The inevitable pace of NFL trading continues at this pre-draft time. The impact of the largest team-player contract in NFL history and the largest team-game contract in NFL history will last. Also, an interesting new trend in broad receiver pay and strategy may emerge. Settle
Bills always sign the best deal
Although Watson took player contracts to a new level, ownership of the bills took stadium contracts to the highest level. Watson received $ 230 million; The bills got many times more than that. Ideally, the bills made the best deal in the history of the sports business.
Let it fall: Bills grants New York $ 850 million — $ 600 million from the state and $ 250 million from Eri County — to fund a new, $ 1.4 billion stadium. The owners of the bills, Terry and Kim Begula, certainly have the resources to personally finance most of the cost of the stadium. But hey, if they can make the state do most of the funding, why wouldn’t they?
A few years ago, the Nevada Raiders spent over $ 750 million to help build a new stadium, but that prompted them to move there.. The deal is for a whopping $ 100 million. New York Governor Kathy Hochsul has chosen to allocate these resources to NFL owners instead of to schools, libraries, and public security. Why?
One could say that Hochul did not want to be known forever for losing the bills, but would the bills really have gone out if he had not received this extraordinary sum? To Austin? St. Louis? Toronto? Really ??
While acknowledging the fact that New York has to pay public money, I think Hochzul needs better negotiators. Couldn’t New York State have negotiated half a billion more than $ 850 million? The bills will eventually be sold to the North for $ 4 billion, of which New York State’s share will be $ 0.00. NFL owners socialize cost and privatize profits. What a business.
The stadium is going through the playbook
The Playbook of Bills is active in at least four other NFL markets.
In the Washington metropolitan area, Virginia paid the commanders $ 1 billion – and further reduced sales tax revenue – while Maryland, which they currently play for, paid the same amount. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has set aside $ 500 million for a new facility for the Titans. The Bears have a temporary contract with Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago, which offers a better deal than the city of Chicago. Bengalis are clamoring for some public assistance for a new practical facility. At NFL owners’ meetings, Chiefs Chairman Mark Donovan noted that the pitch was made by developers in Kansas (the team currently plays in Missouri).
Even without previous negotiations to hunt down horses in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, NFL team owners still dictate regulations to their municipalities, and, it works. No public official wants to lose a precious NFL right, even to a neighbor.
The Watson deal will resonate for years to come
Ken Place / USA Today Sports
With a full guarantee of $ 46 million a year for five years and the protection of serious players from losing money due to suspension or misconduct – Browns did not need a genius to accurately predict the game-changing deal that was awarded to Teshan Watson. Causing resonances throughout the league. The recession has begun.
Ravens owner Steve Picciotti did not hide his displeasure with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and that deal because Biscotti now feels the direct impact. Lamar Jackson has a better life than Watson, is healthy despite his sporting style and is much closer to a free agency than Watson. Anything less than the Watson deal would be unfair to Jackson in this new market.
Of course, Biscotti and all the other owners will try to explain the Watson mega-deal as an alienation and variation. Good luck with that. It does not affect teams with elite young quarterbacks like the Ravens, Bengals, Chargers, Cardinals, but I have heard of one or more elite quarterbacks. With an existing contract I would like to reconsider the terms in light of Watson.
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The financial rule focuses
Also, there is the big problem of NFL finance regulation for future guarantees. In simple terms, teams need to fund future guarantees past the current year and keep the money in escrow. Teams have traditionally hid behind the financing rule when explaining to agents why contracts cannot be fully guaranteed. That excuse is weakened by what Browns did.
The problem, however, is this: many non-cash groups, like Haslam, fund this type of deal. The two teams will be directly in the crosshairs of this deal next year. Joe Burroughs and Justin Herbert deserve a one-year extension with every reason to get a better deal than Watson. But those teams do not belong to millionaires; They are essentially family businesses. The Brown family (Bengal) and the Spaniards family (chargers) did not have the $ 180 million to put in the escrow, as Haslam does for the Watson deal.
Trust me: they know it, well, Got angry.
Browns has made every player and agent want to make a team for decades, on the contrary, every NFL team has fought for decades.
What’s done with this player is even more stunning (and a bit tough).
Transforming broad receiver market and, perhaps, strategy
The recent weeks have seen some ups and downs in the wide receiver market in a variety of ways.
Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill have now switched from Super Bowl-competing teams to the future Hall of Fame quarterback with the great pleasure of getting passes to fewer teams and fewer quarterbacks. Money was certainly a part of Hill, but like Adams, something seemed wrong from both sides of the relationship between the team and the player. As I always say, even someone who has managed the payroll for a decade – group management is less in number and more about relationships. There is more to these situations than meets the eye.
With the new top tier pay set for wider receivers, the next domino fall as bills refer to Stephen Dix’s current contract. I do not know what to believe in numbers — all statements are agent-driven, so it is difficult to know the real numbers — but whatever they are, the bills “won” these negotiations because of the contract period.
The bills were secured for an additional four years, beyond the two years already available to Diggs. Now that Josh Allen is also locked up until 2028, the bills with these deals — whatever the money — are in the driver’s seat. They have contract control for seasons six and seven, and the “out years” of these contracts are unsecured (unlike Watson).
New broad receiver strategy?
As the receiver market explodes we can see a change in financial and staffing strategies. Bakers and captains signed other key players in their squads for extensions; They seemed to make the emotional decision not to prioritize Adams and Hill, and they had already moved on to the next team, with both teams talking about Cape Space and the Draft Picks.
We are now at a point where teams can use the new-contract broad receiver pay as they used the rookie-contract quarter pay. Teams like the Bengals, the Dolphins and the Eagles have J’mar Chase, Jaylan Wade and Devonta Smith at least two more seasons in contract because the CBA will not allow re-negotiations with these players until they have played three seasons. These players earn about $ 4 million a year, as well as talented experienced players earning $ 15 to $ 25 million a year. Their teams have a built-in advantage.
The CPA Rookie-Pay System is a gift to NFL front offices.
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