Where'd The Money Go?

The first week of free agency was much like any other year. There was a flurry of signings and a bunch of richer players. This past week it seems that everyone has taken a nap. The drop off in action from the first week to the second week just feels greater than past years. The salary cap has stayed pretty much the same for the past couple of years so there's only a few bucks to spend on a bunch of hungry football players. A handful of teams had a ton of salary cap space. The Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers spent a lot and signed several new players. For whatever reason, Mike Brown and the Cincinnati Bengals are just sitting on their big pile of gold. Maybe he thinks that he can take it with him. Basically, there's a lot of pretty happy, newly signed football players on new teams or even their former teams. There's a lot more football players looking for work. There's a few that might still get lovely contracts like defensive ends Dwight Freeney and Elvis Dumervil. Most will get contracts far less than they expected. Owners win again. There are still some very good football players out there. Karlos Dansby, Andre Smith, Sebastian Vollmer, Osi Umenyiora, Brent Grimes, Shaun Phillips, Fred Davis, and many more. A lot of those players are going to have to swallow their pride and settle for far less money than they expected if they want to keep playing football. Especially the older players. Somehow the owners put the brakes on the salary cap after the lockout. With most teams having little available money they are going to be relying more on rookies. With the new CBA event he first round picks are fairly inexpensive. Certainly far less expensive than those greedy veterans.

A tremendous salary imbalance is forming on NFL teams. More and more we are finding that a handful of players are taking up a greater percentage of the salary cap. This is especially true for the teams that have extremely well compensated quarterback. Just look at the Super Bowl champs. The Baltimore Ravens lost about half of the their team to free agency. Retirement hit too. They lost most of those players so that they could pay Joe Flacco. They couldn't afford many of their defensive players and Flacco too. Football is a team sport but the salaries certainly don't show it. I understand that it's a passing league now but no one player should take up a quarter of the cap. But, that's just me. I just see problems with five or six players taking up about 3/4 of the cap. Teams are heading that way. Some are already there. The level salary cap didn't end the huge salaries. It just cut down on the number of them. Some players like Mike Wallace, Paul Kruger, Percy Harvin, and DaShon Goldson still got them. Nearly all the rest signed for far less than they would have only four or five years ago. Many more are still looking for work. They're still looking for that money.