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No Cap Doesn’t Mean No Limits
by Chris Brophy
14/1/2010
Whilst we are still in the midst of an exciting post season with the battle for the Vince Lombardi trophy looking as open and as intriguing as in any year, lots of coaches, owners and front office personnel are already getting ready for the off-season. 2010 looks very likely to see the NFL enter something of an unknown territory for them an uncapped year as the owners decided to opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement so as to try to strike a new deal.
Rather than try to explain what all of that means I want to try and get past the clichs of what an uncapped year seems to mean to people unlimited spending and a free-for-all that could ruin the games competitive balance for years, maybe forever. The uncapped year does promise to be a watershed for the NFL and its long term relationship with the players and it could yet end up in open warfare with legal wrangling in court replacing hard hitting in the field but the situation has come to this head and probably needs to happen in order for long term labour peace to be re-established.
So, no salary cap huh? The likes of Dan Snyder, Jerry Jones and Paul Allen must be licking their chops ready to go out and buy the best of the best, improve their teams no end and head on down to the 2010 Super Bowl. After buying lots of tasty veteran talent from other teams, if their already established veterans get upset, then they can just give them a hike too to keep them satisfied right?
Well yes, they could if they wanted too but life and business are never that simple. First up, the eight teams currently left in the play-offs will have severe restrictions placed on them stopping them from been active in free agency. It’s known as the Final Eight Plan. The rule will restrict the final eight teams in the playoffs from signing free agents. The final four teams shall not be permitted to negotiate and sign any unrestricted free agent to a player contract except for players who acquired their status by being cut or were on a final four team when their contract expired. Playoff teams five thru eight (those eliminated this weekend) get a break to sign one player with a salary of $4,925,000 or more and any number of players with a first-year salary of no more than $3,275,000 and an annual increase of no more than 30 percent in the following years.
 So whilst an owner like Jerry Jones might be willing to splash the cash on free agents he is probably going to have to make do with looking around his local electrical retailer to see if he can spend the cash burning a hole in his pocket on a bigger TV than that punters dream he put in the new Cowboys Stadium last year.
Still, free agency will have plenty of players for the likes of none final eight owners like Snyder and Allen to go for right? Well not exactly! Free agency in the uncapped year will be more barren than recent times because it will take players six years experience to earn unrestricted free agency for NFL players this off-season rather than the usual four. Not only does that reduce the number of free agents, it reduces the quality of player as players in years 4 to 6 of their NFL careers are usually in the prime of their careers and ready for their big life changing contract. This year sees a reduced market with less quality and not as many shoppers. There will still be restricted free agency, but what this means is that those players will likely be getting one year tenders instead of big money long term deals.
The market will actually get an influx of talent as many veterans are let go after the season. This always happened in the free agency period as team’s clear house and make cap room but with no cap penalties to consider teams don’t have to worry about ridding themselves of tough contracts with large cap hits that would be easier to renegotiate instead. There are many veterans in the latter stages of expensive contracts that will be getting an early visit from The Turk. Owners will do this because they believe they can squeeze down what these players are earning and make it a buyer’s market. They get to save money but also get to choose from a new pool of players who can still offer something but will have to play at bargain basement salaries because owners won’t match the silly money the back end of their old contracts were promising.
An uncapped year does mean no limits, but one of those limits been removed is minimum spending. In capped years, teams have a limit to stay under and whilst we understand those rules can be bent there was also a little-advertised rule on minimum spending. Owners can now go ahead, if they wish, and ask their front offices to purge their rosters, reduce spending on salaries drastically and try and sign players on cheap deals in a restricted market for them. Capped years meant a certain amount had to be spent and a certain percentage of the teams shared revenue went to the players. This year, none of that applies.
When the last CBA deal was brokered at the very last minute by outgoing Commissioner Paul Tagliabue in 2006 it seemed he had been able to leave a last legacy but some owners did feel the deal was rushed and gave up too much. As the world’s financial markets went into meltdown in the years following the deal and the implications of what the owners had given up became clear, they used their opt-out to bring us to the present position.
Many comments have been made about how an uncapped year will mean we’ll never see another CBA or cap in the NFL again. I don’t believe that to be true. Neither side are fools. The players can look back and see that the cap rose every year, salaries kept increasing and the caps rules had enough flexibility to allow for megabucks deals for star players whilst also bringing the many lesser players the protection of minimum salaries and pensions. For the owners, they knew roughly what they had to give to the players and it maintained the leagues competitive balance whilst also keeping revenue sharing the way they liked it.
The path to a new deal is not easy, both sides will want to save face and neither side will want to budge but what the uncapped year sees is the owners playing hardball, not playing a free-for-all like the idea of an uncapped year suggests. You’ll see actual salary spending go down in 2010 but long term, the uncapped year might give this ongoing labour despite the clean breeze it needs to hammer out a long term solution and remove some of the issues that old CBA agreements tried to love with (rookie salaries, protection and medical support for ex-players, local revenue sharing).
It’s going to be interesting to see it play out, because 2010 has the opportunity to either make or break the NFL in the long term. Let’s hope it’s a future with a new CBA and the labour peace we have enjoyed since the early 1990’s.
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