I get that. I think that the situation that you just described is literally called “Guaranteed for Cap Reasons.” However, that is just one of the subcategories of “fully guaranteed” and my point is that anything that isn’t “…money that the player is going to get anyways” aka ‘fully guaranteed’ is not actually guaranteed at all. They just call it that to fluff up the numbers and make a deal seem better than it is. That’s actually, why I said reporting the fully guaranteed amount “up to XYZ” is more accurate.
On a related (but nerdy note). The original expression was “God is in the details.” Attributed to 19th century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohebut, it meant that “the Truth is in the details.”
First, that is an interesting note on that expression. Thank you for sharing. I certainly like the devil version better! I also like the expression “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” So true.
This subject has been an ongoing discussion on the Pat McAfee show. Pat was told to only look at the guaranteed money reported because that is all that matters. But once he got some cap experts on the show and they started breaking down the details of particular contracts vs what was reported as the guarantees, he has changed his tune a bit. Overthecap has posted some of the details of Oliver’s contract. Notice the language used. Oliver has $45M in “total guarantees” with $24.5M “guaranteed at signing.” Keeping it straight forward, if the Bills cut Oliver tomorrow the $24.5M is the only part that Oliver would be guaranteed to receive/not pay back. However, if Oliver is on the roster the 5th day of the 2024 league year he is guaranteed an extra $21M. That $21M is being reported as “total guarantees” and definitely falls into the category of “virtually guaranteed” because its a near 100% certainty that he will be on the roster.
Any guarantees in a contract are 100% NOT fluff numbers, they are there for a reason and are very important to the team AND the player. Practical guarantees for Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen’s contract are very important. As long as Mahomes doesn’t quit trying, his contract is essentially guaranteed.
If only fully guaranteed money was all that mattered, agents and teams wouldn’t be negotiating other parameters of the contract (partial guarantees, base salary, roster bonuses in later years, etc.).
Fluff numbers are numbers in Tyreek Hills contract where he earns cash of $27M (2022), $26M (2023), $20M (2024), $23M (2025) and $45M (2026). That $45M in 2026 is a fluff number, it distorts the actual value of the contract.
OK, I’ll back off of calling those numbers ‘fluff,’ but you gotta admit that common sense says its inaccurate to say a player got $50M “guaranteed” if only $20M will be paid to him no matter what.
Those other ‘conditional guarantees’ are like someone hiring you and saying they’ll pay you $50k to do a job but they’re really only paying you $20k, and you have to meet incentives to get the rest of your base pay. That contract is worth $20k up to $50k, not a ‘guaranteed $50’. And you’d think any employer who told you its $50k guaranteed is a liar.
I think there is a disconnect on how you are viewing it vs the reality. I don’t want to get deep in the weeds on analogies that aren’t directly related to football. But in order for people to understand that the way contracts are written is a little more nuanced, I will try my best to piggyback onto your analogy.
The employer “guarantees” you $20k and has an incentive built in to where it becomes $50k guaranteed. Here is where it gets nuanced. The “incentive” kicks in if you aren’t fired before your 3rd week of work. That “incentive” is essentially a guarantee because who the F fires someone they just paid $20k in their 3rd week? And if they do fire you, you are walking away with $20k for only 2 weeks of work. Relating it back to football, all Ed Oliver has to do is not get cut before the start of next season and it essentially jumps from $24.5M in guarantees to around $45M in guarantees. And if they DO cut him, he walks away with $24.5M for 1 year of work. Has it happened before? Yeah. But its so lopsided in favor of the player that its not really something an agent or the player are concerned with. The team is structuring the deal like that for a reason, and its not because they are looking to cut the player after 1 year.
Three years ago, Patrick Mahomes signed a $450M extension that when he signed only had $63M guaranteed. He’s been paid all those guarantees and currently has an additional $105M of his future salaries fully guaranteed. Those are practical guarantees and while not as good as fully guaranteed, they are very good as 99% of the time Patrick Mahomes would have gotten paid that additional $105M in guarantees (and he is). As long as he didn’t quit life and start touring the world in a VW, he was ALWAYS going to earn that additional $105M in additional fully guaranteed monies.
Same thing with Tyreek Hill, when he signed his extension, it was a $120M/4yr contract and with $52,535,000 fully guaranteed (all of the final year of his contract, plus the first year of the extension ($25.5M signing bonus, a $10M roster bonus (2023) and base salaries of $1,035,000 (2022) and $16,000,000 (2023)).
Now that’s the fully guaranteed part that you are so enamored with.
If Tyreek Hill was on the roster on March 5 of this year, his entire 2024 base salary of $19,665,000 becomes fully guaranteed. Like Mahomes above, Tyreek Hill was ALWAYS going to earn that money, 99% of the time. He would have had to quit life and start touring the world in a VW . . . and even then, the Dolphins might not have cut him. They could have cut him before 03/05/23 and paid Tyreek $32M to not play a single down on the new contract or they could have kept him on the roster and paid him and guarantee his $19,665,000 2024 base salary.
So what numbers do you think are more important, the numbers that the player will earn 100% of the time or the numbers that they will earn 99% of the time (when they don’t step on their dicks).
Good morning, @Mr.Peabody. It’s not a disconnect, its a disagreement. All I said was that it is more accurate to report the range of the guarantee ($24M-$50M guaranteed for instance), rather than just saying $50M guaranteed if the player may not actually get $50M.
It’s a take. Fans have opinions. I understand your position that it is fair to report the numbers as the NFL already does. Me thinking that’s a less accurate way to report the numbers isn’t a mental break from reality, it’s a preference.
The only part of this exchange that I didn’t enjoy is you assuming that my take comes from ignorance. You’ve been ‘mansplaining’ football to me despite me telling you that I get all that stuff. I even gave you the technical term for stuff that you thought you were teaching me. I’m a dude, though that part shouldn’t matter, who has followed the Leos and the NFL my whole life. I just think that reporting the max guarantee without mentioning the minimum is not as accurate as stating the range. No love lost, we’re both football nerds, but your comment about me being disconnected from reality was condescending and I took umbrage.
[and analogies by definition are about things that are dissimilar but comparable] See, that was me being snarky. We need something more interesting to debate.
I certainly didn’t mean for it to come across like that, so I apologize. My “disconnect vs reality” wasn’t a personal assessment. I like your takes and its why I am engaging. I should have worded it better. What I was talking about was the reality of the situation. In reality it is extremely unlikely that a team is going to hand out a $25M signing bonus and then cut the player before the start of the next season. And if they do, that player is going to make out like a bandit for one season of work and hit the open market to cash in again. So what I was trying to say…which I did poorly…is that the reality of the situation is that Ed Oliver (for example) is going to be a Buffalo Bill for the 2024 season. Which means any guarantees associated with that reality are real guarantees in his contract. So for him it bumps his guarantees from $25M up to closer to $45M.
Regardless of how they report the numbers, the devil still lives in the details.
The numbers they report will typically say the larger number of guarantees in the contract but then they will say “X amount guaranteed at signing.” Using those two numbers is how you get the range. The “guaranteed at signing” will be the lower number you are interested in. It really comes down to the reporters judgement and how the contract was presented to them by the agent, team, etc. So while I look at those numbers, I don’t pass judgement until overthecap.com reports the details so I can see what things really look like. I completely ignore the “guaranteed for injury” figure. It means something to the player but its really not something that has a practical use when I’m assessing the deal.
