Quote:
Originally Posted by Chromeburn
I am looking at it like an NFL FA situation. They designed the tag so a team isn't screwed when losing its best player, but teams do not lose their best players as much anymore. With an ever-increasing cap and better cap management than two decades ago, this is not as common an occurrence anymore. The Colts are 70 million under the cap and could be a playoff team. The cap has outdistanced the salaries now. The player's union miscalculated because they did not anticipate the cap skyrocketing like it did. It is a system created over 20 years ago that needs to be updated.
Again you are using a QB money in a RB contract situation. QB's are not the model for this comparison because QB's have, by far, the most exorbitant contracts in the league. QB's can force the hand of the team because the averages the tag uses to base the one year salary off of are so big they can actually be a detrimental influence on the team's cap. RB's are paid much less money as an average, they are on par with say safties. I reject your comparison because it is not a good analogy and the situation is not the same for every position. Some positions are valued more and are paid more. Also, QB's have a longer average career in the league. A QB can play well into his 30's, they can wait 2-3 years for that escalating tag to add up. That is a lifetime in a RB's career and will directly affect his next contract negotiation. The Steelers are obviously using the tag to get enough years of Bell's prime, then they will cut bait once that is done, or they have found a replacement for him. That is not what the tag was intended for and it screws some players and positions more than others. The tag wasn't meant just to be used for QB's.
Bell has a legitimate argument that he is more valuable than the average RB on the Steelers and should be paid accordingly. That is backed up by unprecedented production from his position. The tag, even after a second year, does not even match what he was asking for yearly. So they actually saved money by using the tag twice to secure their best offensive player. Not to mention saving bonus money that they would have to pay right away. If they did it a third year, he would hit an estimated 25 million which is QB money. Only then would it really affect them. However, if they did the proper cap predicting, and the savings they had from the previous two tag years, they could make a judgment call whether to do it or not for one more year. Whether they were still in the SB window or not. But this outcome still costs Bell millions that he would find in FA. There are definitely two types of RB's in the league, the upper echelon that account for a large amount of the team's offense, and the committee systems that may approach the same as the stars. The tag is weighted down by the lower paid backs and it is not a fair system.
In my opinion, everybody loses here, and that is why they should address the tag. The Steelers window is closing and James Connor, while good, is not Bell. Bell loses an entire year's salary. But even more important, he loses another year in RB halflife and is forced to sit out because getting a second lucrative contract is in serious danger now. The Steelers are obviously not going to cut him loose and to me that is just sour apples and is fucking a guy that has been a good player for them.
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To begin with, I want you to understand that I’m not trying to be combative on this issue, and no disrespect is intended in my posts. Tone is a hard thing to capture in a cold internet post, so I feel I should say that up front. Second, I will not go too far into detail in responding to your post, since I don’t want the posting to get out of hand and irritate everyone with another long post. With these things out of the way, I’ll respond as follows:
The collective bargaining agreement is not outdated nor is it 20+ years old. It is renegotiated periodically as it expires. The last renegotiation occurred in 2011, and it is due to expire in 2020. Both sides are well represented in the negotiations, and the resulting agreement is presumed to be a fair balance between both sides’ interests. For the teams to receive the benefit of things such as a salary cap and franchise tag options, they must concede to the players on other points such as increased pension benefits and minimum spending floors.
In the above context, Bell’s “value” in an unrestricted free agent market is irrelevant – he's negotiated away the right to be an unrestricted free agency if he’s franchise tagged. And of course the Steelers will use the tag as often as they can if it’s a good deal for them. They are simply taking advantage of the rights they negotiated into the agreement. It provides the teams with a way to keep their best players if they choose to do so, and in theory it also provides the teams with a way to limit overall salary growth since the best players rarely reach unrestricted free agency. In return, the teams have conceded other things, and the players have installed protections for Bell by ensuring that the tag price is a reasonable approximation of a top salary at his position (but he won’t be setting any record salaries unless he maneuvers himself into a Kirk Cousins-type situation).
I don’t really get your complaints regarding my use of the QB position as an illustration of my points. Kirk Cousins comes to mind because it just happened this last offseason. But you could use any position – as I mentioned, Bell could have set himself up for a tag price of $21 million, which is just as crazy for a RB like Bell as $34 million would have been for a QB of Cousins' caliber. The same rationale applies regardless of position/tag price.
About the only thing I agreed with is that the current system is not as beneficial for positions with shorter lifespans such as RB. That’s true, but in my mind that’s up to the players union to address in their negotiations. You can’t blame the teams for taking advantage of the terms they’ve negotiated - in fact its unfair for you to suggest that they should.
Lastly, please explain why Bell is in a different class than Conner? I’ll admit that I know very little about their respective running styles or skills, but what I do know is that Conner has outpaced Bell’s most recent production in almost every respect – which gives rise to the question of whether this is because the Steelers’ system is RB friendly, in which case signing Bell could be a huge mistake.
Well, I need to apologize now because my post ended up long again. But I'm trying!