Rarely in the NFL are there stunning events. Today was one of those rare days as the Dallas Cowboys traded EDGE rusher Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers for two first round picks after months of bickering over a contract extension. Never in a million years would I have expected this to happen. The way this dragged out was basically the same as every other annual holdout/hold in we see in Dallas and every time in ends with an extension and a number of people saying “if they had just done this sooner they would have saved millions”. They certainly saved millions today but lost a superstar player in the process.

I am not sure what really drove this trade. If you were running the team and ever thought that this would be the end game, the trade should have occurred either during the draft or by the start of training camp. To have this kind of situation drag out all camp long and then right before the start of the season trade the player is kind of crazy. It sends a bad message to the other players on the team at a time they should be really locked in on getting ready for week 1. It’s demoralizing.

This whole saga feels like Jerry Jones was upset over some contracts that have gone sideways for him the last few years. Bad outcomes on contracts happen all the time. You have to ask yourself if the process of extending was bad or you just landed some bad luck with injuries. In the case of Dallas it is more the latter than the former. Parsons agency did make a few public statements this year which did poke at the Cowboys decision making. These were not made by Parson’s specific agent but they basically took a deserved victory lap for the way they manipulated the Dak Prescott negotiations to get two massive contracts for Prescott which have not been a good ROI for Dallas. Maybe that played a role here that Jones needed to get one over on the agents because it is hard to see the logic here. Jones made some comments about valuing the run which is nonsense. If that was the case they never would have drafted Parsons in the first place nor would they have engaged in extension talks.

The money Parsons will make in Green Bay is gigantic. His $47 million year extension is massive. It is a near 15% raise in annual value over TJ Watt and even prior to Watt’s contract the money at the position exploded with Myles Garrett landing a $40 million per year extension a few months ago. It is very rare to have a season with two major market movers at the same position in the same year but that is what we got with Garrett taking the market to $40 million and Parsons to $47 million.

The Packers probably view the number differently than others due to the fact they had no prior investment and see this more as a five year contract worth around $42 million a year. Others in the NFL may try to make that argument too, but from Parsons perspective it doesn’t make a difference. For him it is $47 million a year and this is the way you manipulate the numbers in a trade similar to what Khalil Mack was able to do in Chicago seven years ago.

It is far to question the Packers decision to part with two first round picks as well as a player they already paid a significant amount of salary out to but Parsons is a special player and the Packers do have a good young core that can make it easier to drop draft picks. While it may not be a home run it is a move that is meant to maximize the Packers chances the next two years and then they can deal with the fallout from the trade in 2027.

For Dallas the opposite is true. This minimizes their chances to compete now and requires some great draft picks to come out from this. Sure they saved a bunch of money but it is not like they are going to spend it on free agents in the future as Dallas generally avoids free agency like the plague. I don’t know if Dallas is a real competitor this year or not but if these two picks do not lead to Dallas drafting a good young QB next year or the year after I am not sure what the point will be. Dallas had leverages here and let it all vanish basically getting talked into a trading away a player they probably should have not traded in 2025.  

Though the NFL teams still have a few days before they have to count all players on the salary cap, we have made the change early so you can all get a good estimate for where teams actually stand with the salary cap in 2025. A number of teams are currently estimated to be over or nearly over the cap for this year. Those teams are the Giants, Falcons, Bills, Texans, and Bears. They will likely be making some salary related decisions in the coming days regarding restructures, extensions, injury settlements, or renegotiations. They have until the start of the season to fully comply with the cap.

We are not yet including these salary cap space estimates in our 2026 salary cap figures. I will make a note of it when we do, but typically that will be the 2nd week of the regular season as the 2025 cap figures for each team should stabilize by then and make the carryover estimates more accurate.

NFL cutdown day is just around the corner as one of the toughest days of the year comes on August 26^th. Every team in the NFL will need to be down to 53 active players by 4PM that day. Somewhere around 1,050 players will be cut between today and the end of the business day on Tuesday. Here is a look at how many moves each team will need to make between now and then.

It is important to note that rarely will the roster at 4PM Tuesday actually be the final 53 man roster for a team. Players are not paid a weeks salary until the Tuesday of game week which means teams are under no obligation to anyone. Teams will make waiver claims for some of the released players and have to make a corresponding release to someone who “made the 53 man”. Teams will activate players who did not report and have to make another release to account for that. Teams will see veterans who are cut and perhaps sign them as well. The real 53 man roster really hits on September 2^nd at 4PM.

There will always be some releases that also catch people off guard. Usually these are veteran players on lower cost contracts who were expected to make the team. These releases are often done due to various circumstances regarding the team they play for. Though rules have changed a bit regarding injury returns (teams are allowed to designate two players to return from IR if placed on IR during camp and designated to return) most teams want flexibility with the return from IR rule. That requires putting an injured player on the 53 man for a day and then placing him on the reserve list the following day. To make room for that player often a veteran, who is not subject to waivers, will be cut for a day or two and then re-signed when the injured player is actually placed on IR.

Many teams also have no intention of guaranteeing a veteran player’s salary when that veteran is more of a bubble player. Teams want the flexibility of cutting a veteran during the year with limited financial penalty. A base salary guarantee for the year kicks in if the veteran player is on the 53 man roster for the 1st game of the year. To avoid that base guarantee teams will cut a veteran player, place him on the practice squad for a week, elevate him from the practice squad for week 1, and then sign him to a regular contract in week 2. A contract signed after week 1 does not carry the full salary guarantee protection.

Non-veteran players who are cut are all subject to waivers. Teams will have until noon on the 27th to make a claim on those players. If claimed their contracts will transfer to the team who claimed them. If they go unclaimed they are eligible to be signed to a Practice Squad. Teams can start to fill their practice squad as soon as the waiver period expires. Generally, teams are most active on the first day or two following cutdown when it comes to waiver claims. Sometimes teams will stash a player on the 53 man with hopes of moving him to their practice squad by sneaking him through waivers next week or after the first game when teams are more focused on prepping for their games and not looking to bring another guy in. These are effective roster management strategies for teams.

Another important thing to note is that cutdown day does not mark the change of offseason salary cap rules where just the top 51 players count against the cap. That does not happen until the first day of the season at which point every player on a reserve list, practice squad, active roster, etc…will count against the salary cap. At OTC we will make that switch earlier to give a more accurate picture of where every team stands with the salary cap. It is possible that some teams will show they are over the cap when we do that. Technically those teams are all fine within the official NFL rules but it can give you a better idea of who does and does not need to make contract modifications to comply with the salary cap when the NFL changes the rules.

Finally, please bear with us as we work through all of the roster changes. Hopefully we will work through them quickly but it can take some extra time to process so many transactions. The practice squad will also take some time and there is often a big delay between a team releasing on X a practice squad or leaking to media members about signings and then actually signing the player. Rather than getting names wrong, which can often happen, we generally wait until the signing is official to get them onto the roster for the team.

One of the more bizarre contract stories comes out of Las Vegas with the Raiders publicly announcing the release of DT Christian Wilkins from a $110 million contract with nearly $83 million in guarantees signed just a year ago.  Wilkins had been injured last season and should have over $35 million in injury protection but the Raiders are voiding all guarantees in the contract due to issues with how he has treated his rehab process, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The union will file a grievance on Wilkins behalf to recover that money

The whole situation regarding Wilkins comes across as odd. The team converted over $20 million of Wilkins salary into a roster bonus back in February for salary cap relief which was paid out in late March. Clearly at the time the Raiders and Wilkins were on the same page regarding his injury. Sometime in early June, the Raiders must have told Wilkins that if he did not have a second surgery on his foot that he would have the remaining guarantees on his contract voided. Here is the statement from the Raiders regarding the release:

We have decided that it is in the best interests of the organization to move on from Christian Wilkins and he has been informed of his release from the team. This franchise has a Commitment to Excellence on and off the field. With no clear path or plan for future return to play from Christian, this transaction is necessary for the entire organization to move forward and prepare for the new season.

Essentially the Raiders argument seems to be that Wilkins is not following the rehab treatment that was given to him by the team physician and is not making a good faith effort to play. Players always have the right to a 2^nd opinion but reading between the lines of the team’s statement regarding his release, it seems that he did not provide a satisfactory rehab plan to the team without obtaining another medical procedure. All of the guarantees in Raiders contracts require a player to follow “reasonable and customary rehabilitation or treatment” in order to have the guarantee stand. By not following such a plan the player would be in default and the guaranteed protection would vanish. With those guarantees voided and Wilkins in no condition to play football, the Raiders would be able to release him due to injury.

This whole issue seems suspect on the part of the Raiders. Wilkins is clearly hurt. He was clearly following a rehab plan as of March. He had his salary guaranteed in 2025 and 2026. He reportedly was at OTAs. He didn’t commit a crime or refuse to show up to camp. Was there simply no follow up on his end (essentially finding a credible medical opinion that surgery is not required) that would allow the Raiders to do this on effectively a technicality?  Did he refuse to submit to physician exams at the teams request in another technical breach?

If the Raiders are successful with their voiding of guarantees here it really does open a can of worms for some players to deal with. A few months ago, Derek Carr declined surgery while on the Saints despite a large guarantee on his salary. Carr was not certain he wanted to play in 2026 (or 2025 for that matter) and there were some concerns the surgery was not going to allow him to play even if he wanted to do so. Carr opted to decline the surgery and voluntarily retire, giving up around $30 million in the process.

While it is certainly Wilkins responsibility to do everything in his power to return to playing football there should be questions about what the likelihood is of such surgeries being successful and if the probabilities are very low and risks outweigh the rewards the injury guarantee really should be honored. That is not to say that this is the case here or with Carr but seeing back to back contracts put in jeopardy due to potential surgery is a bit alarming.

Wilkins’ salary cap charge at the moment should drop from $18.137 million to $9.925 million. Next year it will drop from $37.6 million to $29.775 million. That is all dead money associated with the two bonuses that he received from the Raiders. The next question is what cap charges will there be from the grievance, if any?

Typically, when a player files a grievance against a team, 40% of the grievance counts against the salary cap. That would be a significant charge. However, it sounds as if the grievance filed by the NFLPA is a non-injury grievance that was related to the interpretation of the default language in the contract not a standard injury grievance that would be filed after a player was released. In this case, a financial award is likely not being sought at the moment so my guess is that there will be no charge until that grievance is resolved. If Wilkins wins the grievance then his cap number will increase by $35.25 million which will have the Raiders scrambling for cap room.  

The other possibility in all of this is that the Raiders are simply looking for an alternative way out of a bad contract that was showing less and a less chance having any return. The signing of Wilkins to a contract of this magnitude was questionable at best and the GM who spearheaded the signing has been replaced. Sometimes when you are trying to change the culture around a team, one of the worst things is a player on a bloated contract that you do not see playing in the future.

During the grievance process the sides will engage in settlement discussions and perhaps the Raiders hope here is simply that they can settle for pennies on the dollar and that Wilkins would rather have closure about this rather than have things drag out. While nothing has been reported about him possibly being open to forfeiture of the large bonus he was paid earlier this year perhaps they will argue that Wilkins breached his contract rather than just defaulting his guarantees and that could open up the chance of recovering some of that salary. That could lead to a settlement of keeping the bonus or perhaps his full salary for 2025 while avoiding any responsibility for money in 2026. That would, in the grand scheme of things, be a win for the Raiders. The Raiders really have little to lose going this route since they owed him a bunch of guaranteed salary and if they can get out of any of it, it is worth their time to pursue this.

Wilkins best hope in all of this would be to pass a physical administered by a neutral party. That would certainly seem to prove that whatever he was doing is putting him in a position to play football. That might be unlikely given his foot injury. These statements made by Raiders head coach Pete Carroll back in May, just weeks before the guarantees were voided, should work in Wilkins favor:

“Every day he’s here early, working hard, but we’re still working. He’s not ready to get back out. We’re in the midst of a long, challenging process. Fortunately, there’s a lot of time, and we’re going to take every bit of it. We’ve really tried to be really diligent in the way we’ve worked it and the way we’ve wanted it and all that, and he’s been on board the whole time. But it has been challenging”

That certainly seems to show commitment on his end to coming back and something big needed to change over those next few weeks which seems like a pretty quick change in direction from the Raiders. Whatever that was should determine if Wilkins is succrddful or not in recovering most or all of his salary.

It’s another summer and we have another Cowboys contract dispute getting a ton of attention, especially after some comments Jerry Jones made regarding some early extensions he wishes he had not done. However, the overall issue about extension timing goes well beyond the Cowboys and it is one thing that many teams do seem to get wrong. Let’s look into the numbers a little deeper.

When discussing situations like Dallas with Micah Parsons we are talking about superstar players in the NFL. While the contract numbers that are being discussed are gigantic and sometimes cloud the issue with the fans the fact is that teams simply do not move on from these players regardless of the cost. That is what makes situations like Dallas’ so ridiculous since the odds of them moving on from Parsons are miniscule at best and the end outcome is going to be a contract that makes him the highest paid non-QB in the NFL no matter when he signs.

If we look at every position in the NFL and look at the top 10 paid players, here is the breakdown of how many signed an extension or were tagged at each position.

In every case a team held the contractual rights to a top 10 QB, WR, CB when they did an extension. Edge is at 90%. It is only three positions where we fall under the 50/50 range- safety, center, and linebacker. If we pull the tag out of the equation we get the following:

Here you can see a few other teams do draw things out similar to Dallas and the tag does come into play but again the odds are strongly in favor of an elite athlete signing an extension.

What if we look solely at teams that drafted a player?

Again we are looking at only a handful of positions where the odds are worse than 50% of the player winding up on his own team. And these numbers can be misleading due to the age of some of the players on the list. For example at EDGE the top 10 includes Danielle Hunter who was a third contract free agent, Brian Burns who was traded as a franchise player on a rebuilding team, Montez Sweat who was traded from a team blowing things up, and Andrew Van Ginkel who is also a third contract type player.

None of these players are comparable to a player like Parsons but even if you wanted to make an argument that they are, does anyone see the Cowboys being in the Panthers or Commanders position of blowing things up? The point simply is if you have a young elite player on your team and you are expecting to be semi competitive you are going to sign that player.

Waiting to sign an elite player is pointless for many reasons. While there was a time where contract squabbles were somewhat substantial and both sides could win or lose in these type of fights, todays NFL pretty much always has the same result- the next elite player to sign  will be the highest paid player at the position. The next close to elite player to sign will be top 5 at the position. So by waiting all a team is doing is allowing the market to rise and thus the player cost to rise.

If you look at where the EDGE market was last year, when the Cowboys could have extended Parsons, it sat at $34 million a year. That was also the top number for non highest paid QB. Parsons was going to earn much more than that, but would he have hit $40M a season? Maybe, maybe not. Would it have topped $40 million a year?  Doubtful since he would have been the first ever “$40M a year non-QB” had Dallas signed him last season.

Right now the market stands at $41 million a season. That contract was signed by a third contract player and Parsons should be able to get some distance between he and TJ Watt the same way Nick Bosa years ago got a little distance from Aaron Donald. So in this particular case you are looking at the price likely going from a max of $40 million a season to now $43 million a year and counting.

There are also significant benefits for a team, besides that price tag, when it comes to getting ahead of the curve and getting a contract done. While I don’t fully believe that the only part of the contract that matters is the guaranteed part, the guarantee is one of the prime reasons that players hold leverages and teams lose flexibility. For whatever reason agents do not negotiate “new money guarantees” and instead focus on the total contract guarantee. When a player like Parsons signs early that actually reduces a team’s overall risk exposure since the team will get to include Parsons existing salary into the guarantee.

Right now the top guarantee would be Myles Garrett at $124 million and last year it was Bosa at a shade under that. Whether Parsons signed last year or this year the guarantee for him will be at least $125 million on an extension. If they go into next year it will again be at least $125 million. Last year Dallas could have rolled $27 million of “old money” into that total. This year its $24 million. If they wait it will be $0.

The early extensions can help with salary cap flexibility as well. The clock on an extension begins immediately when it is signed. For 1^st round picks that can give a team six or seven “active years” to work with right off the bat for bonus prorations. Effectively you blend the old and new contract together and you can work the numbers out to best benefit the team.

While the team is taking on risk by doing the early deal they are also putting themselves in a position with less effective guarantees and earlier bonus prorations of being able to get out from what turns out to be a bad contract. Jones brought up the name Trevon Diggs as an early extension gone bad, but the reality is the added year they had makes it easy for Dallas to move on next season (it is just $5.8M in dead money) and, had he not been injured and had an injury protection clause kick in, they could have walked away before this season without too much damage.  A tough pill to swallow? Sure, but it was better to be a year early than a year late and his situation pretty much represents a worst case scenario.

For the players who do pan out, the longer term deal also prevents you from getting leveraged the way Dallas was when they signed Dak Prescott to a $60 million extension that far surpassed the rest of the QB market and continues to be treated as an outlier by the other 31 teams in the NFL. Prescott’s prior contract was signed as a franchise player giving Dallas none of those extra years to work with regarding the cap. His cap numbers became so bloated that there was no real way to walk away from him, so one bad contract turned into two bad contracts for Dallas.

While the Cowboys have plenty of bad examples to draw from, if you do take a teamwide approach to contract extensions the good can (and should) outweigh the bad. It’s no different than outing together a stock portfolio. Some work, some don’t, The hope is the ones that work far outperform the ones that do not. Dallas was able to do that in the past with extensions for players like Tyron Smith who gave the team cap and cash benefits for years.

If you are running a team you simply have to ask yourself this. What are the odds of us trading a player or letting him walk as a free agent?  The data is that for all but a few positions those odds are very low. Unless you see yourself as the exception to the rule there is far too much to gain out of the early extension rather than just delaying the inevitable which is what the Cowboys seem to be doing now.

The numbers are in for Sauce Gardner’s $120.4 million contract extension and it is an interesting contract, one that falls into the category of being a “market setter” without really setting the market. The structure of the contract is pretty team friendly and creates some solid leverage points for the Jets throughout the life of the contract. Let’s break things down.

Prior to Gardner’s signing the top market CB contract in the NFL was that of Derrick Stingley who signed a three year contract extension worth $30 million per year. The Stingley contract was a massive leap forward for the position, in many ways defying the logic that normally comes from teams negotiating contract extensions. Stingley’s contract was signed days after Jaycee Horn of the Panthers signed a contract worth $25 million a year. The 20% annual raise is one of the largest that you will see these days.

Stingley set new markers at every turn. His raise during the existing rookie contract years was $25.5 million compared to $17.6M for Horn. By the end of the first year of the contract Stingley would earn $46 million compared to just $35 million for Horn. In year two it was $67.5 million to $52 million  and then $90 million to $75 million over three years. Stingley would also be a free agent after three seasons while Horn would be signed after four years.

From the looks of things the Jets looked to find a way to surpass the Stingley APY while staying below Stingley in the most likely to be earned years of the contract. Here is the year by year earnings comparison of Gardner, Stingley, and Horn.

Gardner’s raise over the next two years is much closer to the Horn market than the Stingley one. The Jets, who also did a big contract extension for Garrett Wilson just the other day, likely pointed out that they were a bit cash poor following their spending in some recent years. That has been a typical Jets pattern under their current ownership and may have played a factor here.

As you look at year 1 and 2 of the new contract years, the Jets basically split the difference between the two contracts as Gardner will fall right between the prior contract 1 and contract 2. The turn comes in year 3 when Gardner will finally surpass Stingley by $300,000 and pull away from Horn. This is a typical contract structure when a team is willing to “set a market” while looking to really keep options open with a player.

The overall cash flow structure of the contract is weak relative to the corner market. Here is the year by year cash payouts relative to the overall size of the contract.

The initial pay for Gardner at 12.5% ranks 7^th out of 8 players. That moves to 6^th after the first year and 5^th after the 2^nd year. He ranks 3^rd by year 3 as the Jets backloaded the contract more than most of the others were able to do.

The guarantee structure of the contracts does not favor Gardner as the market leader. $40.5 million in full guarantees is actually 7^th in the NFL though that is often not relevant since vesting schedules dictate more about the guarantees and Garnder has favorable vesting schedules on his salary in 2027 and 2028. The total guarantee of $85.7 million is 2^nd in the NFL and while it falls way short of Stingley on a per year basis it is a few million a year higher than Patrick Surtain II of the  Broncos, who was the prior number two at the position when it came to guarantees.

There are also some other minor things with the contract that work in the Jets favor. Gardner took on $750,000 per year in per game bonuses and $250,000 per year in workout bonuses.”.  This is $1 million more than Stingley in per game compensation and $1.25 million more in workout compensation. Surtain has $1.02 million in per game bonuses and no money tied to workouts. The Jets current GM came from Denver and seemed to push the Denver option bonus structure on this contract yet seemed to escape the per game and workout push. The Jets have no history of workout bonuses (this likely was an Aaron Glenn push) and haphazard approach to per gamers. The per game numbers were more in line with Horn and Jalen Ramsey who were more injury prone than Garnder. Stingley also had more injury history, while Surtain was relatively healthy. This seemed like a miss from Gardner’s side.

These bonuses from 2026 through 2028 are also part of his “guarantee package”. Stingley and Surtain’s are not included in the guarantee. For Horn the workout bonuses were but the per gamers were not. This devalues the guarantee since Gardner must be healthy and attend workouts to earn these salaries.

The structure of the contract is interesting to me. The Jets used two balloon payments at the end of the contract of $30.1 million per season.  Prior to those two years the Jets will never pay Gardner more than $25.95 million in a given year. Those numbers seem to indicate that the Jets look at those two seasons as potential out years in the contract. If the Jets exercise both options in the contract the cost to cut in 2029 would be $16.8 million, a savings of about $22 million in cap over his $38.9 million cap figure that year. That type of structure clearly lets the team move on if things do not work out for the long term. In theory the Jets could reduce the dead money by not exercising the options but the structure of the contract makes that unlikely.

The second interesting thing with those salaries is that they are so high that it should prevent Gardner from holding out to seek a new contract if things do go well. All of the other players in year 3 are earning no more than $23 million, and in year four $25 million. If the market moves up to say $35 million a year or more in the next few years all of those players will likely have a gripe about being underpaid and threaten to miss game checks unless their contract is addressed. At $30.1 million in salary that is less likely to be an issue for the Jets. It also throws a ton of “old money” into an extension if they do extend him that would be used as part of the guarantee and prevent the team from having to pay out a ton of new money guarantees while also keeping any raises early in the contract relatively low since the existing salary is already so high.

Gardner does get the benefit of effectively having the first two years of his new contract guaranteed two years prior to the time when he would be franchise tag eligible. His $60M in new money that will be earned by 2028 should far exceed what two franchise tags will cost (the tag would need to jump from $20.2M in 2025 to $27.3M in 2027 to make this meet his current salary) and this $60M is protected from injury already and has a pretty favorable vesting schedule that makes this virtually guaranteed.

Ultimately, I think this is a very solid contract negotiated by the Jets. While they may have had to work with an APY that they were not entirely comfortable with, they seemed to take a  pretty measured approach to how to reach that number and make it comfortable for them. They were able to get some of the soft concessions like workout and per game money while also getting a percentage based cash flow that is very strong relative to the market despite the big numbers that are the first thing that catches someone’s eye. They really protected themselves at the back end of the contract as well. The contract will help nudge the market forward but that Stingley contract is still going to be the main sticking point for any other top flight cornerbacks that come up for an extension in the near future with this one being more of a floor to work off from.

There is currently a waiting game going on with the 2^nd round picks drafted this year. The basics of the hold up center on one team going over expected slot with the guaranteed salary and the presence of a QB in the round that could help the other players earn higher guarantees. Each year the guaranteed percentages usually get higher but the expectation was that the top pick would gain the full guarantee and the 2^nd would probably be at 95% or so. Here were last year’s numbers and how they compared to the prior season.  

Odds are strongly against the entire round getting a 100% guarantee but if the top 5 can get there it will help the others grow at a quicker than expected rate.

The question is how much should the teams fight this?  Based on historical data it is understandable why there may be some consideration given to the holding off on future guaranteed years. Here is the year by year breakdown of how long players remained with their original team who were drafted in round 2 from 2015 through 2022.

Looking at the numbers you can see why this is a somewhat meaningful fight. Two years is a virtual guarantee for the 2^nd rounders but the numbers do drop at three years and fall drastically at 4 years. My assumption is that over time the NFL would concede at a three year guarantee but would be more hesitant to get deep into those 4^th year guarantees especially as the round progresses.

From a practical standpoint the players near the top of the round have the highest probability of lasting which is why the Texans just did what they needed to do to get their player signed quickly rather than haggling over 5% of the contract value since 100% vs 95% is the same thing. The issue is more about teams thinking about the figures raising the thresholds towards the bottom where teams want more flexibility to release players deeper into the contract.

Overall I think the union would be better served putting more and more energy into formulating a plan to reduce the length of rookie contracts so those who deserve big raises get it quickly but that battle is a few years away when the new CBA comes up. They can certainly try to chip away at things here but at some point those near the bottom of the round are going to lose their leverage and likely have to move into camp if the top part of the round doesn’t start moving the needle for everyone. It is probably more important for those players to get practicing than trying to add a few extra guarantees to their third year salaries.