The NFL has issues it needs to resolve soon. The #1 issue as
a fan should be the quality of the product on the field. Rookies who
should not be making teams are replacing veterans who should not be
getting released. The cause of this problem is the way draft picks are
compensated. It is ludicrous to pay unproven athletes fresh out of
college kids like they are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. One
solution is a slotting system like the NBA uses. Currently, a player
has to be signed to a huge contract spread over six or seven years to
make his contract fit in the salary cap of a team drafting in the top
ten. This might be a slight exaggeration, but there are valid points to
consider. As an example should Mike Williams be set for life
financially for the effort he gave to the Detroit Lions who spent the
#10 overall pick on him? What about a player such as Charles Rogers who
struggles with substance abuse yet forced the team who invested the #3
pick selecting him to swallow huge signing bonuses affiliated with that
draft spot? These are just two examples of the compensation of rookies
gone awry. Teams can assume part of the blame for players not panning
out, but there is no crystal ball in many of these situations. Plenty
of NFL analysts thought Ryan Leaf was nearly as good as or even better
than Peyton Manning.
The salary cap is also problematic because it forces teams to cut
experienced veterans who are being paid better than inexperienced
younger players solely because they make more money. The quality of the
play on the field is affected as is the depth on the roster. Fans wind
up seeing an inferior product. Watching a poor draft pick play for five
years because a team signed him to a seventy million dollar deal and it
cannot afford to cut the guy is painful. The salary cap makes it
prohibitive to simply cut him. Instead, how about paying scale salaries
to rookies? It would enable teams to trade a player or release him
based on performance, not his contract. That holds true for the
veterans and rookies alike. Because rookies will not be so well
compensated there should be more money for compensating veterans. The
NFL has partially addressed this with veteran signing exemptions as
part of the salary cap.
Another issue just as serious to many fans is teams deliberately losing
or “tanking” games late in the season. It might be impossible to
legislate, but this goes on for several reasons and teams going to the
playoffs are just as guilty as teams jockeying for a higher draft
position. If a team is locked into their playoff seeding and sits its
starters, how is that different than a losing team sitting better
players to secure a better draft position? By essentially foregoing any
opportunity to win a game, a team benefits by losing. Fantasy football
(FFL) managers are driven crazy by teams sitting their best players
come playoff time. Like it or not FFL players make up a substantial fan
base for the NFL. These are people who watch the games and provide
ratings. Also, strictly from the average fan’s point of view, why would
you watch a game you know isn’t being played to be won or doesn’t
involve the best players available? One example of this in 2007 was
Tampa Bay’s final two regular season games. Head coach Jon Gruden never
backed away from the fact that he wanted to rest key players in what
resulted in defeats to a pair of losing teams in San Francisco and
Carolina. How did fans of the team who paid to watch them play the
Panthers feel about this decision?
The NFL draft currently awards draft placement by overall record. There
are other qualifiers that allow the NFL to prioritize the order. Some
of the qualifiers are record against common opponents, opponent’s
winning percentage and division record. The worst teams in the NFL are
rewarded with high draft picks. The NFL says this is the best way to
guarantee parity, but it’s not exactly true. To get an accurate measure
of improvement and remove the aspect of purposely losing games from the
draft equation, it would be better to use a formula based on the record
over a three or five year period. That way, truly bad teams would
consistently draft in a higher draft position until they become better.
Winning or losing one game would not as drastically affect draft
position. For example, Chicago’s reward for trashing rival Green Bay
35-7 when the Packers were resting up for the playoffs? Instead of
drafting #9 they dropped down to #14 and this impacts every round of
the draft. In effect the Bears were punished for trying to win. Using a
three to five year record would either stop teams from throwing a game
or certainly lessen the impact. There seems to be no way to stop
playoff teams from resting their starters.
Using the record from multiple years would prevent teams like Chicago
from drafting ahead of Detroit. Just one season ago the Bears were
playing in the Super Bowl while over this entire decade the Lions have
been one of the worst teams in the NFL. Even as poorly as Detroit has
performed over this period, they have never drafted #1 overall. If
draft position were determined by three or five year performance, then
you might see true improvement from the worst teams. Those teams
actually get better and the league’s goal of parity would be better
served.
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