Spin Doctor":2cixjax4 said:
The author of this article is way off base. He has the misconception that teams just tear up contracts when they release a player. This is simply not the case. A portion of that contract is guaranteed by the team, even if the player gets injured and never plays a single snap. Moreover if the player is injured they are also given injury settlements for a certain amount of time, or until that player is picked up by another team. If teams just tore up contracts, I can guarantee that there would be legal repercussions, and as you can see that is not the case. Teams still have obligations to fulfill even after they cut players. That is where the "dead money" stems from in the salary cap era.
I'm sorry, but I do not feel an ounce of sympathy for Chancellor, playing for more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetime. Even if he suffered a career ending injury he would end up with around 17 million or so, plus injury settlements. Every day there are people working dangerous jobs, for mere crumbs. They are risking their well-being and quality of life just to get keep a roof over their heads. Kam Chancellor is acting like a spoiled, entitled brat right now, and this article did a poor job of defending his childish behavior.
Are you guys serious? The issue cannot be compared to getting paid out for an injury. The player is out the remainder of his contract. He signs for four years and gets injured year one, he is out the remainder of the contract. They don't guarantee the future, they don't hand out fully guaranteed contracts like candy. He gets part of that guarantee for each year he plays out.
That's it. That year.
For Example:
For example, David Akers signed a three-year, $9 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers before the 2011 season. The team paid a $1.7 million signing bonus to Akers. That money was guaranteed. He received it up front. The 49ers also paid $1.3 million in salary to Akers for the 2011 season, plus another $3 million in salary to him last season. Akers was scheduled to earn the remaining $3 million via salary for the 2013 season, but he will not get that money because the 49ers released him Wednesday.
So, the three-year, $9 million deal Akers signed wound up being a two-year deal for $6 million, plus a relatively small amount earned through incentives.
That's not a real contract when one side can just opt out of it any one year and the other can't. Kam Chancellor is opting out of the remaining years of his contract. But he can't, can he? They can dump him and make his position available to anybody but he can't just leave the team and go play for someone else. That contract only binds
him. And why should he be bound to those terms?
The next two years aren't guaranteed to him. Why should he be guaranteed to Seattle? They can change their mind due to injury. He can change his due to risk.
The NFL doesn't want players to be able to rip up their contracts anytime they want, but they don't want to fully guarantee contracts either. Let's suppose for a moment that the NFL HAD TO fully guarantee their contracts. What would the GM do then? Well, he'd sign more short term contracts for the average players. But would he sign Wilson, Manning, Rodgers to short term deals? No. How about ET, Sherman and Kam? Pete wouldn't want to keep his core? yes, he would.
So what happens then, if Kam, or Manning or whoever gets injured? You can't pay his replacement? Well, yes, you can, just a lot less. Teams could only take on certain numbers of injury to their key players before they'd have no room to afford more players. So they'd pay all the players less so as to have a bank for injured players.
Which means either all the players get a little bit less so all the injured players get more, or they renegotiate the cap with the union so the teams also carry some of that load.
Personally, considering what the NFL already owes the old guys with their injuries, and the injuries these players are currently sustaining, I have no problem with the NFL being forced to fully guarantee their contracts or allow players to walk out of them just like the team can.