NFL dynasties go 'way of dinosaurs'

[Cntrygal]

Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers dominated the NFL through the 1960s. Pittsburgh's "Steel Curtain" rose in the '70s. The San Francisco 49ers' West Coast offense rolled in the '80s. Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin made the Dallas Cowboys the team of the '90s.

The new millennium? Recent results strongly suggest no team will sustain excellence long enough to give any decade a face, not to mention a nickname.

more... (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/super/2003-01-23-1acover-dynasties_x.htm)

[Pride]

I tend to disagree wiht this theory.

I believe that once the salary cap is figured out, and once players stop believing that there is always more money on the FA market than where they currently are, players will stop moving around as much.

As soon as that happens, salaries will come down to a decent level which will allow players to play out their contracts.

Once all of these things are acheived, you will have little player movement (unless a player REALLY wants to leave his current team) and you will see dynasties rise again. I think we are seeing the foundation right now. Bucs, Bills (hopefully), Browns, Pats, Jets, 49ers, Eagles, all have young teams, with a solid foundation.

[pmoon6]

Pride, i think you're underestimating the greed of the players.Most players want to "get thiers" so they parley a good season or two into big $$. I don't blame them for this as the average lifespan of a player is about 4 years.This situation does not help to keep a cohesive unit on the field, which is essential to having a "dynasty"

[Dozerdog]

This system they have in place now almost forces the Peerless Prices of the world to grab the brass ring when they can.

With the hard cap and no guaranteed contracts- when the small opportunity arises to get the dough you take it.

One minute you are big man on campus, next you are excess baggage.

[WG]

Pride,

You're forgetting one thing, and that's that salaries for the top players will never come down to a decent level. There's two reasons for it. You have to remember that it's not the intial years of a contract that mean anything, it's the latter years where guys like Flutie and Bruce are supposed to make a killing. It's prohibitive. Players even often use that as a tool to help themselves as well to 'get released' knowing that they're never gonna get that money. I mean think about it, a player who signs a deal w/ salaries in the 10s of millions only 3 or 4 or 5 years down the road really isn't realisitcally expecting to be retained then.

Secondly, the bonus money as well. Players want too much in bonus which is the NFL equivalent of the "guaranteed contract" which the NFL doesn't use. As soon as the unearned portion of that bonus money becomes "dispensible", players end up being cut if they don't perform.

Thirdly, something that I just thought of while writing this, is that players who teams bring in and end up performing above where they were expected to, will want more money as well. Well, since they've been an integral part of the team's success, they will want a lot and will be able to command it. Team's simply can't afford to pay any player as much as they want to.

That's why as I've been stating about Price, you can't simply say "how much is Price worth?", let's pay him that. You have to look at the opportunity costs of getting someone else in here.

For example:

It's rumored that we have around $16M to spend this offseason. Our offense was far more than adequate this year given the players who will be staying on, and this would be a golden opportunity to "fix the D" to the extent that we have a top 10 D next season or even better. It was already playing near that level towards the end of the year.

But if we spend say $5 or 6 M of that money to sign Price, that allows fewer good defensive pickups. And you can't simply say we'll get three players for the remaining 10 or 11 M, you have to hold some for lesser players as well and rookies.

B/c of that, you simply can't have all the best players at the best positions and as players improve, teams are faced w/ tough decisions on how to retain players who weren't originally expected to play to a level who do.

Not every solid player was a first, second, or 3rd round draft pick. There are plenty that were 5th, 6th, and 7th rounders or undrafted altogether. It's a supply and demand thing. And b/c teams "carpe diem" or "live for the day" or year/season, player prices are always going to be inflated.

That was one of the things that those against free agency said would happen when the league and proponents said "all players salaries would rise" as a result of FAcy. They didn't. The mid tier players don't get as much b/c on any typical team, 5 or 6 players take up 40 to 60% of the cap in any given year.