Quote:
Originally Posted by Amnorix
So Tim Duncan and the Spurs are also cheating?
Every player who leaves money on the table is cheating?
I do agree with you however that what Brady agreed to gives the Patriots a competitive advantage. It may also be fundamentally unfair, because his wife's ridiculous wealth puts him in a position that no other QB enjoys -- the ability to basically make no money and still be absurdly rich. If I were the Ravens or Steelers or PeytonManning's team, I wouldn't be very happy about it.
Maybe there should be rules around it, though God knows how you would draft them. What system could you possibly have? It would be very difficult. The concept that Brady (or some other superstar who doesn't need money) could play on a veteran minimum contract is definitely troubling.
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I'd really like to see a standard contract for the entire league that pays players a league minimum and then has performance clauses all over the place. I'd like the NFL's winningest teams to be the ones that know the most about football rather than the ones that do the most creative accounting.
It would be rather simple, and composed of two parts.
Part 1. Minimum base salary. Starts with the rookie minimum and then rises with each year of seniority.
Part 2. Performance clauses. Each position gets performance factors identified, and you make $X for reaching each tier. A neutral third party tracks the stats. You'd probably build in a factor that is "percent of team's performance" so that players wouldn't get unduly penalized for going to a bad team, i.e., being a wide receiver when Matt Cassel is your quarterback.
Let's stop Elway from playing for league minimum and then getting cushy jobs with the team for the next 20 years.