The Signing Business Part 1

Jun 11, 2008, 6:20:57 AM by Bob Gretz - FAQ

The Chiefs are in the final week of their off-season program at Arrowhead Stadium. The rookies will hang around for another week or so, and then the football side of the building will be a ghost town as the players and coaches grab vacation time before the start of training camp in late July.

As always, the guy who will stay behind is Denny Thum. The team’s Executive Vice President and COO will be in the office, working the phones and fielding the calls from agents. With the assistance of Woodie Dixon, the Chiefs manager of player compensation, they will go about getting the team’s dozen draft choices signed to their first NFL contracts.

Just having an NFL high 12 draft choices will make it a busy five weeks. Then, add the fact the Chiefs have two first-round choices to ink this year and three of the top 35 selections and that complicates the situation even further.

And, on top of all that was the recent vote by the NFL owners to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement with the players. That means the league’s salary cap system ends after the 2009 season with the first uncapped year being 2010.

It’s forcing teams and agents to get even more creative in how contracts are structured, how signing bonuses are paid out and pro-rated. It’s especially tough on the picks in the top half of the first round. The Chiefs have two players in that group: No. 5 choice Glenn Dorsey and No. 15 selection Branden Albert.

“There is a 30 percent rule in effect right now,” said Thum, explaining that under current regulations a player’s salary and cap number cannot go up more than 30 percent from one year to another.

“People become smarter and smarter each year and come up with new concept and some of the teams have found a way to structure their deals to take advantage of the uncapped year.”

Whether a team is willing to roll the dice and dump a lot of the contract into that 2010 uncapped season comes down to this: there’s always the chance the owners and players could come up with a new agreement that would keep the cap in place.

“The three picks that have signed so far, have done new structures where they have gone with guaranteed base salaries and then they are advancing money out of those guarantees,” said Thum. “That’s something new and a reaction to the decision to opt out of the CBA.”

There was a day when the NFL had a standard player contract. It was two pages and there was seldom any reason to have more paper involved in the deal. Back in April when the Miami Dolphins signed offensive tackle Jake Long before the draft as the league’s No. 1 selection, his contract covered some 40 pages.

The entire salary cap system and all the rules and regulations under it that have been created over the 14-year life of the cap will give you a headache should you sit down and try to understand them all. That’s why the Chiefs are lucky to have Thum, who is one of the league’s best at understanding the system and making it work for his team.

This year, there will be no salary cap problems for the Chiefs, as they are significantly under the cap maximum for this season. But because of the owners decision to re-open their agreement with the players, the Chiefs must think beyond the 2008 cap and into 2009 and then the future of uncapped football.

“I think the players are coming to understand that the uncapped season is not going to be a big financial windfall because of how the rules will change,” said Thum. “Free agency goes from four years to six years. There is a lot of money tied up in player benefits and going to an uncapped year will end all of those. The pension, severance, health care and the like will all disappear. Most players will lose money.

“The uncapped year also means there is no longer a minimum salary. You can pay players whatever you want to pay them.”

All this factors into the give and take dance that teams go through with their draft choices. It’s going to be a challenging time for all the Denny Thums of the NFL.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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A former beat reporter who covered the Pittsburgh Steelers during their glory years, Gretz covered the Chiefs for the Kansas City Star for nine years. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Board of Selectors. He has been the senior columnist for the Chiefs web site since its inception.