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Eliminate Signing Bonuses For All Future FAs/Picks


RiggoReincarnated

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Why not? Why not just pay flat salaries?

Because signing bonuses are the only part of a contract that is guaranteed. NFL contracts are very one-sided in other ways. A team can terminate a contract at any time but a player cannot. If the player gets injured then he's out of luck. That's why players hate the franchise tag. The one year compensation for tagged players is high, but it offers no security.

No vaguely intelligent player would sign a contract without a signing bonus (and no vaguely competent agent would negotiate one). Furthermore signing bonuses help the team deal with cap issues. The only way we're going to get under the cap, regardless of whether a new CBA is signed, is to convert some money to bonuses for a number of players.

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Because signing bonuses are the only part of a contract that is guaranteed. NFL contracts are very one-sided in other ways. A team can terminate a contract at any time but a player cannot. If the player gets injured then he's out of luck. That's why players hate the franchise tag. The one year compensation for tagged players is high, but it offers no security.

No vaguely intelligent player would sign a contract without a signing bonus (and no vaguely competent agent would negotiate one). Furthermore signing bonuses help the team deal with cap issues. The only way we're going to get under the cap, regardless of whether a new CBA is signed, is to convert some money to bonuses for a number of players.

does the nfl have a rookie pool like the NBA? that way a rookie cant make more than a 5 or 10 yr vet.
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does the nfl have a rookie pool like the NBA? that way a rookie cant make more than a 5 or 10 yr vet.

Yes. The NFL,every year, allocates an amount, or sets a cap, on the amount each team can sign it's rookies/draft picks with.

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We can stop the signing bonuses anytime we want. But guess what. No one will come to our team.

If you were a player and had three offers of around 10 million up front and a million a year for 5 years and one offer of 3 million a year for 5 years which would you take???

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We can stop the signing bonuses anytime we want. But guess what. No one will come to our team.

If you were a player and had three offers of around 10 million up front and a million a year for 5 years and one offer of 3 million a year for 5 years which would you take???

well,then how about we go back to when they had to work during the offseason to keep up the lifestyle they are accustomed to?
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well,then how about we go back to when they had to work during the offseason to keep up the lifestyle they are accustomed to?

Hey I'd love it. I would also love tickets to be $12.00 a game with free parking, and beer at a buck a piece. But it aint gonna happen. Thats history.

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especially with TO's fiasco last season, I doubt players/agents will even go for future roster bonuses either. I speak in reference to a possible uncapped 2007 season, I doubt many will take a low SB now to get a huge roster bonus in 2007.

Now if the 2007 year is uncapped, we can give out roster bonuses pretty nicely I think.

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It could happen if the NFL united together so that it became every teams policy

The union would never agree to it in the CBA. If you didn't have a CBA then they couldn't do it because of antitrust laws. (collusion)

The best you might ever negotiate is guaranteed contracts instead of a signing bonus, but really there's not much difference in the two.

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I've had this theory for several years, that seems workable to me, but that doesn't mean it's workable in reality.

To me, if, say LaVar wants a big signing bonus, my counter-offer would be vet minimum, guaranteed for 10 years.

Granted, from his viewpoint, it's not up-front money. But when you get your money in a big lump sum, the IRS takes a really big chunk of it. A lot of small payments = a lot less taxes.

For an example, anybody think Emmit Smith would chose, if he cound, to give back his last signing bonus, and take another 10 years of vet minimum, instead?

In my theory, a bonus like that wouldn't accelerate when a player leaves. It means that there might come a time when, for cap purposes, we're paying 20-30 guys who aren't here any more, but we'll be paying all of them vet minimum. (And I think, under the NFL rules, only the first so many players actually count towards the cap. The retired guys might not even make the list.) And we'll be able to predict that kind of dead money in advance, no sudden situation where you have to keep paying an injured guy because you can't afford to have his cap hit accelerate.

But the NFL owners have got to be scared to death of the possibility of guaranteed contracts, even vet min ones. So I'd bet they'd make it illegal if Snyder tried it.

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I've had this theory for several years, that seems workable to me, but that doesn't mean it's workable in reality.

To me, if, say LaVar wants a big signing bonus, my counter-offer would be vet minimum, guaranteed for 10 years.

Granted, from his viewpoint, it's not up-front money. But when you get your money in a big lump sum, the IRS takes a really big chunk of it. A lot of small payments = a lot less taxes.

For an example, anybody think Emmit Smith would chose, if he cound, to give back his last signing bonus, and take another 10 years of vet minimum, instead?

In my theory, a bonus like that wouldn't accelerate when a player leaves. It means that there might come a time when, for cap purposes, we're paying 20-30 guys who aren't here any more, but we'll be paying all of them vet minimum. (And I think, under the NFL rules, only the first so many players actually count towards the cap. The retired guys might not even make the list.) And we'll be able to predict that kind of dead money in advance, no sudden situation where you have to keep paying an injured guy because you can't afford to have his cap hit accelerate.

But the NFL owners have got to be scared to death of the possibility of guaranteed contracts, even vet min ones. So I'd bet they'd make it illegal if Snyder tried it.

This would be a bad deal for the player. First you always have to discount future income versus present income. Second even at the vet minimum there would be no tax saving s for the player. A vet minimum salary in the NFL would result in maximum tax rates.

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No vaguely intelligent player would sign a contract without a signing bonus (and no vaguely competent agent would negotiate one). Furthermore signing bonuses help the team deal with cap issues. The only way we're going to get under the cap, regardless of whether a new CBA is signed, is to convert some money to bonuses for a number of players.

An example of this is Maurice Clarette. Waived his signing bonus for a deal with a ton of incentives. He was later cut, and didn't make anything. While if he would have taken the signing bonus he would have had about a half a million dollars. :(

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