There was no deal in place when the Chargers picked Manning (otherwise the two teams would’ve just traded draft picks instead of waiting to trade players). I believe that there was no deal when the Giants drafted Rivers, either, but I’m a little less confident about that.
Even though I’m a Giants fan who likes Eli Manning, I always thought he was nuts!
I mean, he had a choice between playing in San Diego (where the fans and media are mellow and the weather is always perfect) or in the Meadowlands, where it’s frigid and rainy come November, and where the fans and media are brutal when you don’t succeed.
As #1 overall draft pick, El iwas going to be rich regardless- why not be rich in Southern California??
Bottom line, though: I don’t think the Giants, Steelers OR Chargers have any reason to regret the quarterbacks they ended up with that year. Eli, Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger have ALL turned out as well as their teams could have hoped for. And the Chargers managed to get BOTH Rivers AND Shaun Merriman for Eli.
Happy ending all around.
Lured by the even richer endorsement deals in New York city.
For the cream of the crop salary is just the rainy day money. They can make as much or more per year in endorsements.
Can a player opt out of the draft?
Much is said about underclassmen formally declaring for the draft (thus terminating their college eligibility), which suggests that a player has to take some positive step to join the pool of draftable players. Is this also true of players whose college eligibility has simply run out?
I can’t recall any instances of any player doing this, which suggests to me that either (a) it’s not permitted or (b) the consequences of doing so are undesireable, so nobody wants to do it. Or, © it happens all the time and I’m an inattentive dolt who hasn’t noticed.
My initial guess for (b) is that a player who is “undrafted”, even if his undrafted-ness was by his own choice, would be looking at a rookie contract orders of magnitude smaller than that of a top pick. Is that really true, though? Would an “undrafted” Andrew Luck really have had difficulty finding a team willing to pay him big bucks?
Such thoughts lead me back to option (a): if that’s true, by what mechanism is it enforced?
There is a process for declaring intent to join the draft before you college eligibility is used up - http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-17/sports/30634322_1_nfl-draft-sports-business-sports-agent-blog
I don’t know if everyone who uses up their NCAA college football eligibility is automatically entered into the draft. If you weren’t in the draft lists there are other supplemental drafts that you’d have to go through first before you could be an undrafted player.
Ah, OK. Thanks.
Would it be accurate to say, then, that a potential rookie player must pass through at least some variety of draft (regular, supplemental, who-knows-what) unclaimed before teams can sign him as a free agent?
How about me? I’m 41 years old and have not played football since junior high school. If I suddenly developed freakish placekicking skills, could the Dallas Cowboys just sign me up, or would I need to enter a supplemental draft first?
Yes. I was thinking the same thing, that a player could just not declare for the draft then sign with whoever they want, but it turns out you cannot become an “Undrafted Free Agent” until you are actually undrafted.
There’s the story of Kelly Stouffer, who happened to be the St. Louis Cardinals’ last first-round pick (#6 overall) before the team moved to Arizona. The Wiki articlesays Stouffer and the Cardinals weren’t able to agree on a contract. In fact, Stouffer said he didn’t want to play for the Cardinals, period, and wouldn’t sign. He sat out the entire 1987 season. Just before the 1988 draft, when their rights would have expired, the Cardinals traded Stouffer to Seattle, where he got off to a promising start, then was injured and faded away.
You’d have to sign up for the regular draft so all the teams get a chance at you.
There is a supplemental draft, but it’s not really for this kind of situation. It’s more for kids who weren’t initially draft eligible and petition for draft eligibility for any of a number of reasons (not eligible in following college season being the usual one).
If you make it through a draft without getting drafted by any of the teams, you can sign onto any team that wants you as an undrafted free agent.
Actually, after the regular draft, most teams call up a bunch of undrafted kids and try to sign them up and maintain good sized lists of athletes they don’t necessarily want to waste a pick on but may still have value. The free agents are free to sign (or not sign) with anybody at that point. Most, of course, don’t end up on a team, but there are quite a few who do well. Off the top of my head, both Cameron Wake and Arian Foster went undrafted and are stars on their respective teams. Wes Welker also went undrafted and signed with the Chargers. They dropped him, leading him to bigger and better with New England (though not so much these days with his contract negotiations).
And it’s not like they have their pick of any team; rarely, if ever, is there any kind of bidding war for a particular player’s services. While a player may get offers from a few teams, in the vast majority of cases they’re going to quickly sign with the first team that calls and consider themselves lucky to have a shot at making a roster.
Wake is an interesting story…he was undrafted in 2005, signed as an undrafted free agent with the Giants right after the draft, but apparently was cut by them before even going to training camp. I’m guessing he bounced around on tryouts, but never stuck, and went up to the CFL in 2007. He played two years with the BC Lions, and won a ton of awards up there (Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, etc.). He was able to parlay that into a bunch of NFL tryouts in 2009, and signed with the Dolphins, where he made All-Pro in 2010.
After getting cut by the Chargers (after one game), Welker caught on with the Dolphins, who eventually traded him to the Patriots, where he became a star.
The Chargers are pretty much the kings of the UDFA (Undrafted Free Agents). To name a few - Kris Dielman, Malcom Floyd, Stephen Cooper, Steve Gregory, Jacques Cesaire, Kassim Osgood, Mike Tolbert, and, oh yeah, Antonio Gates.
On the other hand, a year or two after Elway, Bo Jackson did the same thing with Tampa Bay, who decided not to trade him, thus effectively getting nothing for the #1 overall draft pick. IIRC, the main problem was that Jackson, like Elway, was also a star baseball player, but Jackson’s “demand” was that whatever team drafted him let him play pro baseball as well, which affected Tampa Bay’s ability to trade him. Eventually, he never signed with Tampa Bay, went into the next year’s draft, and was drafted in a later round by the Raiders, who were willing to let him play baseball (and who, IIRC, ended up winning a Super Bowl not long after that).
One question: does the one-year rule apply if you play in the same sport in another league? Doesn’t the NBA have a rule where a player who is drafted but decides to play pro basketball in, say, Europe, isn’t eligible for the draft again for a number of years?
Jackson was still at Auburn when the Raiders last won a Super Bowl.
For first round players, teams own a player’s draft rights for three years, with a team option for a fourth year. The clock doesn’t start running until the player actually signs an NBA contract, though - so in the case of a player who refuses to sign, the team retains his rights until it trades them.
The draft rights to second round players, however, are only good for a year.
The Orlando Magic still own the rights to Fran Vasquez, who they drafted in 2005, and who decided to stay in the Spanish Liga ACB.
In baseball, players refusing to sign with the teams that draft them is pretty frequent (lots of them choose college rather than go to a loaded farm system, for example) so draft rights are only good until the following July 15 (basically, until a few weeks before the next draft for which they are eligible).
So those movies where pro teams have open tryouts are not documentaries?
Well, I looked up the movie I was thinking of, “Invincible,” and then looked up the real guy it was about, Vince Papale.
If the article is correct, he played no college football, and went through no draft. He just tried out for the local (Philadelphia) teams at various levels (semi-pro, WFL, and NFL), and was signed each time. Have they changed the rules since then?
Eric Swann was drafted from a semi-pro team so it’s not as if being a professional in some form keeps you out of the draft. I’m willing to bet that after Papale had his workout with the Eagles, he somehow got his name added to the official list of draft eligible players the NFL must compile, and when he didn’t get drafted (whether it was an the main draft or a supplemental one) only then was he able to sign as a UFA. (Obviously, unless the rules were different back then, but I’m pretty sure the draft was always designed to eliminate loopholes that would allow players to evade its purpose to fairly distribute the yearly crop of rookies.)
For baseball we had a local guy who found a loophole in the draft. He was in high school but got a GED. And he declared for the baseball draft but nobody knew he was in the draft so he was not picked. So he became a free agent which he thought was a great idea but nobody signed him. He played college baseball for 3 years and then was drafted .
The current rule is that players have to declare themselves eligible for the NFL amateur draft by filing an application with the NFL. However, that only applies to amateur players because professionals cannot be drafted. Papale played a couple of semi-pro games and was thus ineligible for the draft.