And a corollary to this is teams artificially holding an MLB quality player in the minors just to control him for an extra year. As we can see in this era of tighter drug policy, there's no reason to believe that a guy's 21 or 22 year old season will be less valuable than his 27 or 28 year old season. You had about a twenty year period where it was tough for a 21 year old to break in because his position was manned by a 34 year old All-Star. That isn't happening without super-juice. It would be pretty silly to waste the 20 year old season of Mel Ott, Bob Feller, or Al Kaline in Podunk, Kansas because you're worried about his salary six or seven years down the road.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That's the problem. You are assuming that the player would get the EXACT same contract with guaranteed money through the length of the deal. Burton has in effect a 2 year/$22 million deal. He would have to be really bad to not get the third year which gets him up to $25 million over 3 years.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Correct. I applaud Rick's effort but you can tell he's bored and doesn't feel like jumping into the Politics muck for a debate

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

How many players on a baseball team? How many players on a football team?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

This is an insane argument, Im tapping out.

I maintain that gettting 32 million is better than getting significantly less than that.

40 and 58. What's your point?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This is a good point and a big deal. But floors can hurt in ways as well.

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Elections have consequences.

Cmon Keyser, you know the Yanks are one of the few outliers.

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Elections have consequences.

Keyser also think the only costs the Yankees have is payroll.

Nope

Are you guys truly not understanding this? NFL players get their money up front. The concept of a guaranteed contract doesn't mean much. Here is another example. Let's look at the Kirk Cousins deal which was fully guaranteed.

It was undoubtedly a bad deal but it is the best we have.
3 years at $84 million. He gets $28 million per year.
Year 1: $26 million
Year 2: $54 million
Year 3: $84 million
The last big money deal was Matt Stafford.
He signed a 5 year deal, with $92 million guaranteed. This was an extension so Year 1
Year 0: $51 million(this was the last year of his previous deal, but he got his signing bonus here)
Year 1: $67.5 million
Year 2: $87 million
Year 3: $108 million
It is at this point that the Lions could cut him, but as you can see he would have made far more than Cousins at this point.
If they don't cut him,
Year 4: $128 million
Year 5: $151 million

As you can see, the guaranteed value at the start of it is all that really matters. What Cousins really did was not give the team a chance to keep him on a competitive value for an extra couple years but he actually will make less than Cousins throughout the contract with the only chance being that in year 4 Cousins gets another massive deal, and in that case Stafford would probably also be in line for a big extension similar to how Brees and others keep on getting new deals after the guaranteed money is gone.

That doesn't even get into the fact that Stafford got a check for $50 million when he signed, and Cousins didn't.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

How are you getting to those numbers?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

See how Matt Stafford, for 3 years, is actually going to get more money than the fully guaranteed money of Kirk Cousins, and Stafford signed a year before Cousins.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Those are the numbers.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

See how every MLB player gets every penny of the money he signs for 100% of the time.

lol.

Yes, but Cousins then gets to sign another guaranteed contract while Stafford has to hope for an extension he probably won't be getting.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

No I am correct I said "few" of the outliers.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

I don't think we should count inactives in either but I don't even know what point you are arguing anyways. The number also should be 63, not 58 I believe.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

If both are performing at a high level then each will get a big contract/extension around that time. To take it a step further, the only way he isn't getting around $20 million a year is if the Lions cut him then, which he would be in the same position as Cousins.

That doesn't really matter though. The whole point is that Stafford will make MORE money than Cousins did on his 3 year deal over those 3 years, and he also got the money much faster. That is why I'm saying it is overrated. It's not like Stafford lost out on anything in taking a deal with more guaranteed money but not the complete contract.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I'm not arguing anything. I'm trying to figure out what your point is.

I believe there are 53 players on an NFL team plus a 5 man reserve squad. There are definitely 40 men on a major league roster.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The practice squad is 10 players. It can sometimes be 11 players.

Also, it should be pointed out that the MLB union uses average salary numbers for the 25 man rosters. If we are talking about average salary, it almost certainly is using 53 for the NFL and 25 for MLB.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I have two offers for you Rick

Offer #1: 10 million dollars, right now, no questions asked


Offer#2: 1 million dollars right now, with the chance to make as much as 10 million if you perform well enough

Hey Scorehead, you might want to put a disclaimer in there.

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Elections have consequences.

Withdrawn! Withdrawn!

It's clear you aren't even trying to understand the point.

Of course an equal contract is better when fully guaranteed. The problem is that it makes no sense to think the contract wouldn't change. Going back to my last example, Matt Stafford signed a 5 year, $135 million dollar contract with $92 million guaranteed for the first 3 years(with $20 million, and then $23 million coming the two last years). Kirk Cousins signed a 3 year, $84 million dollar contract. At the end of year 3, Stafford will make $8 million more and he got $50 million right away and Cousins got $3 million right away. If Stafford is cut after year 3, he makes MORE money than Cousins did. If he isn't cut, he makes another $20 million, and then another $23 million if he isn't cut the year after that.

Right now, if you were an agent for a quarterback, and both those deals were offered to you which one do you take? I think it's fairly obvious that Stafford's contract was much better.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That's a management-centric way to describe that contract. It's actually a a 3-year $92 million contract with team options for two additional years.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That's all I'm saying, brother man

Glad we agree.

Sure. That's fine. That's why I'm saying that the concept of NFL contract not being fully guaranteed is overrated.

The worst case scenario in any non-guaranteed contract is either a catastrophic injury or such a decline in play that you never get anything but a very low next contract. If that happens to both players, Stafford came out ahead of Cousins by a good margin.

In fact, Alex Smith is a great example here. He signed a 4 year, $94 million contract with $71 million guaranteed. It really was a 3 year, $71 million contract. This was the guy who isn't nearly as good who was signed to replace Cousins in Washington. Even if he never plays again, he is getting $71 million over these 3 years. Not bad for a contract that isn't guaranteed.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Right, but your point isn't really to compare Stafford's deal to Cousins's, is it? The point is, a baseball player that was equivalent to Stafford would receive the full 5 years guaranteed. Why don't you compare Stafford's deal to Jason Heyward's? And we won't even consider that Stafford's brain is being destroyed in return for his millions.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I saw Stafford's draft day interview. Negligible losses on that last point.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul