Hamlin was reportedly watching and tweeting about the game also.
It must be tough for him not to be playing but I hope he still feels like part of the team, because I’m sure they feel that he still is.
An uplifting game. Pity about those late interceptions, but the arm on the Bills QB impressed many.
There’s a start, anyway.
Reports are that he will get his full 2022 salary for the Week 18 game - there had been a clause (standard for the vast majority of players) in his contract that it would be cut in half if he was placed on IR. That amounts to a little more than $20k, which could be big considering his potential health care needs but maybe not quite what people were thinking.
Now to see about the rest. He hasn’t been in the league long enough (3 full seasons) to qualify for a pension or 5 years of post-football career health care. No doubt the NFL, NFLPA, and Bills are scrambling on that, but they’re also no doubt considering how this makes them look for all the other players on similar contracts who may, for whatever reason, find themselves suddenly jobless and with chronic injuries. Or just that it’s common to cut their pay in half if they land on the injured list.
More excellent news on Hamlin’s recovery, including the fact that he was released from the Cincinnati hospital where he’d been treated, and transported to a hospital in Buffalo for further treatment.
I’m glad they addressed the issue of his 2022 salary and I really hope they find a way to get him set up for success beyond this year, assuming he doesn’t play football again. But I also hope this sparks a bigger conversation about other players that have their career cut short by injury in the first few years. A guy who breaks his leg badly enough that he can’t play again wasn’t facing the life-and-death situation that Hamlin was, but the end result is the same - he sacrificed his body for the game, and the league tosses him aside with a salary cut and no pension. If this forces the NFL to do something about all these other guys, that’s a good thing.
Well, at least for the final game of the season. There are billionaries involved, so you’d think they could scrounge up $20k in their couch cushions.
Playoff pay isn’t great but he’s not due all of it, either, necessarily. Nor is next year or beyond, so we’ll just have to see.
That’s something that would be collectively bargained between the NFL and the players’ union.
I remember hearing about post-career health care during the previous negotiations. If I recall correctly, active players weren’t interested enough to give up something meaningful in the negotiation for guys who were no longer playing.
Apologies if I’m not remembering this correctly.
You’d think with all the multi-millionaire players and the multi-billionaire owners, they could open their Scrooge-like fists just a little bit.
So much for being team players.
The percentage of players in this category is very small. The average career is three years, and contracts aren’t guaranteed, so lots of players only cash checks for a year or two. Those checks may be large relative to yours or mine, but we’re not washed up at 24.
Not that there isn’t greed and self-centeredness amongst players, but the average player doesn’t have to be a scrooge to prioritize keeping as much of his earnings as possible.
And, while former/retired players can apparently continue to be members of the players’ union upon retirement, they apparently aren’t allowed to vote (on things such as the collective bargaining agreement), and thus, likely don’t have much of a voice in such things.
What’s the percentage of players whose careers are ended in the first three years by injury? Plenty of players just don’t make it, but how many cannot play any more? I’d assume that adding those few wouldn’t significantly cut into everyone else’s paycheck, but I don’t know the numbers. (And really, the rich owners should be coughing it up, not players.)
Agreed, sort of. The NFL’s labor contract is a hard-fought revenue-sharing agreement, and while the pie is huge it’s not infinite. Any concessions the players can wring out of it for former and/or disabled players reduces the size of the pie, reducing the take for both players and owners. It’s not like you can simply make the owners pony up an extra few billion out of nowhere, no matter how just that might be.
(I’m not an expert in this by any means, so if anyone can correct or clarify the above with actual cites I’ll gladly cede the floor.)
OK, that proves that many NFL owners are multi-billionaires. So what? You still can’t make them pay extra for retired and disabled players outside the labor deal. We can all sit here and say they should pay more, but that and five bucks will get you a Big Mac.
This is five years old so adjust for inflation.
The average NFL player career is 3 years long. The median career earning is $3 million over the course of a career. That sounds like a lot of money, and it is, especially over such a short period of time.
BUT
To make it in the NFL, players often have to train and practice most of their life. You have to live and breathe football. You go to college and focus on it. For most of these players, that is all they know to do, because to be the best in the world at something takes a lot of dedication and many don’t have the time or energy to be good at anything else. And many who could are not given the opportunity. They’re taught that football is everything and people aren’t teaching them how to be electrical engineers or sculptors or psychologists. They are devoted to football.
Once that ends, then what? Many are unprepared. They could have invested that $3M and it could set them up well through their lives, but they aren’t being taught that.
A 2015 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates about 15 percent of players are bankrupt after being out of the league for about a dozen years. And a 2009 Sports Illustrated article estimated three-fourths of former NFLers experience what the magazine called “financial distress.”
To the average person it looks like they’re getting rich playing a game. But for the vast majority of players, it’s other people getting rich off of them.
I think in practice it would be very hard to make that distinction. Like if a guy on the fringe of the practice squad breaks his leg and gets waived, then never gets another chance despite making a full recovery. The fact that he doesn’t get another chance suggests that he wasn’t a real good prospect to begin with, but it’s also true that the immediate cause of his career ending was an injury.
I have a hunch Damar will be back next season. That’s assuming he gets cleared by the doctors. The league will want a full medical check of his heart.
It’s great that he’s already back at a hospital in Buffalo.
I fully agree. But I’d like to think they could put some effort into what is admittedly a very tough distinction, instead of throwing up their hands and saying “it’s too tough, so nothing for anyone!” Maybe a scrub with a sprained ankle gets an extra payout. I’d rather have a few of those than have deserving players get screwed for life.
This is obviously all pie-in-the-sky. As noted, it can’t be at the expense of existing players, so the owners need to expand the pie. If the fans demanded it enough and there were financial consequences (like boycotts) to not responding, things would change. I see slim to none chance of that.
There are, in fact, injury settlements that are reached between teams and players (or, more specifically, their agents) whom they release due to injuries.
However, those are more typically for a player who has a shortish-term injury, which is going to keep them out for a while, but likely isn’t career-ending (but whom the team doesn’t care to carry on injured reserve).
And Damar is home.
9 days ago he nearly died. Amazing recovery.
I imagine the Bills trainers will work towards regaining his conditioning and strength.