The other day Pablo Torre released the ruling related to a collusion grievance filed by the NFLPA on behalf of almost all of their veteran players who signed a contract in 2022. One of the arguments made by the NFLPA was that the NFL was colluding to keep guaranteed salaries down across the entire NFL. It seemed like a very broad and generalized claim but I did want to dig into the numbers somewhat to look if there was really any merit to the argument plus give some thoughts on the actual case itself.
Before starting to dive into the numbers it is important to note that there are different measurement periods likely used by the NFLPA and myself. The NFL league year technically runs from mid March to the following mid March. That means that when teams are scrambling for salary cap space to comply with the new league year salary cap mandates they need to restructure and extend player contracts prior to the start of the new league year. These decisions can artificially bloat cash spending in a given league year (i.e. a $40 million restructure bonus that was committed on March 2, 2025 technically counts as 2024 cash payments) and wont match the way I calculate the numbers which are based on when the season ends, more or less making the year run from January to January.
My assumption is that the March to March accounting likely made the best case for the PA because the cap strapped years of 2021, 2022, and to a lesser extent, 2023, forced teams to do far more salary cap restructures than ever before, likely bloating the cash spending from 2020 to 2022 and reducing it for 2023 and 2024. Using the Jan to Jan year, IMO, paints a more realistic portrait of the cash spending and contract commitments around the NFL.
The rate of players receiving some form of guaranteed salary in a contract has risen since 2016. The percentage of contracts with at least a partial guarantee in 2016 was just over 32%. Last year it was 47% (2025’s numbers are high because we do not have regular season signings to account for). If we take rookies out of the mix the number has gone from 27.4% to 32.1%.
| Year | Pct Guar. (all) | Pct Guar. (vet only) |
| 2016 | 32.3% | 27.4% |
| 2017 | 34.6% | 24.5% |
| 2018 | 41.4% | 25.1% |
| 2019 | 42.9% | 27.7% |
| 2020 | 50.3% | 32.2% |
| 2021 | 41.7% | 29.3% |
| 2022 | 47.8% | 31.4% |
| 2023 | 47.7% | 32.7% |
| 2024 | 47.0% | 32.1% |
| 2025 | 61.1% | 45.5% |
The actual numbers related to guarantees has also risen steadily. In 2016 the % of total contract value (not new money) was 31%, with an injury only percentage around 39%, and 16.6% of the contract paid as a signing bonus. Last year those numbers were 37%/46%/18.7%. There was no real difference between 2022 and 2023 which was the time period that was being looked into.
| Year | %SIC | %IO | %SB |
| 2016 | 31.4% | 38.8% | 16.6% |
| 2017 | 30.0% | 36.2% | 15.3% |
| 2018 | 32.3% | 38.7% | 16.7% |
| 2019 | 32.8% | 40.5% | 17.1% |
| 2020 | 37.2% | 43.9% | 16.5% |
| 2021 | 36.0% | 42.2% | 18.6% |
| 2022 | 36.7% | 43.8% | 18.4% |
| 2023 | 37.5% | 43.7% | 18.6% |
| 2024 | 37.1% | 46.2% | 18.7% |
| 2025 | 39.9% | 46.0% | 20.0% |
If we take out our drafted and undrafted players the numbers don’t really change at all and that includes the 2022 to 2023 timeframe.
| Year | %SIC | %IO | %SB |
| 2016 | 31.0% | 40.0% | 15.2% |
| 2017 | 30.1% | 38.2% | 14.0% |
| 2018 | 32.8% | 41.2% | 15.5% |
| 2019 | 33.0% | 42.8% | 16.0% |
| 2020 | 38.8% | 47.6% | 15.5% |
| 2021 | 36.2% | 44.2% | 17.6% |
| 2022 | 39.0% | 48.2% | 18.7% |
| 2023 | 40.4% | 48.5% | 19.2% |
| 2024 | 38.9% | 50.3% | 19.2% |
| 2025 | 45.3% | 53.8% | 20.1% |
About the best case that could be made is maybe if we just focused on the QB position itself. I pulled Watson’s numbers out since he was considered an outlier. While we did see big growth in 2022 in terms of injury protection, full guarantees as a percent of total value didn’t really move much. Signing bonus money was down in both 2022 and 2023. Probably easy enough for the league to explain but at least it would be something. For the most part the NFL looks to have settled in on this position at a 45%/64% guarantee split at signing.
| Year | %SIC | %IO | %SB |
| 2016 | 40.2% | 52.5% | 25.5% |
| 2017 | 39.1% | 51.0% | 18.7% |
| 2018 | 49.3% | 57.0% | 20.7% |
| 2019 | 44.5% | 62.5% | 26.8% |
| 2020 | 40.1% | 54.5% | 12.9% |
| 2021 | 44.2% | 56.1% | 23.8% |
| 2022 | 44.7% | 65.0% | 20.2% |
| 2023 | 46.3% | 63.1% | 15.0% |
| 2024 | 45.3% | 66.5% | 22.6% |
| 2025 | 45.3% | 63.7% | 17.2% |
I believe in the hearing the NFLPA tried to peg the guaranteed salaries to the salary cap. That does show more of a change from 2022 to 2023, so it was probably their best argument that they could make but the union would have had to make a very compelling argument as to why the large increase from 2021 to 2022 should be considered a new trend versus an outlier year of some big contracts (2023 was back down to 2020 levels but 2024 is way up. These metrics are more a measure of who signed versus trends).
| Year | %SIC | %IO | %SB |
| 2016 | 56.2% | 69.4% | 29.7% |
| 2017 | 53.6% | 64.7% | 27.4% |
| 2018 | 55.4% | 66.4% | 28.6% |
| 2019 | 60.0% | 74.0% | 31.3% |
| 2020 | 66.9% | 79.1% | 29.7% |
| 2021 | 65.8% | 77.2% | 34.0% |
| 2022 | 73.6% | 87.9% | 37.0% |
| 2023 | 67.5% | 78.6% | 33.5% |
| 2024 | 74.7% | 93.2% | 37.8% |
| 2025 | 55.2% | 63.7% | 27.6% |
Ultimately I think the decision to broaden the case to include so many players and focus on areas like cash spending and guarantees which really was not going to work for them made it harder to connect the dots they needed to win their case. It was clear that the NFL league office did everything in their power to get the owners to lock down their front offices from continued spending, guarantees, and use of bonuses but the numbers pretty much show it didn’t happen.
I’m not sure why they didn’t keep their case focused on the QB’s in the original grievance and perhaps add a few more. There were plenty of arguments to be made about precedent around the NFL and how it typically impacts contract negotiations. None seemed to really be brought up.
Russell Wilson’s situation was very similar to Deshaun Watson’s in that he had leverage from a trade, multiple years remaining on a contract and so on. Maybe Wilson should have played more hardball during the trade process which Watson did enabling a bidding war to occur but the ruling just seemed to accept the fact that Wilson didn’t have leverage because he had two years left on his contract.
Lamar Jackson’s situation was unique. QB’s of his caliber rarely get to free agency. I believe Kirk Cousins in 2016 was the last QB to not get an exclusive tag protection and there was no comparison between Cousins of 2016 and Jackson. While there are varying levels of concerns with signing a player to an offer sheet you do not ultimately sign, it is hard to believe that nobody seemed to force the issue with any of the teams around the league. Atlanta in particular was in heavy on Watson, despite an injury history, which was going to cost a fortune in trade compensation as well as a very hefty contract, albeit one smaller than Jackson’s. Atlanta had no concerns with blowing up their own team at the time, effectively destroying their relationship with Matt Ryan who was traded following the Watson trade talks. Picking up the phone and seeing if Jackson would consider a non fully guaranteed deal certainly seemed reasonable.
Realistically teams may just be fearful of going after a franchise player. The fear is it opens up a whole bag of uncertainty with extension talks and potential free agency retribution. Back in the day the RFA tender was more or less considered to make a player off limits despite technically being a free agent. The Seahawks and Vikings engaged in a mini war over poison pill contracts back in the mid 2000s. Is that collusion? Im not sure, but it would have been interesting to hear some perspective on that particular issue if there was more of a focus on Jackson.
I am still surprised that the NFLMC went so out of their way to basically tell owners that their front offices are doing a bad job with contract negotiations and contract structures. Anyone would have drawn the conclusion just from the numbers themselves rather than needing to give that advice which they are lucky did not lead to a different outcome.
The issue of collusion at a league level is going to be something that I can see being addressed in the future for setting more guidelines about the information that can and can not be provided to clubs. While the league is always at an advantage in collective bargaining and waiting out individual player contracts the recent consolidation of agencies across the league has paved the way for the player side to help manipulate the market by pooling a number of players together collectively rather than independently when it comes to extension and free agency talks. I am also sure the league takes issue when they see no players sign in a particular round in the draft knowing that this is a collective effort. It is allowed by the CBA but if looking to maintain power over all the league likely is taking note of changes in the landscape and will look for ways to collectively bargain more ways to work around collusion claims.