* THIS RULE HAS PASSED *
Rationale: Okay, so you’ve decided to pay your holdout player. Why wouldn’t you, he’s performed well enough to justify the cash, right?
BUT WAIT! This guy is Matt Stafford, who has 8 more years on his contract. No one can afford to pay the holdout cost 8 years down the road – do I have to cut him?
Or…WAIT! I wish I had signed Navarro Bowman, a young stud at LB, for longer than one more year.
As with Rules Proposal II, this rule is designed to help reward owners for getting great value on players by allowing the owners to keep those players for reasonable amounts of time.
Rule: When meeting the financial demands of HOLDOUT players, owners may choose to restructure the length of the player’s contract such that:
A) Adding years will decrease the initial holdout salary by 5% per year, up to 15% (a max extension of 3 years)
B) Reducing years will increase the initial holdout salary by 5% per year, up to 40% (a max reduction of 8 years).
Mechanism: As with Rules Proposal II, the tools are all there. We have the contract ledger in place and a little math will do the trick.
Example A: Enright decides to pay Bowman, but wants to extend his contract for 3 additional years. Bowman is thrilled by the contract’s security and takes a discount to stay on. Rather than a playing for one year at the Holdout Salary of $18.46, Bowman will play for a total of 4 more years with a Year 1 salary of $15.69.
3-year extension = 15% discount on Holdout Salary = 18.46 – (18.46 X .15) = 15.69
Example B: The new owner of Matt Stafford wishes to pay the $40.30 Holdout Salary, but realizes that in 8 years, that price would be about $323…in a $300 cap league. So, in order to keep Stafford and still field a team, they decide to reduce the years in the contract by 5 years (leaving 3 on the contract). Stafford’s new Year 1 number would be $50.38 and a much more manageable Year 3 number of $75.58.
5-year reduction = 25% increase on Holdout Salary = 40.30 + (40.30 X .25) = 50.38
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.© 2012, Adam Franssen. All rights reserved.
I am also very intrigued by this. I think I like it as it gives us some realistic options here (teams restructuring players deals longer, an alternative to just cutting those players with long contracts making the minimum).
Okay, I think this one has some merit. However, I don’t see the previous proposal and this proposal as BOTH being necessary. I think it would be far easier to apply the same holdout rules as before, regardless of how many years are left on the contract, etc. What’s the point of saying that a player can hold out because he has completed 50% of his contract when you are just going to tear up the contract anyway and have a different number of years?
I say that we just let players holdout the same way as before, even if it is after only one season. Then we can apply this “restructuring” formula to take some of the sting out of paying the holdout.
The only caveat I have to this is the Bowman scenario. I don’t think you should be allowed to extend players with expiring contracts. That’s what the franchise tag is for. This would circumvent the franchise tag. So the idea would be to sign your guy to 2 years if you think he has potential. If he blows up after year one and wants to hold out, then you can work out a longer term deal.
What if Bowman didn’t blow up after one year and instead blew up after year 2…or not at all? Then he’d simply be subject to the Franchise Tag a la Justin Tuck.
Oh, sorry, I thought Bowman was only signed for one year. I thought you were talking about extending a free agent’s contract.
I think the main point here is that it would take a very awesome owner to sign Bowman for the league minimum.
I tend to agree with the point Josh is making. He’s swayed me.
I love the notion of restructuring contracts. Franchise Tags are fine.. except they’re of limited use; you only get one each for O and D. It happens in the NFL all the time (unless you’re Drew Brees): resigning players to new multi-year deals.
What if we allow owners to restructure any contract (add years)
– For players out of the top 10.. owners pay the average of the top 10 salaries at that position.
– For players finishing in the top 10-5 you pay the average of the top 5 salaries
– For players finishing in the top 5 you restructure at the top salary of that position.
This structure goes for any player not just holdouts. players can still hold out under the old rules.
the shortening of contracts could work as Franssen suggested.