ANALYSIS : Settlement Won’t Send Most Players Packing

Don’t look for a Barry Bonds equivalent in the new world of NFL free agency, an Emmitt Smith jumping the Cowboys and holding up 25 teams for pro football’s first $10-million-a-year contract.

Look instead for:

--Stars such as Smith, Steve Young, Barry Foster and Derrick Thomas to stay with their teams, but to earn more than untested rookies, who are now subject to a $2 million-per-year salary cap.

--The same teams to remain at the top: the ones with good front offices and scouting staffs.

“It’ll be a new world,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said after the owners and players settled their five-year-old labor dispute Wednesday.

“It’ll be very different in terms of how clubs have to operate and plan, develop their squads.”

But not that different--not like baseball, where rosters seem to turn over by 50% each year.

For one thing, a key part of the NFL agreement that allows each team to protect one “franchise player” will keep most of the top quarterbacks and defensive impact players where they are.

Moreover, while baseball players routinely have 15- to 20-year careers, only quarterbacks and offensive linemen regularly last beyond a decade in the NFL. Most players are lucky to last that long--particularly running backs, who average six or seven years.

Example: Smith, whose contract expires Feb. 1, is a three-year player who hasn’t met the time requirements for free agency. So the Cowboys can match any offer and sign him to, say, a four-year contract that will run out when he’s 28 and probably past his prime. And they can wait another year to designate quarterback Troy Aikman as “the franchise.”

Example II: Defensive end Neil Smith of the Chiefs is a 26-year-old just reaching his peak. He’s a free agent this year but is sure to be protected while Kansas City waits for Derrick Thomas’ contract to expire so it can designate him the franchise player.

So it’s likely that few superstars will change teams in the next two or three years. The notable exceptions will be the 16 players who were plaintiffs in the various lawsuits filed against the NFL. They can neither be franchise players, nor can they be protected.

That’s bad news for the Philadelphia Eagles, who could lose Reggie White, Clyde Simmons and Seth Joyner--the heart of their defense--in the next few years.

A seven-round draft means teams with good scouting departments will be able to pluck handfuls of free agents who would have been drafted in the past.

Buffalo, for example, had 12 players on its 45-man active roster in last Sunday’s playoff game with Houston who were drafted in the eighth round or lower.

Four teams--the San Diego Chargers, Minnesota Vikings, San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints--have the most veterans who can become free agents this year. But all are likely to keep most of them for various reasons, including the fact that few established players really want to move.