With players like Derek Carr, Odell Beckham and Aaron Donald either set to become their respective position’s highest-paid player this year or reside in position to do so in due time, select agents and NFLPA personnel are suggesting a change in how big-money deals are structured.
The NFL’s salary cap made its highest year-to-year leap between 2016 and 2017, with the payroll ceiling rising from $155.27MM to $167MM. And that could continue once the 2020s begin. A new CBA could intensify these cap spikes, and Jason Cole of Bleacher Report hears (Twitter link) agents and union personnel are suggesting young players on the verge of landmark contracts tie their deals to the salary cap instead of signing deals that feature set wages when it’s unknown what future years’ caps will be.
Using Carr and Beckham as examples, with their new deals almost certainly to lock them up through some years after a new CBA is negotiated, Cole points out the anticipated cap growth is causing some early preparations (Twitter link). Deals that would be for a percentage of a team’s cap would certainly be more player-friendly, but they are not yet a reality. Nothing has emerged on whether or not agents engaged in negotiations are taking a hard line on this.
Cole (on Twitter) and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk note Darrelle Revis‘ camp tried this angle in 2010 with the Jets, while Kirk Cousins‘ representatives did so with the Redskins last year. Revis did not get a Jets extension before the 2011 CBA kicked in and was traded to the Buccaneers, who extended him in 2013.
Florio writes such a drastic shift would need to come from a player who possesses maximum leverage, envisioning a franchise-level quarterback hitting free agency as such a scenario that would induce a team to agree to this. He also writes that the NFL’s management council is believed to have urged teams against allowing this provision to come to fruition.
Florio uses Aaron Rodgers‘ 2013 extension as an example of how this setup would have greatly benefited the perennial MVP candidate. Rodgers will make $20.3MM this year. If a cap percentage-based agreement was in place with the Packers, Florio writes Rodgers would have made $29.72MM this year — at 17.6 percent of Green Bay’s cap, which the extension represented in 2013.