Really the only reason from the players point of view is injury protection. If not for injuries I suspect that most players would prefer a series of 1 year deals in which every good season leads to a bigger payday. Those big fat long term deals become guaranteed if the player gets kneecapped. It’s financial security of the “hit by a bus” variety, metaphorically speaking.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of contracts. There is always an ability to “opt out” of any work contract. You can’t really have a contract that doesn’t implicitly give that option because you can’t force someone to work, or act against their own volition. You can’t sign away your free will; all you can do is make it financially advantageous for either side to abide by the deal. You can do that by specifying terms or penalties if one side breaches the contract. Accordingly, there is ALWAYS a clear understanding on both sides that the player does not have to fulfill the contract as well. The ability to violate a contract is part and parcel contract law. It largely semantics that one side opts out while the other side violates the contract.
The is incomplete. Players are trading exclusivity for a larger check up front. A series of one-year deals means a player would theoretically not be paid more than his market value at any given time. So a bad season would likely lead to a salary decrease. A long term deal usually includes guaranteed money that is distributed upfront, but prorated over the course of a contract that will likely never be completed. Thus, signing a deal at your peak earning potential means you can theoretically lock up more money.
Players also have the advantage of owners making irrational decisions based on sunk costs. Its easy to cut a guy after a one year contract if he doesn’t pan out. It’s much harder to pull the trigger if you’ve paid him millions of dollars already. In practice, this advantage is mitigated by the fact that contracts are continually tweaked, but it still makes more sense for most players to sign long term deals.
Owners and players, both explicitly and tacitly, agreed to this system. Non-guaranteed contracts and hold-outs are built into the system. Neither side can claim to be an aggrieved party, and everything is just negotiations. Neither player nor owner has the power to upend this system unilaterally. It’s dishonest to imply that the player has any control over the terms of his contract with regards to structure, non-guaranteed contracts are collectively bargained.
That’s just silly. Johnson wants around $13M per year, or thereabouts if you read between the lines. Here’s the list of top salaries. None of those teams are crippled. The cap is $120M. 10% to one player is a lot, but not unheard of. Left Tackles, Defensive Ends and Corner Backs all regularly earn that much and more and teams manage to field competitive teams. The Titans have over paid some role players putting them in a difficult situation moneywise, that was foolish on their part, but in no way is Johnson asking for a crippling amount of money.
What happens if CJ holds out indefinitely? Would he be booted from the league? How long before he could play elsewhere? What liability would Ten incur?
He’s under contract for 2 more years. He can hold out for 2 years and not get paid, then he’s a free agent. Simple as that. No penalty for either side. Just a lot of lost money and a lot of lost games.
Not quite. I believe if he sits out the entire season he doesn’t obtain service time, so he would still be 2 years away from free agency. Thus you have players like Vince Jackson coming back for the last games to ensure they get their service time.
Yeah, but with rookie contracts the players often don’t have much of choice, so I’m not sure how much value I’d put it that he agreed to the contract. In fact I wonder if one of the unintended downsides of rookie wage cuts is that there will be more of these type of holdouts.
They don’t get guaranteed, exactly. The base salary becomes guaranteed. Generally speaking, the player loses everything else: roster bonuses are typically contingent on the player being on on the active roster or PUP list rather than IR. And obviously playing-time and performance based incentives are out the window.
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Not quite. I believe if he sits out the entire season he doesn’t obtain service time, so he would still be 2 years away from free agency. Thus you have players like Vince Jackson coming back for the last games to ensure they get their service time.
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Johnson doesn’t even have that option. Due to the new CBA, players under contract had to report by the second week of training camp in order to earn a year towards free agency for this season.
I don’t know if that’s permanent or applies only to this year.
The reason CJ wants big money now is precisely the reason the Titans are reluctant to give it to him: because even the best running backs have short careers.
CJ thinks, “I won’t be much good in another few years, so I have to get big bucks while I can!”
Bud Adams, meanwhile, thinks “He won’t be much good in another few years, so I’d be nuts to give him big bucks.”
And they’re BOTH right!
Adding to CJ’s problem is that, as the Denver Broncos proved a few years back, if you have a good offense and a strong offensive line, you can get very solid production from a second-tier running back. A LOT of guys nowhere near as talented as Terrell Davis put up very good yardage totals for the Broncos.
The Titans may figure that IF their offensive line does a decent job, even a lesser running back than CJ can do a solid job for them.
I recall seeing in the news that the Titans are willing to make CJ the highest-paid RB in the NFL. I think that he should be, given his performance and remaining potential. The problem is, he wants more than that, and the market doesn’t support it. But there are mitigating factors. CJ was vastly under paid the past couple of years. The Titans brass/ownership seem to be pretty dickish, too (see Jeff Fisher). I think CJ has every right not to trust them, but then again, he’s a RB, and shouldn’t be trying to get too big for his britches here.
I agree with you, but I think the belief that a RB can NEVER be worth more than X amount, based solely on their position, seems kinda myopic. It’s less of an intrinsic issue than a failure of imagination and selective memory. While it’s true that there are plenty of Shaun Alexander’s and Larry Johnson’s to look to as cautionary tales, there are also people like AP, Emmit Smith, and LT who remain(ed) pretty durable and productive.
One should also consider the huge sums of money wasted on players who didn’t pan out who play more “important” positions (eg. Albert Haynesworth, JaMarcus Russell, Glenn Dorsey). I mean, can anyone really say an elite RB, during any given season, is less important than a cornerback or a wide receiver? That said, if there was a wins above replacement stat for football, elite RBs would probably not rank as highly, for as long, as some other elite players, but that’s only part of the picture.
Ultimately, the Titans should pay him WR type money if they believe they can make him the face of the franchise. I don’t know if CJ is as marketable as AP or someone like that, but the money is doable if they can transition him from being just a great football player, to a great representative for the organization.
To address the question in the thread title, I think Tennessee should be willing to pay him if it comes down to it. In almost every other case involving a running back I’d say they should let him rot and just play his backup, who’ll probably contribute 90% what the starter would. Chris Johnson, however, is one of like three players at the position who are simply not fungible (Johnson, Adrian Peterson, probably Jamaal Charles, and maybe Arian Foster, though I tend to doubt it). It’s a weird position: at any given time there are those 3 or so special players, a handful of scrubs, and then everyone else is just another guy who falls somewhere along the “acceptable” spectrum, and who will succeed or fail mostly because of his environment.
A good line is not everything though. The GSoT years for the Rams had a very good O-line that let Marshall Faulk do miracles on the field, but there is a reason you are not hearing the name Trung Canidate any more. Conversely, the last few years thier O-line was a patchwork of injuries and anyone they could grab off the street to fill holes and S-Jax still became one of the top RBs in the NFL. When you have a talent like CJ you pay the man. Like was mentioned before, TEN could have locked him up long term for $10-12MM a year if they hadn’t cheaped out last year.
The Packers RB Ryan Grant just had to renegotiate his contract to get paid less this year if he still wanted to play.
It works both ways.
Honestly, I pretty much agree with this. Chris Johnson is a nice RB. He’s been pretty durable, you can count on 300+ carries, 1200+ yards and 10+ TDs. But let’s be real, the average RB career is 2.5 years. He’s been in the league for 3. How many RBs are stellar for 6 years or more? WR and OL like Larry Fitzgerald and Joe Thomas, who both just got mega contracts, have a much longer career expectancy.
I think the future of the NFL is probably to go with a bit of a RB by committee approach. The Titans, or any other team, would be wise not to break the bank on one guy at the RB position.
Chris Jonson’s contract specifies that he plays and gets paid X.
He isn’t playing, so he isn’t getting paid.
Don’t confuse this with other contracts. For example, you contract to have a pool put in and the company never finishes the plumbing properly and wants all their money. They are contractually obligated to install the plumbing. If they don’t, you have a civil issue on your hands.
Chris Johnson doesn’t play, then Chris Johnson doesn’t get paid. Titans can find someone else. He’s not obligated to play. If he plays, they are obligated to pay him.
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I agree he’s not worth QB money, but he definitely should be the highest paid back. The Titans should scream the terms from the mountaintops, and when Johnson refuses to sign, the fans will react accordingly.
Horsefeathers. There is nothing stopping a player from asking for, or a team offering, a fully guaranteed contract. (and indeed, one page of googling comes up with this: http://www.chron.com/sports/texans/article/NFL-Coles-Jets-agree-his-next-two-years-1778341.php)
The NFL players just signed a new CBA. Did you hear anyone on the players side talking about the desire to make NFL contracts work like those in the NBA or MLB? I didn’t. By and large, this is the system that both parties agree to: players who want more guarantees have to settle for lower overall dollars.
Exactly. At the age of 25, Chris Johnson is likely on the downside of his career: it’s almost certain he’ll neverput up the numbers he did in 2009. A transcendant back is a powerful weapon; at 190 pounds and overwhelmingly dependent on his speed, Johnson has probably 3 more years left. At the rate he’s gone so far, in 3 years he will be #40 on the all-time list for most carries. Does anyone think he’s really that durable?
I expect his NFL career to look a lot like Jamal Lewis: one awesome season, followed by 3-5 good ones, and done by 32. Especially given that the Titans are a bad team and rebuilding, they’d be nuts to pay through the nose for the last five years of Jamal Lewis.
I’d deal him ASAP.
While it is understandable that Johnson understands and realizes that as a running back he likely might not have many opportunities to get a large contract, the Titans are not a charity and they have already said they want to make him the highest paid RB. It I were the Titans I would tell him to come in or he can spend the off-season pounding sand. Its not like the Titans would win the Super Bowl with him there and finding another decent running back isn’t nearly as hard as finding many of these other positions. Look at the best RBs last year - Peterson, Johnson, Charles, Foster. Only Charles made the playoffs. The Packers won the Super Bowl with barely any running game to speak of, it just isn’t that important.