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Packers QB
Brett Favre
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NFL contract numbers have become like federal budget surplus numbers. No one’s got
anywhere near as much cash around as they say they’ve got.
Twice since this year’s free-agency period opened, NFL teams have announced the
signings of high-profile quarterbacks to "record" contracts. First was Packers
QB Brett Favre, who supposedly agreed to a 10-year contract worth $100 million, which made
him the highest-paid player in NFL history. Only a few weeks later, Patriots QB Drew
Bledsoe allegedly broke that record with a 10-year deal worth $103 million.
In both cases, nothing could be farther from the financial truth, not that it should
matter.
No one will have to run a benefit for either of those guys any time soon, but what two
of the best quarterbacks in football really signed were four-year extensions to
pre-existing contracts worth $32 million in Favre’s case and $30 million in
Bledsoe’s. That is, unless you honestly believe Favre will still be Green Bay’s
field leader at age 41, and the immobile Bledsoe will still be in one piece at 39 after
playing behind the Seven Blocks of Limestone the Patriots keep putting in front of him for
another decade.
Favre reportedly received a $10 million bonus up front, and Bledsoe will get an $8
million signing bonus this year. That’s good money to be sure, but those contracts
broke no new ground in pro-football financing because each has more holes in it than a
Bill Clinton alibi.
So what is going on here?
In this new day of lowered expectations, only about seven NFL teams entered free agency
with any real money to spend. That being the case, cooking the books has become the
fashionable way for owners to make themselves appear to the fans they’re fleecing out
of their tax money like they’re willing to pay any price to win. It’s become the
fashionable way for players to convince their peers (at least the ones who can’t
count) that they’re making more than they really are. And it’s become the
fashionable way for agents to convince their clients that they’re doing for football
players what their counterparts in baseball and basketball long ago did in those sports.
It’s a nice sham if you can pull it off, but the fact of the matter is, if the
Titanic had as many bail out options as the Packers and Patriots have in those contracts,
it would still be afloat. In Bledsoe’s case, for the deal to extend more than four
years, New England must exercise an option that will carry with it an additional $7
million bonus payment in 2006. If he’s playing well and still in one piece, Bledsoe
might well collect and extend his deal three more years before another team option comes
due. But if by then Bledsoe is hearing The Bells of St. Mary’s inside his head the
way poor Troy Aikman now does after a multitude of concussions, Bledsoe will end up in a
similar circumstance. Unemployed.
In other words, as contracts go, Favre’s and Bledsoe’s are the kind boxing
promoter Don King loves.
What has happened in the NFL is that the league’s owners have realized, at least
temporarily, that mortgaging the future with long-term deals carrying huge up-front
bonuses inevitably leads to present-day disaster — as the 49ers and Cowboys are
experiencing today. It is why an incredible $97.3 million in salaries was sliced from NFL
payrolls in one day just before teams had to reach the $67.4 million salary-cap limit for
2001, a move that resulted in 52 players being released and another 57 having their
contracts restructured.
Still, there is a host of teams burdened with what is now euphemistically known as
"dead money," which is what the Bledsoe and Favre deals are designed to avoid.
"Dead money," to be kind, is money still on the salary-cap books for players
long departed from their teams. In the Cowboys’ case, they have about $22 million of
that, which means they have only $45 million in real money to spend this year.
The Cowboys are not alone in this predicament. The 49ers began the hacking process a
year ago, but it continues, and the Chiefs had to whack QB Elvis Grbac because they
couldn’t afford to fork over the bonus they’d agreed to several years back. The
Chiefs now face a cap in which 19 percent of their total is dead money. The Bills are in a
similar fix, and it’s costing them on both offense and defense. Call it death by Dead
Presidents.
The Patriots and Packers both wanted to avoid that fate while allowing their star
quarterbacks to avoid having to admit to their peers that they signed deals worth less
than free agent DE Marcellus Wiley. Fact is, Wiley ended up with less than had been
predicted as well, even though he cashed in for $40 million, in part because deals beyond
six years are no longer allowed under new cap restrictions. Further restrictions may
eventually cut the maximum allowable spread to be five years to prevent the kind of
accounting gymnastics the 49ers and Cowboys invented in the 1990s.
At the time it appeared their cap experts were the Nadia Comanecis of accounting, but
the way things have turned out, they now need what many an aging gymnast needs — a
chiropractor to get them straightened out.
The Packers and Patriots avoided that situation while making it appear as if they were
sparing no expense to sign their best players. Because of that, somewhere down the road
those players will face the kind of day Troy Aikman had not too long ago when the Cowboys
bid him adieu rather than hand over a $10 million bonus to extend his contract.
That’s what makes running an NFL team better than any other form of sports
ownership. It’s the only place where even if you sign a guy for ridiculous money,
chances are you’ll never have to pay it.
Ron Borges is a columnist for the Boston Globe |
