2012 NFL Pre-Draft Discussion

The Game Room
261

The point is that guaranteed means guaranteed. It’s true that agents and perhaps teams like to lie about the terms of a contract, this isn’t new. It’s also not new that sports reporters tend to not be the most critical thinking group and can be lazy in their fact checking. However I think it’s a touch silly to use this as justification to invent a new meaning of a word. Because Manning’s deal was reported as having $54.4 million guaranteed isn’t reason to draw the conclusion that there’s a new NFL specific meaning of the term guaranteed. Had you asked if Lynch’s deal was really worth $18M guaranteed or if it was exaggerated and included differed bonus money that would have made sense. As you wrote it it was an oxymoron. In either case you’re taking this way to personally.

If that happened I wonder if the plan would be to release/trade Schaub or retain him as a backup/contingency plan. Houston does make for a pretty compelling landing spot, perhaps better than even Miami. Not sure how Peyton would feel about going to a division rival, though I’d suspect he’d relish the thought.

262

How is Houston going to afford Manning if they can’t afford Williams? Unless Manning takes a low pay just to stick it to the Colts… which admittedly, would be kind of funny.

263

I would like to beat about the head and shoulders, members of the sports media who keep dragging out this “Peyton is going to Houston” meme. Houston doesn’t have much room under the cap. From the link, even if you cut Jacoby Jones and Leinart, you still are only ~~$14M under the cap. And you still have to re-sign your center Myers, and guard Brisiel. Plus sign all of your draft picks. Never mind trying to find a WR#2/PR-KR who isn’t a walking disaster.

But, but?! We can cut Schaub! Who’s got a cap number of $8.3M. This actually wouldn’t be that bad, as this is Schaub’s contract year, before he’s a UFA in 2013. So you wouldn’t have that much signing bonus dead money to deal with, about $1.1M. Most of his compensation is going to be in salary. It looks like you save about $7M by cutting him, money that would go right back to Peyton, plus a lot more, but I digress. I guess you could trade Schaub, maybe for the 2 2nds that you originally had to pay for him. You certainly couldn’t afford to keep both. Which means that if Manning’s shoulder konks out, or his neck flares back up, you are left with T.J. Yates (cue sad trombone sound.)

If he could come back to the 2010 version of Manning, he would be an improvement over Schaub, I’ll give them that. But Schaub is a top-10 to top-8 QB already, over the last several years. Who’s 5 years younger than Manning. Unlike Alex Smith, I think we’re all pretty sure about how good Schaub is.

I just think you can use the money in a much wiser fashion, and broaden your championship window, by sticking with Schaub. Hell, if Schaub didn’t get injured, I think there’s a good chance they’d be in the Super Bowl last year, considering how close they played the Ravens, and how close the Ravens/Pats game went.

Now, OTOH, why SF is so set on not dealing with Manning, I have no idea.

264

For what it’s worth, what you said was totally reasonable, and the response would’ve bugged the shit out of me. Even Omni’s link about the Lynch contract says:

265

Yeah, but those questions were clearly implicit for folks who were aware that “$18M guaranteed,” as reported, didn’t necessarily mean that Lynch would definitely be paid at least $18M. I had *assumed *that even people who weren’t aware would figure something other than my vocabulary was amiss, but I guess I was wrong.

Ugh. Let’s just go back in time and assume that I, in my first post, put scare quotes around the word “guaranteed,” and that you, at some point, said, “Huh, I didn’t know that.” Yes?

ETA:

Thank you, good to know I’m not totally crazy.

266

Wow, passive aggressive much?

Yes, the scare quotes would have alleviated the conflict. I knew all about bogus claims of guarantees, you may have noticed that I follow this stuff and have referenced the Peyton contract a handful of times believe it or not. I do not believe it to be SOP to the point that it can be readily assumed of every single contract. When we hear about astronomical QB contract it’s worth investigating, but for most of the contracts out there, excepting injury exclusions, guaranteed means guaranteed.

If you think my snark in regards to your comment is grating, I can only imagine how you’d feel about being called ignorant over and over again.

267

Wait wait wait.

Either you’re lying about having known what “guaranteed” means in NFL reporting, or you wrote your first response purely to carp about my word selection even though you knew exactly what I meant – and while giving no clue that you did know what I meant … and then you expended two more responses before bothering to correct, in your fourth response to me, the misapprehension upon which all of my responses to you were clearly based? Christ, I don’t know which one is weirder.

(Well, no, the second one is definitely weirder, but I nonetheless believe it to be the case.)

268

Dude, you really are reading too much into an offhanded comment.

It’s my belief that the vast majority of NFL contracts which have “guaranteed money” are in indeed truly guaranteed. There’s little reason to believe that Lynch’s deal is one of those deals which would have a Brady/Manning-like clause in which there’s a secondary date in which a huge roster bonus is paid.

To do some digging, it seems my assumption on the subject is true.

As you’ll note, Lynch received $6M in a signing bonus (guaranteed) a base salary in 2012 of $4M and $7M in 2013 which is guaranteed for “skill, injury and salary cap”. Which covers all the likely scenarios, meaning that he’s due $17M in guarantees. This was later revised to $18M but I’m not sure what changed.

You’re making the assumption that guaranteed doesn’t mean guaranteed in most cases based on 2 weird, huge QB contracts signed in the last few years. That’s no basis to make that assumption, generally and commonly guaranteed is truly guaranteed in the NFL.

I made the initial comment in good fun pointing out your weird parsing. I had an impression of why you’d make that statement, but I figured it was 50-50 as to whether you meant that or if it was just a careless use of words. For most people the latter would be more likely considering the relative rarity of these non-guaranteed guarantees. In either case I was just poking fun.

269

I was saying that, for any at least moderately large contract, “guaranteed” doesn’t necessarily mean guaranteed. (And I wasn’t basing it on those two contracts: they were just illustrative examples, and literally the only two cases I bothered to look up – for large contracts it’s not at all uncommon, though I don’t care to assign percentages).

Then I sincerely apologize for overreacting – your post just didn’t read that way to me. I do wish, however, that you’d shown a little more haste in explaining what you meant once it was clear that there was a miscommunication.

270

ESPN has an article about Peyton Manning’s representatives being contacted by 12 different teams. Fine. But the really interesting part to me is a quote by Tony Dungy that gets buried halfway in.

If that’s true, and I assume Dungy has as good an idea as anyone except Peyton… there goes Washington. Kinda shakes up some of the scenarios in this thread.

271

I think Dungy might be talking out of his ass.

But Manning and Reggie Wayne to Miami, with Brandon Marshall? Intriguing…

272

There has been a lot of chatter about Miami. I wonder if Washington is interested in Flynn…

273

Washington is supposedly still in line to make Manning a big offer, so we’ll see. But from a pure football standpoint, I think Miami would make more sense for Manning. Good o-line, Brandon Marshall, Reggie Bush in more of a pass-catching role, maybe bring in Reggie Wayne…that’s a playoff team, assuming Manning is mostly himself.

274

As of a month ago, no.

275

Dungy was on, and he was asked was asked what he thought Manning would prefer. He made no claim to know anything concrete; he just said that he thought that, all else being equal, Peyton would probably rather not be in a situation where he’d have to root against Eli. I suspect most people would tend to feel the same way.

Giving a solicited opinion is not “talking out of his ass.”

276

The idea that he wouldn’t want to compete in the same division as his brother is dumb. It’s not like they’ve never played against each other. Dungy makes them sound like the Williams sisters.

277

Not to mention no state sales tax.

278

Miami’s not in Delaware. :wink:

279

checks map

Well I’ll be damned!

280

I do wonder how many pro athletes (and their agents) are savvy enough to see the savings of playing for a Florida or Texas team versus a slightly bigger pre-tax package from another team in a state with income tax.

Not that I’m much above them; I just filed my taxes a few weeks ago and damned if I know how much I paid the state or my rate.