In the book Crunching Numbers Jason and Vijay go over in detail the ins and outs of contracts. NFL contracts are the heart and soul of a team. This is how the team acquires top-notch talent within the budget of the salary cap. These contracts are complicated and take a dedicated team on both sides to come up with a deal that both parties feel comfortable with. The league has a Salary cap that teams are not allowed to go over in salaries for that year. The cap has been increasing year after year so the players all together are making more and more money each year. There are other things such as, free agency, which is the time period when your contract has ended and teams will try to make a new contract with you. You can also get traded or be …show more content…
The first season on free agency started back in 1993 when Reggie White signed with the Green Bay Packers after playing for the Philadelphia Eagles. (Crunching Numbers) To know if a player is a free agent we need to look at how many accrued seasons they have played. With knowing how many accrued seasons they have played they will either be an exclusive rights free agent, a restricted free agent, or an unrestricted free agent. An exclusive rights free agent is an NFL veteran with less than three accrued seasons, and a rookie, second year, and third year player also fall into this category. (Crunching Numbers) A restricted free agent is any NFL veteran with three accrued seasons but not four accrued seasons of playing. (Crunching Numbers) There is something that teams used during prior CBAs that were called poison pills. (Crunching Numbers) This is when teams would give a contract offer to a high profile player that was a restricted free agent. The team that had the player would not be able to match the contract without violating the salary cap, so they would have to let the player go to the other team. An unrestricted free agent is any NFL veteran with four or more accrued seasons of service. (Crunching Numbers) The average tenure playing in the NFL was 4 seasons. Once they have hit this and their current contract is up then an unrestricted free agent will be completely free to sign with another team. (Crunching