The Baltimore Ravens find themselves in a bind with releasing veteran players in the last week. We are all aware of it, but if you are a fan of the Ravens or any other fan watching football, you have to wonder why money isn’t flowing the way it should with the new collective bargaining agreement.
When looking at what people do in life, it’s all about competition. When someone sees someone else do something in a positive (or even negative), others start to process what they think is best.
When money is involved, things get competitive. The NFL has demonstrated itself to be the strongest sports league in the United States. Just look at the way we watch football – it used to just be on Sundays to start off, then progressed to a Mondays and then some Thursdays and now every Thursday. Rumors of seven-days-a-week NFL have been swirling for a while now.
Since free Agency started in 1993, competition around the league has gotten better and the parity has grown over time, and is now higher than ever.
That is where the money has arrived.
Quarterbacks are looking for top dollar, and if a so-called, “best QB in the league” is looking to be paid the highest at his position, the market has been set – you can’t win without a “franchise QB,” and teams will pay once they think they have found theirs.
However, QB hasn’t always been considered such an important position, and salaries have never been this high. Just look at the NFL’s first salary cap from 1994, which was just $34.6 million per team.
Now though, the money flows, and especially to the marquee position. With the NFL reaching marks no sport has ever seen, there is an issue with the salary cap in 2013 with multiple teams having to maneuver players in restructures or cuts due to the lack of space.
Money is tight. So while the league office is not in a recession, multiple NFL teams are approaching recession that could set them back for years. From an intergenerational perspective, the game has changed. Multiple former players have sued the league over concussion issues.
In the 1970’s, concussions were not thought of as a big deal and some referred to them as a simple headache, with players told to “just walk it off.” Now with the NFL being sued by former NFL players, the league has made their approach to limit the hits on the field and penalize while erring on the side of caution.
So while we can sit here and discuss the on-field status of the team and the consequences of the salary cap, there is a motive for it. This week alone, we have seen the market for defensive players get cheaper. Players are signing one-year deals worth around $5 million for example while QB’s contracts continue to explode. Even running backs are getting cheaper deals.
League officials are going to Phoenix this coming week to discuss running backs lowering their heads against defenders.
All of this goes hand-in-hand.
The league is sending messages to defensive players and running backs: “What you do for this league is appreciated, but we will not tolerate the ‘extras’ (concussions) that come with it.”
Helmet-to-helmet hits are practically unavoidable, yet the league continues to seek to punish anyone who initiates them.
So by branding the quarterbacks and making them the faces of the game, they have also continued to cheapen defensive players and running backs. The intent is to diminish the level of physicality by minimizing the roles defensive players and running backs add to this league.
Only fans can get the final say. Do you want a league that only cares about quarterbacks? Because that’s the way things continue to progress.
