In 2010, Donovan McNabb signed a 5 year $80 million dollar deal with Washington. It was lauded as a mega deal initially, but soon it was discovered that nothing in the contract was guaranteed beyond year .1 He never earned another penny off of that contract. When he was traded here that deal was redone to fit him into our cap space; his secondary option being reject the trade, get released and test the market.
The issue is in any theoretical NFL $200 million dollar contract vs. a MLB $200 million dollar contract, the NFL team can get off the hook for every penny that isn't written to be guaranteed. The MLB team is bound to that contract day in and day out over the course of the deal. There is no "if he's on the roster by X date next year is guaranteed." It all is. The NFL team can say, "well shit, you were only guaranteed $12 million of that $200 million, we paid you $5 million in salary, and you had an $8 million dollar bonus. You sucked this season, go pound sand." ... and extreme example (dumb figures), but that's the idea. The MLB team has to say, "You sucked so bad last season, we need your routing and checking #'s immediately."
Guarantees will continue to be the benchmark for contracts going forward because the other way is incredibly convoluted and one sided for a "contract" between two parties. There is always going to be risk to paying players - that risk always relates to what they are guaranteed and the length of the deal. ... i mean honestly, it's great for a team to have the kind of flexibility they've had over the years, but at the same time, no one is taking that McNabb deal anymore. It's kinda funny that I can even laugh at that like it's stupid. I mean... play harder and earn the rest of that $80 million, gtfoh, right? It's bad business for a player (conditioned recently over the years) to focus on the business of being a player. The days of assuming you're gonna man up and grind for years and earn non-guarantees is over. No one wants to sign a contract that puts a target on their back immediately.
This game of inflated figures and hidden guarantees is slowly ending. Setting the ceiling (guaranteed $) below the bar (maximum $ value to be earned *wink*wink*) has caused a ton of chaos for the marketplace in general. There is a ton of confusion over value simply because of the teetering up and down between those two things. Players are opting for smaller appearing deals in exchange for larger overall guarantees. Agents are becoming adjusted to figuring out how fast those guarantees will be paid out and they leverage it in a way that gets their client back into the market or paid again by restructuring existing 'won't be paid upon release' terms into bigger 'give me that money now' extensions. But players are slow to adjust. Especially young players who grew up hearing someone like Mike Vick in 2011 signed a "6 year, $100 million dollar deal." The fact that only (only, lol) $40 million was guaranteed to be paid out before 6 years was up was probably lost on them. Ultimately, agents and players are responding to the chaos by skipping finer details and just negotiating the bottom line as high as they can get it.
