The Achilles’ tendon tear Ja’Wuan James suffered earlier this week has become a critical event in this NFL offseason, due to the veteran right tackle going down away from the Broncos’ facility.
Although there was some uncertainty regarding the veteran blocker’s availability in 2021, the Broncos placed James on the season-ending reserve/non-football injured list, Mike Klis of 9News reports. This opens up a roster spot but, more significantly, shields the Broncos from the obligation to pay James his $10MM base salary. It is not yet known, however, if the Broncos will withhold that salary.
The team could also go after $3MM of James’ $12MM signing bonus as well, but the former first-round pick’s Denver stay is likely over. It did not go well. Adrift at right tackle dating back to the Peyton Manning years, the Broncos attempted to solve this perennial issue by giving James a four-year, $51MM deal in 2019. However, knee trouble and a 2020 opt-out have limited James to 63 snaps as a Bronco.
Not paying James the $10MM would free up some cap space for the Broncos, who held the second-most room ($25MM-plus) before James went down. This would allow for funds to acquire a replacement; Bobby Massie and Dennis Kelly are set to meet with the team. The Broncos are not yet certain to release James, per Klis. Doing so would trigger a $9MM dead-money hit, if they do not go after part of his signing bonus.
In the wake of James’ injury, the NFL and NFLPA released statements regarding their most recent contentious issue. The union has called for a boycott of voluntary offseason workouts; the Broncos were the first team to indicate they would stand with the NFLPA’s proposed boycott. While some Broncos have reported to the facility, James was training away from Broncos headquarters because of the boycott. The league and union remain at odds on this matter.
It’s ridiculous if the Broncos don’t pay him.
It’s the off-season. He’s staying in shape. Making sure he is ready for training camps. Limited availability at team facilities due to offseason and COVID.
No, it’s not.
Actually it’s extremely ridiculous.
Depends on what his contract states etc. if he wasn’t supposed to be doing things like this outside of team areas, etc.
It’s not.
No it’s not ridiculous, are you telling me that current job would pay for you to off the job from an injury that you sustained at home? Workers comp or any pay from your job would only cover you if your on the job or on their property when you got injured.
He wasn’t away from the Broncos facility because of limited availability. He was working out in the Bronco’s facility until the Union told him to leave. The NFLPA gave James bad advice and he decided to follow it. Why should to Broncos have to go into the season short-handed because the Union and James made a decision that ended up bitting James in the butt? What is ridiculous is the players Union putting their members at risk.
Koreadog, agree totally, if anyone should pay him it falls to thebUnion. They gave him bad advice, he followed it, got injured following it. Why should Broncos be on the hook?
Actually, it’s not ridiculous at all. The NFLPA were the ones who made the agreement in the last CBA that training had to be done at the facility. No one forced them to sign the CBA. This is just stupidity of not following the rules.
I agree with Frank858. Workers Compensation protects employees if they’re injured at their place of employment.
The Broncos have received NOTHING in two years from him. It’s better to cut bait in the offseason. Use the 10M now with someone who can contribute, than cut bait with James in the offseason.
Burning the money would be better than giving it to him.
The players signed the agreement/CBA. This is not some secret that the owners pulled out at the last second.
If he were hurt in a car accident, would they still have to pay, of course not.
Just 3 games since signing a 4 year contract. Screw the injury. Cut him for failure of showing up to work.
“The standard NFL player contract, since 1977, includes language that player workouts outside of team facilities are not covered by any injury salary guarantees or insurance coverage. Instead, they are treated as non-football injuries and can result in substantial salary loss for the player, depending on the severity of the injury. In practice, teams may sometimes pay the player salary in these instances, although they are not required to do so.”
link to dailynorseman.com
Given how many players now have personal trainers and nutritionists, and given how many of them participate in non-team off-season programs like Jerry Rice’s wide receivers camp, I wonder whether some of the players (and camps) carry special insurance policies covering these kinds of injuries.
I could be wrong, but my impression is that teams expect their players to show up to mandatory mini-camp and then training camp in shape. Long gone, decades gone, are the days when players were expected to burn off their off-season weight-gain only after they showed up for training camp.
Well thought out. Why don’t pro players get insurance on themselves like the elite college players do? They can afford it.
Insurance companies would probably lose more money and the premiums would be stupid. It’s like how they don’t provide flood insurance in areas where there’s a high probability of a flood, or you don’t get insurance if you build a home in certain parts of Hawaii prone to lava flow. Insurance companies are in the business of insuring lower probability payouts. The way they make money on car insurance is BC practically everyone is forced to get insurance. And even then they try to skimp you every way they can. Next to a mortgage, insurance is one of the biggest scams going.
This language only applies if the contract is guaranteed for injury, anyway. Not all are.
The next part is my opinion. I’d say that James is getting screwed (for hurting himself getting ready and losing his money), but there are two caveats. One is that he has made money from this contract despite not playing. A lot of money, at that. So it’s not like Denver got a lot of work from him and jumped when it was easy.
The second is that James was boycotting workouts because the union told him to. There was no reason preventing him from going, he chose not to. The union is responsible for that, and I think it’s pretty reckless to tell your members to skip work without any plan to cover their losses other than a few inflammatory press releases. They weren’t even really fighting for anything in particular this time. They just wanted to skip the offseason. If he had been hurt at the facility-on the job-the job would have to pay. It’d be one thing, again, if they got work out of him, but they didn’t. Given how his previous two seasons ended, I’d think that it’d have been wise to show up as much as James could, not push it by following a boycott of a job that, in his case, hadn’t seen him.
I haven’t read the most recent statement(s) from the NFLPA and J.C. Tretter, but I read his original letter to the players and the first half or two-thirds of the press conference they held the next day, and this is not just about wanting to “skip the offseason,” or at least not just THIS off-season. The union is arguing that concussions and “missed-time injuries” both fell significantly last season from their average over the last five years, and they believe that skipping the off-season activities played a significant part in achieving these unanticipated results.
Per the excerpts I’ve seen of their more recent statements, they are looking to eliminate the off-season team activities altogether because of the wear and tear they take on the players. As far as I can tell, this does not include eliminating either training camp or the pre-season, but Tretter has noted that no other major American sport has off-season team activities the way the NFL does. That is what the NFLPA is fighting for.
If they get it, and the coaches, if no one else, will fight tooth and nail to stop them, they will have to address the issue of off-season training on the part of the players, perhaps by arranging for a group insurance plan to cover union members while working out or attending off-season camps. I don’t know. But it sounds like this issue is not going away.
Thank you cka2nd, for clearing a little of that up. I do agree with all of what you wrote, the part about insurance in particular. Now, while the issue is fresh, I expect it to have more support. Long term, however, not as likely. That insurance, in whatever form it takes, would have to be quite extensive to make up for all of the workout bonuses that players across the league have, not to mention any injuries. I doubt the union could get such a policy and make the payouts worth the loss of contract money, but as you said, if this does persist as long term issue there’s no way the players would all sign on without some kind of plan, so the union will have to come up with a proposal. Good post.
The workout bonuses themselves only benefit a few hundred players, 300 or so if I remember correctly, and given the divisions within the union membership – the rank and file couldn’t give two figs about the franchise tags, for instance, which the stars absolutely hate – I could see most of the players just steamrolling over that issue. The NFL has worked to stoke those divisions, which resulted in the most recent CBA being voted in over the objections of many of the league’s stars, but this could bite the league on the butt if a majority of the players see the OTA’s as working against their health, and to hell with the 10% or 15% of the players with workout bonuses.
The insurance issue – and I’m just spitballing here that it’s even an issue – could actually become part of the collective bargaining agreement as a way for the teams to protect their investments in the players. At least that’s how I’d try to spin it if I were on the union’s executive board or negotiating committee (I’ve served on both in my day, but for clerical workers making $20,000 and $30,000 a year).
It is unfortunate his union put him into this position, but frankly it provides some incentive for others to show up at the team’s facilities.