Talking Bird

Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, Junior Seau, even our own Warren Sapp all were forced to finish their careers elsewhere than the team we identify them with due to salary cap restrictions. In the NBA they have the Larry Bird Expection, when combined with a ‘soft’ cap that allows teams to first and foremost re-sign their own free agents who have been mainstays with the team.

Now perhaps you’re questioning why I’m comparing anything the NBA does to the NFL, well I’m an Orlando Magic fan, so of course I’ve been following the last half week of contract talks between Rashard Lewis, and more importantly to this piece Darko Milicic. I won’t get into the whole situation, but it’s made me think the NFL needs to take a similar step in allowing franchise players, not in the new contractual sense of the word, to stay franchise players.

I’m not proposing the NFL go to a similar ‘soft’ cap situation like the NBA has in place, where teams can go over the cap and just pay a luxury tax, that’s somewhat ridiciolous when you consider how wide open NFL free agency is, and then note that only three teams in the NBA have ‘cap space’ while everyone else has five million of ‘mid level exceptions’ to work with. Rather when a player has played five or more seasons with one team, the franchise can ordinate him with some role only used once for the longevity of his contract, and have half of his cap value erased, although not from the pockets of the player, but rather from the tally.

This provision allows teams to keep the John Lynches and Warren Sappes of the world, but it also doesn’t completely hinder the salary cap a moot point when keeping veterans. The key is keeping the salary cap in place, but also not restricting hometown heroes from staying. Of course you may ask what if a team doesn’t have the room to re-sign their player for half his costs, in this case you could work out where they’d be allowed to go over the cap on his contract only, but be penalized off-season workouts, draft picks, or future compensatory losses, of course that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s unlikely that teams will run over the cap unless it’s poor planning, and as always if teams were smart they would backload a deal where the first year or two of a five year contract would be miniscule even without being cut in half, near minimum when done, there’s some backlash to that of course, but we really don’t need to go in depth.