NFL Free Agency Will Take Some Getting Used To

Gather up the wagons, boys. Pro football’s version of the Oklahoma land rush is under way. After years of debate, negotiations and legal hassling, the NFL is driving into the unchartered territory of free agency. Before the dust settles this summer, salaries will have escalated at an unprecedented pace, and some teams will have been strengthened -- and others weakened -- more than they might have imagined. But most important, we’ll finally find out whether the owners really want to win or whether they’ll settle for mediocrity as long as their team is profitable.

The NFL Players Association has maintained since the days of former Executive Director Ed Garvey that all of the league’s revenue sharing has stripped owners of the incentive to spend what it takes to build winners. Nonsense, reply the owners, who claim they were just practicing fiscal responsibility in their efforts to keep salaries under control.

Well, although the NFL is participating in a watered-down version of true free agency, thanks to all the exceptions built into its agreement with the NFLPA, there remains plenty of room for the bad teams to at least attempt to get better. There are nearly 300 truly free players to be picked over and measured, including enough quality specimens to make such embarrassments as Seattle and New England instantly more competitive.

Teams in need of quarterbacks, receivers, safeties, inside linebackers and kickers can help themselves, sometimes significantly, by tapping into the free-agency pool. Indeed, there may never be a more competent group of quarterbacks available in the future: Steve Beuerlein, Jeff Hostetler, Bobby Hebert, Vinny Testaverde, Jim Harbaugh, Wade Wilson, Phil Simms, Steve Bono. All are either current or former starters, with Beuerlein, a former Raider who now backs up Troy Aikman at Dallas, the prize item.

And if you have $3 million or so available and need a top-quality pass rusher, how about Reggie White? White, the Philadelphia Eagles’ star defensive end, is the prime prospect in the pool, akin to chasing after a 20-acre spread with an oil well in the middle. The wagons are going to circle ‘round White, who has indicated he might not mind playing for Washington, Dallas or San Francisco.

But if you are expecting the salary nonsense that is practiced in baseball or even basketball, you’ll be disappointed -- or more likely, delighted -- by the NFL’s first real foray into this modern-day land grab. Already, players and general managers realize the complex agreement is not the best of all possible deals for either side. The restrictions, especially the salary-cap rules, eventually will create teams of haves and have-nots, with a group of stars receiving big bucks and a lot more players settling for whatever salary funds are left over. In contrast, baseball has no cap, so there is no limit on how much can be spent on salaries.

“This isn’t a labor agreement; it’s a star agreement,” one NFL executive says. At the same time, general managers of the best teams already are frustrated by the lack of flexibility a cap eventually will give them in signing and keeping players. They see the system benefiting the less-aggressive, spendthrift clubs and penalizing the more imaginative teams.

But, for the time being, the owners are making all of the correct statements concerning free agency. “It will be Plan B tenfold,” says Cleveland’s Art Modell, predicting scads of signings.

“We plan to get into this as well as anyone,” Atlanta’s Rankin Smith Sr. says. Seattle’s Ken Behring says he has at least $5 million earmarked to improve his woeful Seahawks, who tumbled to 2-14.

“I think you will see a lot of rapid signings, followed by a period when the owners will say, ‘Oh my God, we can’t be like baseball and let these salaries escalate.’ So there will be a retrenchment before the next wave of signings,” says Leigh Steinberg, who represents 10 unrestricted free agents, including Harbaugh, Wilson and Phoenix Pro Bowl safety Tim McDonald, who will be one of the most hotly pursued players.

“But I have nightmares that while you hope you are plugging four holes, you don’t spring five other leaks,” Indianapolis General Manager Jim Irsay says.

That, of course, is one of the foremost problems for teams. Clubs also have to protect their backsides by trying to re-sign their current quality free agents. For example, if you were Al Davis and wanted to improve the Los Angeles Raiders through free agency and also hurt a rival, why not make a strong run at the San Diego Chargers, who must sign running backs Rod Bernstine and Ronnie Harmon, offensive linemen Harry Swayne and David Richards, linebacker Gary Plummer and defensive back Gill Byrd?

Harmon and Swayne are transition players, which means San Diego retains the right of refusal over any offer they may obtain from another team. But Davis could frustrate the Chargers by making outlandish proposals to both players, driving up San Diego’s salary structure. Washington, which has 12 free-agent starters, and San Francisco, which has five, also seem vulnerable to raiding.

“There is going to be some bloodletting among teams,” says Tom Condon, who will be another high-powered agent in this free-agent game.

Nevertheless, there may not be as much movement as you might expect. “I don’t think a lot of players view this as an opportunity to leave their team,” says Redskins cornerback Martin Mayhew, a free agent and part-time law student at Georgetown. “They look at it as an opportunity to negotiate on an even level with management. Before, it was, ‘If you don’t play for us, you don’t play.’ Now, if they don’t want to pay fair market value, we can go somewhere else. We are saying, ‘I just want to make sure I am being paid the most I can make.’ This gives you a chance to determine your real market value.”

Movement also will be restricted by controls some owners hope will maintain competitive balance. Unlike baseball or basketball, each NFL team has been allowed to name one “franchise” player, who cannot negotiate with any other club. They also were allowed to name two transition players this year and will be able to designate one next year. If taken to the max this year, that would have eliminated 84 of the game’s best players from the free-at-last category. In other words, if baseball had a similar rule, Barry Bonds wouldn’t be wearing a San Francisco Giants uniform this spring. And don’t expect to ever see Aikman to leave Dallas.

It is a telling sign of the thinking in the NFL, however, that only 66 of the 84 spots actually were used by the teams. Only 10 named franchise players -- New Orleans and Houston decided to name an additional transition player instead -- in part, because some clubs didn’t think they had a player good enough for that designation and, in larger part, because of financial considerations. To retain a franchise player, the team must offer him a salary equivalent to the average of the five highest-paid players at his position, and that was too much money for 18 teams.

Weaker and less-aggressive teams are protected, at least for now, by the so-called “Rooney Rule,” named after its advocate, Pittsburgh Steeler President Dan Rooney. The final four playoff teams last season -- San Francisco, Dallas, Buffalo, Miami -- can’t sign any free agents unless they lose one, and then they can only offer the new player a contract equivalent to the one signed by the former player. The next four teams -- Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Diego -- can sign only one free agent to a salary of more than $1.5 million. The Rooney Rule applies only in years without a salary cap.

“Being in Pittsburgh, we had lots of concerns about free agency,” Rooney says. “We saw what happened in baseball. (These rules) give us the ability to operate and compete with the bigger cities.”

But the Rooney Rule helps shackle some of the league’s most aggressive clubs, particularly the Cowboys, Redskins, 49ers and Chargers. Now, they are going to be occasional players, at best. Expect the most active teams to include the Jets and Seahawks. The Bengals and Steelers should be among the least active.

Rooney and friends also held out for a salary cap, and they wound up getting more than they should have expected. The players’ union had the owners down for the count, thanks to a series of victories in court, but the NFLPA surrendered more than it needed to reach an agreement.

The league’s greatest victory was obtaining a hard cap, which sets a maximum limit clubs can spend on player costs. The cap isn’t in effect this season and won’t be until player costs reach 67 percent of gross revenues. That could mean the cap will be in place as early as next season, but almost certainly in 1995. The cap will limit salary spending to 64 percent of revenues its first year. And unlike in the NBA, which has a soft cap that allows teams to re-sign their free agents without it counting against the cap, there are no exceptions to the spending limits in the NFL.

“We are in a partnership now with the league,” NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw says. “Everyone had to give a little to get an agreement and move on.” Eventually, players will become free agents after four years instead of the current five, a much-lower cutoff than most owners wanted to give. For Upshaw and the NFLPA, that was incentive enough to yield on the cap.

Mayhew foresees a time when “there are guys who are going to make millions and guys who make $200,000 and the guys who make $500,000 to $700,000 will be few and far between. There just won’t be enough money left once the elite players are paid.”

Already, the league is feeling effects of free agency. Last Thursday, Houston signed reserve quarterback Cody Carlson to a three-year, $8.85-million contract that kept him from becoming a free agent. “We’ve already hit the salary cap,” one NFL general manager says. Carlson, who made $600,000 last season, will get $2.5 million in ’93 whether or not he beats out Warren Moon, who will earn $4 million.

“The new free-agency system has forced teams to play by a different set of rules,” Houston Owner Bud Adams says. “By signing Cody, I want everyone to get the message that the Oilers are players and not watchers in this new system.”

Some franchise and transition designations also will have a ripple effect. The fact that 10 left offensive tackles were protected just re-emphasizes the importance of that position, which is crucial to quarterback protection schemes. But more interior linemen on offense and defense were protected than expected. Those players will receive hefty raises -- Buffalo nose tackle Jeff Wright goes from $275,000 to $1.2 million -- but the fear among some league executives is that if these positions are being raised dramatically, what will happen to more glamorous spots?

“This is so new to all of us,” Chargers General Manager Bobby Beathard says. “We’ll make it work. But you better have a real thorough knowledge of the salary cap at all times. It doesn’t matter if there is no cap this year. You don’t want to get above it and then have it trigger in next year and not know what to do. Your decisions have to be made with an eye on 1994 and 1995 and other years.”

But no one would be surprised if one or two teams say the hell with the cap and spend money like crazy this season, and then deal with the repercussions next year. Could there be football’s version of George Steinbrenner lurking out there, sitting on top of his wagon, ready to unleash his horses and go on a spending land grab? Stay tuned.