My beginning guess.
All rookies have a 3 year contract.
The first pick in the draft gets a three million dollar signing bonus.
The last pick in the draft gets a signing bonus equivalent to one year league minimum salary.
The rest of the signing bonuses are scaled accordingly by pick.
The 1st pick in the draft makes 3 million per year.
The last pick in the draft makes league minimum.
All picks in between are scaled accordingly.
RFA after 3. All of them.
Any hold out beyond one week after the draft will cost the equivalent of one week per week in bonus and salary. Team holds rights to any drafted player for full 3 years in the event of an attempted holdout. (The Crabdouche rule :thumbleft: )
"dfosterf" wrote:
Sorry, my friend, you're dreaming. :)
Consider the following imperfect analogy. Suppose you are one of two platoon leaders in a truly volunteer army (I won't say Marine Corps, because everyone knows they're different, somehow π ). By "truly volunteer", I mean they can decline to serve in the upcoming "live fire exercise" with the other platoon".
So, anyway, here are you and your fellow platoon leader, looking at a mass of people in the exercise yard, who have played other sorts of exercise-like games, but have never played anything as tough as real army exercises. Some look great physically; some have a great resume and recommendations from their earlier exercises in the navy, politics, and accountancy. Some can do ten gazillion pushups and some can only do five gazillion. Some have attitude and some secretly live a lifestyle that has given them the clap.
Rules of the exercise are that you and your fellow platoon leader pick like any playground game. You flip a coin and the winner goes first. Then you alternate until there's no one left that you want.
Now the game changes a bit. Instead of you immediately getting to say, "okay, here's what we're going to do, and Jonesy you're going to do X and Hernandez you're going to be the ...etc.," Jonesy, Hernandez, et al say. "WTF? those other guys are going to have real guns? What you going to give me?"
You say, "Well, Hernandez gets top pay because he's my first pick. And each person gets this amount less because I picked him second." Jonesy says, fuck that shit. Yeah, Hernandez is better than me, and he should get more, I get that. But not that much more. And the difference between me and the guy in front of me is a heckuva lot smaller than the difference between me and Smith behind me. So I'm going to sit over by this nice safe tree and have a beer."
Okay, now of course being a platoon leader from hell, you would go over and chop down the tree and use it to whip Jonesy's ass into shape and take his beer.
But see, this is where the analogy breaks down. The NFL is not the Army. Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy and company don't have the same ability to appeal to God, country, and Mom. (Much less dishonorable discharges and master sergeants.)
To put it bluntly, you have to kiss Jonesy's ass to get him to play. Especially since he's already played with and against that idiot Smith that the other guy drafted three rounds earlier and he *knows* he can whip Smith any day ending in "y".
Pure slotting sounds nice. And it might work for the lower rounds where you aren't dealing with the primadonnas who've lived their lives with their asses being kissed.
But only if there's some uncertaintly left. Only if Jonesy doesn't know for sure exactly what Smith gets. If you can still tell him (lie?) that you're going to do more for him than Dan Snyder is going to do for Smith, you can get him out from under his tree. But if he knows for sure Smith is getting more, he's going to sit, slack, or both.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)