We learned last week that the Ravens won an expensive battle three years ago but may lose a much more expensive war in the days to come.
Thanks to reporting from freelance reporter and broadcaster Pablo Torre backed by the Pro Football Talk website, a finding of collusion on the part of the 32 NFL teams came to light.
Torre and PFT disclosed that an independent arbitrator ruled that the teams, at the direction of NFL Commissioner Smilin’ Roger Goodell and something called the NFL Management Council, colluded to effectively eliminate fully guaranteed salaries.
By way of explanation, unlike the contracts in Major League Baseball or the NBA, salaries in the National Football League, the most prosperous and popular sports entity in the good old USA, are not completely guaranteed.
That means when you hear of a player, like Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson receiving a five-year, $260 million deal, as he did two years ago, you should know that there’s no certainty that he will receive all of that money.
Only $185 million of that figure is guaranteed and much of the salary is paid out in pro-rated signing bonuses.
Jackson’s deal, as are many other contracts, is backloaded, meaning the player will see more money towards the end of the deal rather than the front, assuming the contract isn’t renegotiated.
Jackson, who has won two Most Valuable Player awards and finished as a runner-up last year, is scheduled to earn $43.5 million this coming season and close to $75 million in each of the following two seasons.
The former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, who negotiated his own deal two years ago without the help of an agent, wanted a fully guaranteed five-year contract but had to settle for what he received.
Arbitrator Christopher Droney’s ruling, which sat hidden for five months, disclosed that Goodell and the Management Council, with representatives from each team, moved to discourage if not flat out eliminate any fully guaranteed contracts in the wake of the Cleveland Browns’ decision to give quarterback Deshaun Watson a five-year $220 million deal in 2022.
Watson has alternately been suspended or injured during the last three seasons and the contract is widely considered one of the worst in U.S. professional sports history.
Droney found that Jackson, Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray and former Denver quarterback Russell Wilson were kept from getting fully guaranteed deals subsequent to Watson’s.
Admittedly, there’s not going to be a lot of sympathy for any of the impacted players. Many people who listen to this program will feel, with some justification, that these men are paid handsomely, if not obscenely to take part in an activity with little if any socially redeeming value.
Granted. But, if you take the worthy debate about what sports contributes to society out of the equation, there is something to be said for the idea of negotiating with employees fairly, which apparently wasn’t done with the quarterback trio.
The Ravens are likely to come to Lamar Jackson soon about renegotiating his deal for something more favorable. We’ll see how amenable he’ll be now that he appears to have the hammer.
And that’s how I see it for this week. You can reach us via email with your questions and comments at Sports at Large at gmail.com. And follow me on BlueSky, Threads and X at Sports at Large.
Until next week, for all of us here and for producer Lisa Morgan, I’m Milton Kent. Thanks for listening and enjoy the games.
