Magically, I was able to see most of the first half of Saturday night’s Browns-Lions game complete with commentary from Kosar and Bob Costas wanna-be Jimmy Donovan. When Josh Cribbs ran a punt back for a touchdown, Donovan loudly exclaimed:
“You know what I would do?? Renegotiate his contract!!!!”
The unprofessionalism of a play-by-play acting like a drunken, crazed fan…I’ll let that go for now…and focus on just one of Donovan’s words: “contract.”
I’ve long misunderstood the economics of the NFL - the amount of money rookies are paid is one thing, but the fact that contracts aren’t guaranteed (um, doesn’t that mean they aren’t contracts?) is the other. And it’s huge.
It’s always been my assumption that a lot of the tomfoolery that goes on in the NFL with holdouts has to do with contracts not being guaranteed. You rarely see it in other sports, if at all - for example, the Anderson Varejao “holdout” that happened in 2007 wasn’t a holdout since Andy was a free agent.
Because a NFL team can cut a player at any time and not have to pay them, I can understand why players are focused on securing as much money for themselves as they can when they have the opportunity to do so - even when that opportunity, like in the case of Josh Cribbs, is manufactured by the mind of the player himself and his agent, and not by any natural progression of events, i.e. being drafted or becoming a free agent.
I get why Cribbs wants to get paid more than the 6 year $6.77M extension he signed in the middle of the 2006 season (which carries him through 2012). I won’t criticize him for being “selfish” because I don’t understand where the traditional definition of selfishness comes into play - who is Cribbs negatively affecting by wanting more money? Is he putting strain on the Cleveland Browns organization? I suppose. Are we supposed to be upset about that? We’re talking, essentially, about an employee who works for a corporation - since when did the little guy (aka the fans in this scenario) decide to side with the corporation?
However, while I won’t say Cribbs is being selfish by wanting his contract to be renegotiated more in the ballpark of Devin Hester’s (4 years at $40M with $15M guaranteed), I will say that from the organization’s standpoint, I see no reason in hell why they would give Cribbs the money he’s asking for.
I sympathize with Cribbs, but by accepting the extension before he became a Pro Bowler, he bet against himself. This is always the dilemma when it comes to contract extensions: take the safe route, get the money now, it’ll be less money than you could get in the open market if everything goes according to plan, you don’t get injured, you play well…but if you take this extension now and then outperform the expectations of the current marketplace you’re going to get killed in the long run, until you can become a free agent again.
That’s the gamble, and Cribbs didn’t really gamble. He walked away from the table after winning the equivalent of one good hand. Now he believes he made a mistake - in retrospect, of course, and wants to remedy things.
Unfortunately, that’s not how business - especially the business of pro football - works. As a result, I don’t expect the Browns to redo the Cribbs deal. Not only is it bad business for them in regards to the agreement they already made with Cribbs, but it also sets a dangerous precedent for other players and their agents…assuming any player on the Browns performs well this year.
