When reports surfaced that the contract signed by Rams cornerback Janoris Jenkins contained a greater percentage of guaranteed money than any other second-round pick, we smelled a rat.
And now we’ve found the cheese.
Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the $5 million contract contained $3.1 million in guaranteed money. That translates to 62 percent of the entire haul as guaranteed money.
For starters, the numbers were exaggerated. The real guarantee, per a source with knowledge of the contract, was $2.964 million. The real value of the deal, per the same source, was $4.99 million. That results in a percentage of 59.4.
Multiple other second-round picks have more than 60 percent of their contracts guaranteed.
The biggest percentage, coincidentally, comes from one of the other second-round picks drafted by the Rams. Receiver Brian Quick, the first pick in round two, received $3.821 million guaranteed on a $5.384 million deal. And that equates to a guaranteed-money percentage of 70.969.
And Jenkins didn’t receive the highest percentage of guaranteed money in round two. He didn’t even get the highest percentage of guaranteed money in round two on his own team.
There’s more. Despite an “intimation” from COO Kevin Demoff that the Rams didn’t protect themselves in the Jenkins contract, the deal diverts $821,000 into a two-pronged requirement of participating in offseason workouts and being on the 53-man roster, PUP list, or injured reserve in the first game of the 2013, 2014, and 2015 seasons.
The good news for Jenkins is that he got his $2 million signing bonus, even though the team reportedly wanted to split it into four annual $500,000 roster bonuses. Whether it was the agent trying to make the deal look better or the team trying to make it look like they didn’t short-change the kid or whether it’s a little (or a lot) of both, someone deliberately gave bad info to the media, with the goal of pumping up the perception of the contract.