Remember back in 2003, when the Browns insisted that all their draft picks sign five-year contracts? It was a hardball maneuver which denied these players the sure chance to hit free agency after the four years specified in the collective bargaining agreement.
Training camp opened, and every last one of those rookies held out, even the long-snapper who was amazed he had been drafted at all. They all eventually signed the five-year deals, but the late start was one factor in the team’s 5-11 performance coming off a playoff year.
The Browns continued this policy in 2004, though OT Kirk Chambers would have none of it, preferring to take it year by year instead. (He’s still unsigned for ’06, as far as I can tell.) The new regime abandoned the practice in 2005.
I mention this because the new CBA specifically outlaws such contracts.
The maximum length of contracts for a rookie drafted in the first 16 selections in the first round is six years. The maximum contract for a rookie selected in picks 17 to 32 is five years. Players taken in rounds two through seven can’t be given a contract longer than four years. Teams have tried to force rookies taken in the second day of the draft to sign five-year deals.
Call it the Policy Proviso. In any case, the upshot of those 2003 contracts is that OLB Chaun Thompson, S Chris Crocker, RB Lee Suggs, and LS Ryan Pontbriand still have two years left on their original rookie deals. (C Jeff Faine, the first-round pick, is locked up through 2009.) Otherwise, they would have been playing out their contracts in 2006, unless Phil Savage and company deemed them vital enough to try for contract extensions ahead of time, as he did with Reuben Droughns.
The insistence on those long deals was rightly criticized as a barrier to goodwill between the front office and the incoming talent. But their fruits are ripening as we speak. They give Savage more time and money to continue building a stronger and deeper roster in free agency.
We’ll see exactly what that looks like in the coming days.
