NFL - Discussion Thread

Kyler Murray has officially told the Cardinals that he will not play without a new deal. I can only imagine the inflated deal he expects after the Watson deal. This should be entertaining.

« Last edited by Warrior13 on Apr 14th 2022 »

I can't blame the guy really to be honest, every down in footall could be his last and he may never see that big contract. But on the other side it's going to screw the game up because if he gets that deal the floodgates are going to open up and all the other top players are going to want a big contract. This is going to end in tears, are we looking at another players strike like the ones we saw in 82 and 87. If there is another strike I'm not sure the NFL would recover, the game is already losing its popularity.

Problem with Murray is he hasn't really proven he's worth that gigantic mega deal. There's definitely going to be something about these players holding out in the next bargaining agreement. It's even worse in the NBA. The 99% of players that aren't in a position to hold out aren't going to give up concessions just so the top dogs already making 35M can hold out for even more.

Yeah, the NBA is absolutely horrible. And the players in the NBA already have so much power because of how small team rosters are.

I know nothing about the NBA, I've heard of a couple of players that have transcended the sport like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Lebron James but have no idea what kind of money they make. Why is there not a salary cap in place, with so few players making up a team it wouldn't be difficult to do. Then everybody knows where they stand.

I personally think players in sports these days are getting greedy, and it's only going to get worse with each generation wanting more money if something isn't done about it now.

The NBA does have a salary cap, this year the cap is 122M, with teams being allowed to go over it to re-sign their own players up a "hard cap" of around 144M that they can't exceed. The problem is the concept of a "supermax" contract, where certain players are eligible for gigantic contracts if they meet criteria like making All-NBA teams, winning MVP, having 8 years in the league, etc. These contracts start at 35% of the cap and go up 8% of the cap per year, so a guy like Steph Curry will be making nearly 60M per year soon. The problem is when these guys sit out and demand trades after signing these deals, they screw their teams.

If players sign a contract they should be forced to play it out, not hold the team to ransom. Why don't the NBA stipulate a player can not be traded to another team if they have a contract in place and if they decide to not play they get expelled from the NBA for breach of contract. Not much use being the best basketball player in the world if you can't play in the most lucrative league.

And don't forget that the NBA's 122 million cap is for 12-15 players. NFL has 55 player rosters for like 200 million right now, and most QBs are having a 30-50 million cap hit.

« Last edited by Warrior13 on Apr 15th 2022 »

Dennis - problem is people go to games to see these players play. Most of these superstar players are friends and they often conspire to all end up on the same teams, 2 or 3 of them will go and join a big market team together either through free agency or forcing a trade and those players will be on max contracts taking up 60% of the cap while the other 10 roster members share the remaining 40M. It's worse than the NFL and something is going to be done about it at the next bargaining agreement. Nothing so drastic as what you've suggested, but they're going to have to do something. Also the fact that a ton of star players take "rest" days and only play in 50 or 60 regular season games out of 82, you buy a ticket weeks ahead of time and then on gameday they announce the star isn't playing.

Warrior - yup. The caps are going to jump massively in the next couple years and QBs like Burrow are going to benefit the most. Wouldn't be surprised if it jumps to 240M soon. The real conversation we need to have is player contracts as a % of the cap, not as raw money, because raw cash doesn't matter. Looking at 2022, Mahomes 36M-ish contract is about 17% of the salary cap. Matthew Stafford's contract structure means his 2022 money only counts for about 7% of the Rams cap. It's really hard to win Super Bowls when you're paying one guy 20% of your whole team's salary no matter how good he is. It's even worse when you are paying a guy a huge chunk o the cap and he's not really worth it. Tannehill is getting 18% of the Titans cap in 2022, Derrick Henry is getting 7%. That's fully a quarter of the cap wrapped up in 2 players and not even considering other high paying positions like pass rushers, receivers, and corners. That's why it's so important to get a ring while you've QB on a rookie contract and to draft well - Burrow is getting just 4.6% of the Bengals cap in 2022. Compared to Mahomes and Tannehill that's 13% more money to spread around to other players, about 27M that could get you several key starters.

« Last edited by steelersrock01 on Apr 15th 2022 »

That's terrible if you buy a ticket in advance for an NBA game and the star player your kid wants to see play live decides he doesn't want to play that week. How do you explain to your kid why he's sitting on the sidelines just watching the game, and it's plain to see he's not injured. Teams should offer a discount or at least say in advance the player won't be playing. But we all know that attendance for those games would drop dramatically if they did that, something should get done about it. In Premiership football (soccer) if you don't field your strongest team for every game there is an inquiry as it is not fair on other teams depending on results not to get relegated.

I must admit if I was a Kansas City Chiefs fan and I went to a game and found out Chad Henne was playing I wouldn't be happy, especially if Mahomes was being 'rested'.

I wonder if the Bengals will pay Burrow the money he is due after his rookie contract expires, that team is notorious for not paying star players. There is already some skepticism around the league as to whether or not Bengals owner Mike Brown will be willing to pay the going rate to keep Joe Burrow in a Bengals uniform. They'd be fools if they didn't pay him, the kids the next Joe Montana.

Mike: Yeah. I'm starting to think that maybe they should just give the QBs a separate cap, or perhaps just doesn't count theirs against the overall cap. Spread the wealth more accordingly and help build better, more competitive rosters.

Dennis: Yeah, hard to tell your kid that their favorite NBA player isn't playing because he's tired from having to play two games in two nights.

Lol, if I was being paid 60 million, I'd make sure I was in fit enough to play one game every night of the week and twice on Sunday.

Basketball games are only 48 minutes with enough breaks to make the game last 2 hours. Soccer players have to continually run around for two 45 minute halves and sometimes play three games a week.

Quarterbacks having a separate cap makes sense to me Warrior13, the concept is so simple I don't know why then NFL haven't thought of it-

It also doesn't help that contracts are fully guaranteed in the NBA and how it only takes 45-50 wins to make the playoffs. Basically gives players all the reasons they need to take a few days off each year for "rest".

Yeah, a ton of teams make the playoffs. There's 15 teams in each conference, the first 6 teams get in automatically, then the 7-10 seeds do a little play in tournament to decide the last 2 seeds. So 20 of 30 teams have a chance to make it to the playoffs. Regular season is essentially meaningless for a good 12 of the teams and the players know it. The guaranteed contracts are massively beneficial for the players too. It does help make discussing them simpler unlike all the weird structures NFL contracts can have.

It's definitely made watching the NBA rough the last few years. Stars sitting out left and right, and, like you said, any team that isn't downright terrible basically are guaranteed to make the playoffs or tie in. Watered down product imo. Sad for me since my two teams, Suns and Heat, are the two #1 Seeds, and I barely want to watch.

Sounds like the public will eventually get wise to the inferior product and not attend games unless it has a meaning. At which point the NBA will have to address the problem as the money will dry up. This problem can be easily solved by doing what the NFL does, fewer games but every one of them is important.

I doubt they would lower the amount of games, not when that is where the money is made. I think they should just make minimum game requirements for certain salaries, minus injuries, to resolve the issue. Sort of like if they do not play in 90% of the games, they cannot earn the honors that are tied into making bigger contracts.

I doubt they will lower the games - although I think it would be wise to lower it 65 or 72 games and have 6 teams per conference in the playoffs. They're going to definitely try to do something to stop the over the top "rest days" that star players take. I think it's going to take the form of limiting games on back-to-back by making it so they only play 3 games in a 7 day span with a few weeks of 4-in-7s, cutting the preseason a little short to compensate. It's hard to directly forbid "rest days" because then teams will just say player X has a sore hamstring or tight back and he'll sit out anyway, because they don't want the image of forcing guys to play hurt.

It will be interesting seeing how the NBA tackles the problem so everyone is happy, I fully understand players should not play hurt but at the same time you don't like to see players take advantage of the excuse because they want a rest.

Yeah. It never used to be that way. Pop was the first to do so when Park, Ginobli, and Duncan were aging. Since them, it has gotten worse and worse. The NBA knows they have to fix it, or else ticket sales will continue to plummet.