With plenty of players who thought they would be unrestricted free agents in 2010 due to be restricted free agents if there’s no extension of the labor agreement by March, the NFL’s handling of restricted free agents could become yet another front in the quickly-escalating war between the league and the union.
Nearly four years ago, the Vikings pilfered guard Steve Hutchinson from the Seahawks with an offer sheet containing a “poison pill,” which would have converted the full amount of the contract into guaranteed money if Seattle had matched it. The Seahawks then did the same thing in an offer sheet submitted to Vikings receiver Nate Burleson.
Put simply, the offer sheets contained terms that made the payments fully guaranteed based on factors that did not apply in the players’ new cities, but that would have applied if the offer sheets had been matched. For example, Hutchinson’s contract would have been fully guaranteed if he was not the highest-paid offensive lineman on the team. In Seattle, he wouldn’t have been; in Minnesota, he was.
The poison pill also apparently works for ridiculously superficial factors like the location of the players’ games. For Burleson, a certain number of games played in Minnesota would have made his entire contract guaranteed, making it impossible for the Vikings to match the offer.
It created, from the league’s perspective, a mess. A grievance filed by the NFL against the “poison pill” device failed, and the teams received a dressing down at the next round of league meetings.
Then, an effort to negotiate the glitch out of the CBA failed, making the “poison pill” tactic a viable tool for encouraging player movement.
Since then, however, no team has used it. Surprisingly, no collusion charge has been filed by the union, even though collusion appears to be precisely what the teams are doing.
With the rhetoric ramping up and the union looking for as much leverage as possible while dealing with plenty of pissed off players who wanted to be unrestricted free agents, there’s a chance that the NFLPA will pursue collusion charges if teams submitting offer sheets for restricted free agents don’t use the “poison pill.”
At this point, the union hasn’t finalized a strategy in this regard. One NFLPA source admits that there has been “chatter” regarding such a tactic.
So stay tuned. Though no games will be played from February 7 until Hall of Fame induction weekend, plenty of games will be played between the league and the union during the offseason.