He’s one of the best RBs in the NFL, if not THE best, so clearly he is worth more than his contract value. I’m not debating that. I think everyone would agree he’s worth more than he’s set to get paid under his current contract. BUT…
He DOES have a contract. That’s the point of signing one. It guarantees YOU a job and (supposedly) guarantees your skills to your employer for a set amount of time. What do you do with this guy if you are Tennessee?
If you cave in to his demands then you look like a soft front office and encourage more people to just wake up and decide they don’t want to honor their contracts in hopes of being rewarded with new higher$$.
If you don’t give in then you don’t get to exploit his valuable skills during the season.
Whats the worst outcome here? Could CJ ever be completely blocked out of the league? If Ten doesn’t give in and he doesn’t come around does that mean he doesn’t play football any more?
It’s not unusual at all in sports (or elsewhere in business, really) to renegotiate a contract when the reality behind the contract changes. He’s making something like 800K a season as consistently the best RB in the league, when the second best is making around 8 million per season.
And the Titans WANT to pay him more, it’s just that they disagree on how much that’s going to be. Rumors abound, and no one outside the organization knows how much he’s been offered.
Are you really that clueless when it comes to NFL news? NFL contracts are in no way guaranteed. I see no reason for an NFL player to treat a contract as any more binding than the owners do. It’s damn well a fact that if Chris Johnson underperforms his contract the Titans will be quick to come to him to renegotiate his deal to lower his salary or he’ll be summarily fired. So, when a player dramatically outperforms their deal they have every right to take the same tactic.
Owners who are hardliners are stupid and cut off their nose to spite their face. Players who are greedy and have inflated values of themselves similarly spite themselves in the long term. How many player played hardball with their teams as FAs only to take dramatically less elsewhere when their bluff was called.
If Johnson is holding out for Peyton Manning money he’s an idiot. If the Titans are expecting him to show up and “honor” his meaningless contract, they are equally stupid.
If I’m the Titans I very publicly offer him a contract that is 10% larger than Adrain Peterson’s current deal, about $12M per year. That’s what he’s worth and maybe a little more. Make about $30M of that deal guaranteed, which is 50% more than what DeAngelo Williams got.
Now, Larry Fitzgerald got $50M guaranteed and Joe Thomas got $44M guaranteed so Johnson will probably grumble for more, but those deals are ridiculous and this is where the Titans can take the high ground by saying that he’s “under contract” and should save face by accepting this deal.
The Titans could have gotten out of this a lot cheaper had they extended him last season when he held out but they cheaped out and gave him a tiny bump, now they will pay and if they let him walk shame on them. There are a bunch of teams that would pay CJ2K $12M+ a year AND give up a first round pick for him.
Don’t understand why mods insist on scolding both people when one points out that the other is clearly being a dick. If someone doesn’t want to be called a dick they shouldn’t blatantly behave like one.
No need for a warning. That’s all I’m going to say on it.
Either way I want to know what other people think the CJ solution is.
There was no official warning. If you get officially warned, you will know; there’s a system for it that includes a PM.
“He started it” is not and has never been an excuse. If you call someone an abrasive jerk, you are violating the rule against personal attacks. Want to insult someone, take it to the Pit.
If you have questions or criticisms about moderating they belong in ATMB.
I’m with Omni; the Cardinals have a history of spending far too much on great players and nothing at all on everyone else, which is why they always suck despite appearing to have talent.
Johnson shouldn’t be getting Fitzgerald money because nobody should be getting Fitzgerald money, except a couple of quarterbacks. On the other hand, I wouldn’t show up for training camp for the ~$500,000 he’s scheduled to make this year; one slip and his knee and career are history.
I am less inclined to support holdouts by players at positions other than running backs, simply because guys at other positions generally make it to a third contract. If a running back gets a third contract, it’s more than likely because the team overpaid for him a little so he could retire as a Viking (or whatever). Even the famously durable LaDanian Tomlinson didn’t make it to a third contract with the Chargers (and is being paid like a backup in New York).
Johnson will never again have an opportunity to negotiate for big money. I don’t begrudge him one dollar.
They should trade him. Honestly, he will (understandably) never give the Titans the benefit of the doubt because they have a history of acting in bad faith and being scummy. They will (understandably) never pay him the kind of money he wants because he is a RB in a league where their durability usually doesn’t warrant that kind of salary. They are at an impasse, so they should trade him. They are not gonna win with him, and they have already started to build for the future. They should trade him to get a Hershel Walker-type deal from anyone who will agree to pay CJ the money he wants (if anyone would). The Titans need to get the Raiders or the Redskins on the phone.
Sorry if I hurt your feelings. Maybe I came in a little hard here, but you’re stepping in pretty heavily treaded territory. This topic has been beaten pretty well to death, and I’m pretty sure you’ve participated in threads that have discussed this topic in the past.
You’ll hear it on the sports talk radio all the time, I listened to this argument on both the morning and afternoon drive today. In both cases the commentators were discussing the motivations and arguments on both sides, and sure enough some clown called in to repeat this silly concept that the players’ “signed a contract” and therefore the holdout is somehow a character problem. It’s a juvenile and frankly unsupportable argument. It sometimes comes with a hint of implied racism.
That you went so far as to call NFL contracts guaranteed strikes me as the sporting equivalent of trolling. Needless to say it touched a nerve.
Not trying to be a pain in the ass here, but I didn’t fling any insults. I pointed out a really well known fact. I suppose I could have been touchy feely about it, but I don’t think calling out someone’s ignorance on a subject has been outlawed.
Anyways, apologies to all for being a hardass here.
RB’s don’t have the same kind of value they used to have. It’s a passing league now and RB’s just aren’t really franchise players anymore. They help certainly, but they aren’t irreplaceable. You don’t need a great one to win (and I say that as a fan of a team with one of the best in the league).
If I were a fan of the Titans, I would be annoyed. Chris Johnson has only really had one stellar year. He doesn’t have the weight to hold a franchise up like this.
Now that the flak has cleared, I would simply like to point out that Chris Johnson’s contract does not guarantee him a job, nor does it even guarantee him the money. NFL player contracts are not guaranteed, and are voidable at whim by the team.
So wait, you’re telling me that Ten could just cut CJ at will and not have to buy him out? So a team can sign a player for 7 years and after a year just say “Don’t want him” and send him packing with no financial repercussions?
I’m not talking about trading. I’m talking about walking away from a player.
If this is true then I clearly don’t understand how these contracts work. Why not just work/sign year to year in this case.
ETA: Just want to make clear that I’m talking about CJ if hadn’t tried to hold out. Under the current circumstance maybe they can punt him because he hasn’t shown up for work.
Yes. This is why you hear people talk about guaranteed money in NFL contracts. The rest of the money is not guaranteed, and the player won’t get it unless he reaches the end of the contract. With the big contracts, it’s often assumed that they will not get to the end. The Eagles just signed Michael Vick for $100 million over six years, but only $40 million is guaranteed. They can cut him at any time and they don’t have to pay him the balance, beyond whatever he’s already earned per year.
NFL contracts are not guaranteed so, yes, they could cut him and basically not owe him money beyond what money was guaranteed (which is far less than the contract value). As explained here:
The basic idea is that deals you see reported in the media include both a maximum contract value (eg 100MM over 6 years), and a minimum contract value/ guaranteed amount often on the form of a signing bonus (eg. 40MM). Most clubs pay that minimum value in the beginning, so cutting a player later on usually doesn’t require them to spend more money.
Calling someone “clueless” is close enough to merit a reminder about the rules of the forum. I stepped in to stop a flame war before anything was ignited; again, no formal warning is issued. Please drop the matter or take it to an appropriate forum or PM. Thanks.
There is almost always guaranteed money involved. In fact, most NFL contracts are evaluated by insiders on that basis alone. Most contracts will not be fulfilled one way or another. As to you question, most would not sign a contract with no guaranteed money unless they had no other choice. The idea is that you have these two competing sides. The team wants to contractually lock up a player for as long as possible, at the lowest cost possible. The player wants the most guaranteed money they can get for the shortest period of time. The negotiation exists primarily to resolve those two competing ideas.
This is actually a pretty good question. I think it has two answers:
Well, there is SOME guaranteed money in some of them.
You have to play ball (in the metaphorical sense) if you want to reach the point that you’ll get one of the contracts that guarantees money. If you don’t sign, well, you don’t play at all, and earn a reputation for not wanting to be a good soldier.
Honestly - at the considerable risk of creating further firestorm - I don’t entirely agree with this line of reasoning, which is frequently offered as a counter to the (equally flawed) “player should just stick to the contract” argument.
Ultimately, equitable or not, the non-guaranteed nature of the (bulk of the) NFL contract is part of that contract. A player signs the contract knowing, in advance, that it is non-guaranteed. A team that cuts a player, thus saving themselves the non-guaranteed portion of his salary, is in my view operating entirely consistent with the terms of the contract. If the player does not want to give the team that option, he is free to negotiate an entirely guaranteed contract if he can convince a team to give it to him; if a player wants that option for himself, he is free to negotiate an opt-out clause. Once signed, though, the ability of the team to opt out (and in the inability of the player to do the same) is part of the contract, and it is not fair to say that the player has the right to violate the contract because the team can cut him when, by cutting him, the team is not violating the contract.
That said, I generally have no problem with players who choose to hold out. I also have no problem with owners who choose to be hardliners. Both are making business decisions. In the case of Chris Johnson, everything I have read suggests that he is making unreasonable demands. If the Titans gave him the contract he wants, they would be crippling themselves even if he stays healthy and murdering their team for years to come if he gets hurt.
Again, I don’t see how the contract is meaningless. I really don’t. Johnson is free to hold out; I have no ethical problem with that. But if the Titans decide that he isn’t worth what he wants and decide to let him sit out and waste a year (or more!) of his career, they can do that, precisely because the contract is NOT meaningless. I have no ethical problem with that, either.