The year is 2019. Write that down. Because for the first time in the history of recent NBA free agency, NFL players, fans and Twitter as a whole didn’t freak out about all the money being thrown around at NBA free agents. There was some one-offs, but over $2 billion dollars in money was signed and agreed to yesterday and it’s all guaranteed. Look, it is a lot of money.
The normal reaction is something like this: NFL player sees how much NBA rookie, non-all star or bench player gets guaranteed. NFL player gets angry. Talks about how the NFL should have similar contracts without context. Fin.
How do I know this is the normal reaction? This is the third time I addressed this situation. You can check out the first time here, and the second time here.
To my surprise, it didn’t happen this year. Maybe that’s because NFL players are used to it. This has been happening for years and there are reasons. There are almost 5 times more players on an NFL roster and the Salary Cap is not five-times larger. Guaranteed contracts happen in the NBA because there is less of a fear of injury and that’s how it was negotiated into the CBA. There are a ton of more players in the NFL. There are obvious reasons why this happens.
Now it’s time to speculate whether players are simply more focused on their upcoming CBA and their demands. That could be it. The other option is that they were all on vacation before training camp starts.
