PA Season Ticket Holder
05-21-2003, 12:59 AM
A league source tells us that most NFL teams will be asking late-round picks to sign four-year contracts this year. Typically, low-rounders sign three-year contracts.
According to the source, the teams will argue that the player will get more money in the form of a signing bonus, since the bonus can be spread over four seasons, instead of three.
The real motivation, however, will be to avoid the increasingly vexing question of whether -- and to what extent -- players should receive a free-agent tender after their three-year deals expire.
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, players with three years of service are eligible for restricted free agency. Their teams can preserve a right to match any other offers, and to receive compensation ranging from a pick in the round in which the player originally was selected to a first-round pick to a first-rounder and a third-rounder.
By signing the rookies to four-year contracts, the team will never have to decide whether, for example, to make the low tender or the high tender.
The most notorious example of this phenomenon came this March, when the Jets offered receiver Laveraneus Coles only the first-round tender. After the Redskins bogarted Coles, owner Dan Snyderbrenner boasted that the move wouldn't have occurred if the Jets had tendered Coles at the highest level, which would have required the 'Skins to send a first and a third to the Jets.
Likewise, if Chad Morton had been signed to a four-year deal when he was drafted by the Saints in 2000, the Jets wouldn't have lost him to the 'Skins this year.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm
According to the source, the teams will argue that the player will get more money in the form of a signing bonus, since the bonus can be spread over four seasons, instead of three.
The real motivation, however, will be to avoid the increasingly vexing question of whether -- and to what extent -- players should receive a free-agent tender after their three-year deals expire.
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, players with three years of service are eligible for restricted free agency. Their teams can preserve a right to match any other offers, and to receive compensation ranging from a pick in the round in which the player originally was selected to a first-round pick to a first-rounder and a third-rounder.
By signing the rookies to four-year contracts, the team will never have to decide whether, for example, to make the low tender or the high tender.
The most notorious example of this phenomenon came this March, when the Jets offered receiver Laveraneus Coles only the first-round tender. After the Redskins bogarted Coles, owner Dan Snyderbrenner boasted that the move wouldn't have occurred if the Jets had tendered Coles at the highest level, which would have required the 'Skins to send a first and a third to the Jets.
Likewise, if Chad Morton had been signed to a four-year deal when he was drafted by the Saints in 2000, the Jets wouldn't have lost him to the 'Skins this year.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm