Originally Posted by Isle of Wight (Post 16322659)

Thx Do players all have fixed salaries? Like qb gets £1 million a year but a back up special teams outfielder only gets £100k

Originally Posted by hughff (Post 16325641)

My understanding, and I'm happy to be corrected, is that there is a minimum salary. However, that is for a player on the first team roster. Many players are on the practice squad, where they earn a lot less because they cannot be used in games. In the event of injury, a player can be moved from the practice roster to the playing roster and his income leaps up to the league minimum. I'm not sure if a player on the practice roster can be signed by another team but I suspect that they can, to preserve an open labour market.

In addition, the collective agreement pretty much means that new players receive a set contract coming into the league based on their draft position - there's very little room for a drafted rookie to negotiate. Rookie contracts last four years but the drafting team can exercise an option to extend it to five years. What this means is that players effectively can't negotiate their own contract until they have a lot of experience.

Generally, players in different positions receive wildly different contracts. Running backs, who are notoriously susceptible to injury (on average a running back has a three year career in the NFL, so less than a maximum rookie contract), get the least money while quarterbacks get the most. IIRC, Patrick Mahomes is on $45 million+ a year. Not all contracts are guaranteed either and players on the league minimum can often be cut midway through a season thus ending their contract.

Every team has a minimum and maximum cap that they must spend on players (it doesn't apply to coaches etc.) which is meant to keep the league competitive. Frankly, there are so many ways to work around it that it's more a guideline than a cap. There's no question the cap prevents teams from doing a Man City/Chelsea and hoovering up all the talent making them unbeatable over the course of the season. (I've often said that the only reason the PL plays games is for tv... and they could just ask teams to submit their wage bills for awarding final places!)

The real effect of the cap, however, is to prevent teams from paying the people who generate the money (the players) what they are worth. While the stars get big bucks, the relatively replaceable guys on league minimum get a relative pittance, even though the stars can't be stars without them. It makes it very easy for rich owners to get richer if they are pulling in about $750million p.a. and only need to spend a third of that on their staff.

Now aren't you sorry you asked?

Originally Posted by hughff (Post 16333396)

The merry go round goes round - Matt Ryan to the Colts. Atlanta gets the 82nd pick. Sounds like a salary dump to me.

Originally Posted by Kai (Post 16325648)

No, not at all. Some players are paid $20 million a year whereas other might be paid $900K. Players on the practice squad are paid peanuts in comparison to that but get more if elevated to the NFL squad.
A backup QB can actually get several millions a year not throwing a single ball in a game!

The salary cap of the NFL is far more complicated than them NHL, where players contracts are protected, and contracts can be restructured or cut to fit the cap.

Originally Posted by aj4england (Post 16333446)

The cap hit was still bad. They did it more for Ryan on the top 3 worst rosters with him, they let him walk.

Originally Posted by hughff (Post 16397347)

To my mind, both NY teams got value: Thibodeaux and Johnson could have gone higher. Gardner, Neal and Wilson are good too.