Amid worsening COVID-19 pandemic, NFL CBA approved, free agency set to begin on schedule
The NFL free-agent show apparently will go on—as pretty much the rest of the world as we know it stops.
On Sunday after the league announced its NFL Players’ Association had voted to approve a new collective bargaining agreement through 2030 that adds a 17th regular-season game, two playoff teams and cash especially to minimum-salary players, the NFL indicated its league year will begin as planned.
Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will join much of the world by ordering restaurants and bars to close. That is to further promote social distancing as a way to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grocery stores in Seattle had long checkout lines and empty shelves Sunday night; eggs and even flour were gone at the Roosevelt Safeway.
At the same time, the league starts its two-day negotiating period for unrestricted free agents with other teams Monday. The so-called “legal tampering period” ends at 1 p.m. Wednesday. That’s when the league year and free agency apparently will begin.
The NFL seems to get the clue that millionaires getting megamillion-dollar contracts isn’t entirely appropriate amid this national and global crisis.
At least that’s what ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.
“The NFL says NFLPA would not provide consent to move league year, per source,” Schefter wrote on Twitter Sunday. “NFLPA says: No one is traveling anyway. It’s not football activity, it’s deals. Everyone is working remotely. Let’s do our business remotely. And this could get worse before it gets better. So do it now.”
The head of the players’ union, DeMaurice Smith, denied that.
Whatever. League business goes on, as scheduled. And that means the Seahawks are now more likely than ever to lose Jadeveon Clowney.
Seattle has been trying in earnest for weeks to entice Clowney to re-sign to a multi-year contract. The push began in late February when general manager John Schneider and his staff met with the agent for the Seahawks’ top pass rusher at the league’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis.
Since then, events around the league has conspired against the Seahawks keeping Clowney.
Jacksonville on Friday used its franchise-tag designation for 2020 on defensive end Yannick Ngakoue. That kept the Pro Bowl defensive end who has 29 1/2 sacks the last three seasons from going onto the free-agent market, where he likely would get well over the $20-plus million per season Demarcus Lawrence and Frank Clark got last year from Dallas and Kansas City, respectively, to re-set the pass-rusher market.
The Steelers used their franchise tag to keep sack man Bud Dupree from free agency on Monday. The Buccaneers did the same with pass rusher Shaquil Barrett.
Chris Jones is another defensive lineman who would attract top-of-the-market money in free agency. He had nine sacks in 13 games last season for Kansas City. But the Chiefs are expected to use their franchise tag on him, too.
The result: Four players who would have likely commanded more than or nearly as much as Clowney in free agency aren’t going to be in it. Clowney, barring a last-hour deal with Seattle before Wednesday, is. So Clowney at age 27 with three Pro Bowls and the first-overall draft choice in 2014 in his pedigree becomes the top free-agent pass rusher available.
Let the bidding begin...likely out of the Seahawks’ price range.
They also have defensive tackle Jarran Reed, who had 10 1/2 sacks in 2018, about to become an unrestricted free agent. He could command more than $8 million and perhaps $10 million per season.
Schneider and Pete Carroll have paid more than $8 million per year on a free agent from outside the team just once since taking over the Seahawks in early 2010—and it just backfired on them. Last offseason they signed 30-year-old former Pro Bowl defensive end Ziggy Ansah to a one-year deal worth up to $9 million. Ansah missed almost all the preseason plus the first two games of the season while recovering from shoulder surgery. Then he had just 2 1/2 sacks while missing five games in 2019.
It’s long seemed that once Clowney got to the shopping stage of free agency for the first time in his career, he’d leave. That shopping stage was set to begin Monday.
Clowney said following Seattle’s playoff loss at Green Bay in January he wants to return to the Seahawks and that he loves the team, its locker room and the city. But he also emphasized he wants to get paid, handsomely, and by a championship-contending team.
“I want to get that Super Bowl by any means,” the three-time Pro Bowl defensive end said moments after his contract ended with the Seahawks’ 28-23 loss at Green Bay in the NFC divisional playoff game.
“Who’s going to get me there? I’m not looking to get on no sorry team for no money.”
Clowney is set to earn some of the millions more the league’s players, especially minimum-salary ones that make up 60 percent of the league, will be getting in the next few years from the new CBA.
Roger Goodell heralded the agreement in a statement the league released Sunday.
“We are pleased that the players have voted to ratify the proposed new CBA, which will provide substantial benefits to all current and retired players, increase jobs, ensure continued progress on player safety, and give our fans more and better football,” Goodell said. “We appreciate the tireless efforts of the members of the Management Council Executive Committee and the NFLPA leadership, both of whom devoted nearly a year to detailed, good faith negotiations to reach this comprehensive, transformative agreement.”
The CBA vote, extended by the union from an original Thursday end to Saturday night, became a divisive issue among NFL players.
The rank and file loved it. The minimum salary is going from $495,000 last year to $610,000 this year, then to at least $690,000 in 2021 and to at least $735,000 in 2022. That’s a nearly 50 percent increase over the first three years of the new deal.
Seahawks Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett and Quandre Diggs joined Houston’s J.J. Watt, the Rams’ Todd Gurley and many other established veterans with multi-million contracts who opposed the new CBA.
They don’t believe the owners gave enough to retired players, many of whom have life-affecting injuries from playing in the league.
The veterans opposed to the CBA don’t believe the players got enough for giving the owners the revenue from the 17th game. They know the league is about to sign new mega-billions television and digital deals. They know there are new, billion-dollar windfalls on the horizon from newly legalized gambling in many states.
The veterans opposed don’t know why the majority of the union settled for only a maximum of 48.5 percent of annual league revenues in this deal when they believe players could have and should have gotten at or near a 50-50 split of all this new money in exchange for that 17th game.
Diggs let the world know Sunday he thinks NFL players let owners “bamboozle” them.
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 6:50 AM.
