Bill Polian Speaks

Polian is the GM for the Indianapolis Colts, and he had a great interview recently about the pay structures of NFL rookies coming out of the Draft. He talked about how the purpose of the draft is to even out the NFL teams competitively, and in a league where teams went both 16 - 0 and 1 - 15, there's tons of parity. The problem comes with some teams, like the Cardinals (as I've recently written), who regularly pick in the top rounds of the draft. Salaries are getting so inflated, with examples like Larry Fitzgerald who, unless his contract is restructured, will be paid 17 million dollars in 2007-2008, that taking top picks for several years in a row causes a team to have all of its money tied up in just a few players (the Cards have NEGATIVE 2 million in salary cap space this season). This leaves little money left to pay the players needed to field a well rounded team, as well as making it a complete impossibility to keep drafted players past their rookie contracts. An argument could be made that this prevents superstars from staying with their teams, but there are quite a few examples of these players not panning out, and all you have to do is look at the Cardinals to see they aren't exactly laden with talent at positions past a select few (WR, QB, LOLB, SS, DT, maybe RT... see how Levi Brown develops). Nonetheless, you can see how those are mostly skill positions which they've filled with first round picks. The rest of their roster, especially the O-line, is amazingly pedestrian. For teams like this, who are trapped at the top of the draft, larger rookie contracts are becoming a vicious cycle. I think Bill Polian has a great idea, in that we need to start capping rookie contracts and slotting them, so that a certain pick is worth a certain amount, to prevent constant inflation as well as ridiculously overpaid veterans. JaMarcus Russell, first pick of the 2007 Draft and QB for the Oakland Raiders, earned somewhere between 6 and 10 million dollars last season, during which he threw for 373 yards, 2 TDs, and 4 INTs. How does that make a starter like Drew Brees, QB of the New Orleans Saints and a Pro Bowl-calibre player, feel about his 10 million dollar a year contract? The answer is probably not so great. Huge rookie contracts are a big problem for the league that I think is going mostly unaddressed. Anyways, I need to get back to football news.