such a deal from taking place.

Basically, the rub is this: Trading Sanders would have accelerated the remainder of his signing bonus. Instead of the bonus being spread over the duration of his contract — one of many admirable aspects of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement — it would have hit the Lions all at once, in 1999. That cap hit, a little more than $7 million, would have forced the Lions to cut several players or rework the contracts of dozens to get back under the cap. In other words, trading Sanders simply was not feasible.

In baseball, it’s much easier to trade players, even superstars, because there are no salary-cap considerations. Baseball is hardly a perfect sport, since the lack of a cap creates a bigger disparity between the haves and have-nots than exists in football, where the cap, at least in theory, evens things out.

With a trade not possible, Sanders, at least in his mind, did the honorable thing by retiring. Rather than play for the Lions in the wrong frame of mind, or engage in a bitter war of words over money or personnel moves, Sanders stepped away. With his mind made up, and the salary cap structured as it is, did he have any other choice?

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