Video: Andrew Hawkins kicks son out of house for calling AJ Green his favorite player
October 23, 2014Kevin Love discusses trade, Cavs’ team flight to Rio
October 23, 2014You get the feeling that the NFL would love to pump up their trade deadline, but as Greg Garber points out at ESPN, reluctance rules the day. It’s the only thing in a nearly 365-day NFL year that the league hasn’t been able to turn into an event. There are some examples of deals that occur in-season every year like Trent Richardson last year or Percy Harvin this year, but they still feel like exceptions. And frankly, neither one occurred at the actual deadline, so it isn’t like the NFL could have a live four-hour show on ESPN with talking heads counting down the minutes as the deals roll in. For a variety of reasons, it just seems like a pumped up, exciting trade deadline might be a lost cause for the NFL.
For one, NFL coaching and game-planning dictates tons of synchronicity on the roster. Baseball requires the least because at the plate it’s pitcher against batter with an umpire calling balls and strikes no matter what uniform you’re wearing. NBA teams run offenses and have set plays, but even then, it’s a game that has plenty of one-on-one match-ups. In the NFL, it’s much harder to grab an offensive guard or defensive lineman and just plug him in. If he doesn’t know precisely what to do in a certain version of a certain scheme, it could lead to disastrous results because those units are so dependent on working together in sync.
The NFL still doesn’t seem to make major use of its trade deadline almost as an overall culture.
Yet the NFL still doesn’t seem to make major use of its trade deadline almost as an overall culture. It may have to do with coaches’ reticence toward trying to fold in new players, or if it has more to do with GMs and NFL personnel departments focusing on the draft more. Right now, there’s so much emphasis on the draft that even in the media it seems like general managers get punished for dealing picks and lauded for acquiring those “assets.” That makes sense as well because of the salary cap in the NFL can be so punitive if a team puts itself in a bad spot with too many high-priced veterans.
Then again, it isn’t like the salary caps aren’t expanding.
Today, with the ever-expanding salary cap, there is more money to spend. Here are the teams with the most room to maneuver: Jacksonville (approximately $23 million), Cleveland ($19 million) and Philadelphia ($16 million). A number of playoff contenders have surprising surpluses: New England ($11 million), Cincinnati ($9 million), Denver ($8 million), Baltimore ($6 million), Arizona ($6 million) and Carolina ($6 million).
There’s also no game like the NFL where the players are more devalued the second they are selected and signed, no different than driving a car off of a lot. It feels like we see it in the NFL more than any other sport after a guy gets a big contract, the team regrets it because there’s seemingly an endless supply of cheaper replacement players at every position other than quarterback. Even undeniably great players like Larry Fitzgerald is now looked at as a drag on his team’s future. At 31 years of age and with a $23.6 million cap figure for 2015, everyone — including Fitzgerald — knows it’s an issue.
“I could go out this year and get 2,600 yards and that cap number is still going to have to be addressed, know what I mean?” Fitzgerald said, via the Cardinals’ official website. “It doesn’t matter how well I play or how bad I play, it’s going to be addressed. I don’t even think about it.”
And that’s impacting the trade deadline in a major way. There needs to be player movement because everyone knows there’s an issue with a guy’s contract, but there’s very little incentive to actually get a deal done. Let’s say the Browns wanted to trade for Fitzgerald, hypothetically. Everyone knows his contract is a problem, so how much would the Browns actually consider giving up to take on a contract like that? In the back of their mind, they know Arizona will have to cut him or trade him, so it chills the market for an actual deal to get done.
This situation also works to NFL owners’ benefits because the player contracts aren’t guaranteed. It wouldn’t be cheap for Arizona to cut Fitzgerald as they’d take a cap hit of $14.4 million in 2015 if they did it. Then again, that cap hit would actually save them just over $9 million on the salary cap so they could address other needs. The easy incentives of cutting a player help kill the trade market and thus the deadline, but it would probably cost the NFL owners a lot in the way of their business to create an environment where there were more trade incentives.
I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m also not totally positive the NFL cares. At some point, as a league, they just can’t have it all. They’ve gotten complete and total attention of the American sports world during the combine, draft, regular season, and have by far the most-watched championship game in all of U.S. sports. Then again, I wouldn’t bet against the NFL in any quest to create more of their precious football inventory. Every additional event they create is another potential boost to their bottom line in television revenues.
This year’s NFL trading deadline is this Tuesday. Maybe this is the year it all begins.
10 Comments
“This year’s NFL trading deadline is this Tuesday. Maybe this is the year it all begins.
RING!
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jerry, this is Ray.”
“Hey Ray! What’s up?”
“Not much. You want to wreck this league?”
😀
There have been a couple of deals I agree with Craigers however in that I never understood why NFL teams resisted making deals during the season.
Just send this to Jerry Jone’s email address once per hour until the trade deadline hits:
http://cdn0.sbnation.com/assets/3223059/manzielmagic.gif
also, hope that Romo has to sit a series against Washington and Jerry gets a 1st-person look at Brandon Weeden in action.
Weeden vs McCoy!!!
Also, Manziel throws it ~40 yards (thrown from his 40 yd line to the oppo ~20) while FADING AWAY. Hoyer has much more of a plant (not fully, but MUCH more) on that throw he shorted to Gabriel which travelled ~50 yards.
I have absolutely no reason for pointing this out.
with camera shots into the stands to reveal Couch, Holcomb, and Frye in attendance. Sadly, Derek Anderson couldn’t make it due to pre-existing obligations in Carolina.
Jason Campbell is more upset that he was forgotten than he would have been if he were included on THAT list.
“Better to have been remembered for something bad than not to have been rememebered at all” – Kardashian 6:66
Campbell is much too busy on the senior center autograph circuit these days. Either that or he’s a backup in Cinci. One or the other.
Poor excuse. He’s really not that busy.
How does Denver have 9 million in cap space?