In recent years, a handful of players have decided to represent themselves. Every player has the absolute right to do that. Whether any player should represent himself is a very different question.
Teams negotiate contracts all the time. They understand every nuance and detail of every contract. They definitely know the trade. They absolutely know the tricks. And when a player shows up without an agent to talk turkey, the team rarely gives away free gravy.
The people paid to negotiate the best possible deals on behalf of the organization will do that. They’ll tell the player it’s fair. They’ll tell themselves it’s fair. Maybe they’ll even believe it. Regardless, teams for the most part relish the chance to negotiate directly with players.
The four highest-profile players to go it alone in recent years are Russell Okung, Richard Sherman, Bobby Wagner, and Lamar Jackson. Of those, Wagner has done very well for himself, both as to the deal he negotiated several years ago with the Seahawks and the contract he most recently negotiated with the Rams.
Yes, he left guaranteed money on the table in Baltimore. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the Ravens offered Wagner $18 million fully guaranteed at signing. That’s more fully-guaranteed money at signing than he got from the Rams. But Wagner preferred staying on the West Coast. And if that was his priority, so be it. He has the absolute and unequivocal right to make that decision.
He managed to get $10 million fully guaranteed from the Rams, with $6.5 million paid out this year and $3.5 million next year, without offset. Although the contract is structured to give the Rams the ability to pull the plug after one year at only $10 million, that was as good of a one-year deal as he was going to get.
He reportedly wanted $11.5 million on a one-year deal. With a special season, incentives could push the value to $13 million. For a 10-year veteran at the meat-grinder position of middle linebacker, that’s a damn good payday.
But, yes, Wagner is the exception. Okung’s self-negotiated deal with the Broncos was, in my opinion, a disaster. (A year later, he signed a much better deal with the Chargers.) Sherman’s self-negotiated deal with the 49ers was so team friendly that the NFL Players Association got involved, cajoling the team into changing some terms to make it more fair (or less unfair) to the player.
As to Jackson, it’s impossible to evaluate his negotiating skills because he has consistently refused to use them. (His rookie deal was slotted based on his draft position, so there was nothing to discuss.) He’s been eligible for a second contract for more than a year, but he won’t engage the team in talks.
Given the physicality with which he plays the quarterback position, Jackson continues to take a huge risk. Hopefully, someone has advised him as to the risks he has assumed. Hopefully, he is proceeding with eyes wide open. The Ravens remain ready to give him a major contract, but Jackson won’t even talk to them about what they will or won’t pay. (In this case, the Ravens absolutely would prefer to negotiate with an agent.)
Some have tried to figure out his strategy. He recently pushed back against the notion that he’s trying to get out of Baltimore. His failure to negotiate doesn’t scream out that he’s trying to stay.
So why do some players represent themselves? For many (if not most, if not all), it’s about not paying the agent fee. Since the agent’s percentage (anywhere from one percent to three) isn’t removed from the player’s game checks, the player gets an invoice. It can be significant. And the psychological impact is no different than the contrast between having federal taxes withheld from a paycheck and paying them directly to the government every April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15. (As anyone who pays quarterly taxes knows, IT SUCKS.)
But the agent-free approach can be both penny wise and pound foolish. A skilled agent can always get a player more than the player can get for himself. Thus, whether the player receives 97, 98, or 99 percent of the value of the deal after the agent gets his or her percentage, that slightly reduced haul will almost always (if not always) be more than the 100 percent that the player would have gotten on his own.
Multiple reports have indicated that Jackson hasn’t engaged the Ravens because he’s too focused on football. That’s even more reason for him to hire someone to do it for him.
My house needed to be painted. I didn’t have time to paint my house. Thus, I hired someone to paint my house. Beyond the fact that I would have done a crappy job if I had painted my own house, the reality is that my house would never get painted if I planned to do it on my own.
That’s what’s happening with Jackson. His house isn’t getting painted. All in the name, quite possibly, of saving a little money on the back end. So instead of getting nearly all of a giant pie, he’s instead getting all of no pie whatsoever. And he’s putting himself at risk that there never will be a full-sized pie at all.
This isn’t a pro-agent take. It’s a pro-player take. Check out Playmakers. It’s chock full of pro-player takes. They’re the ones who are putting their bodies on the line. They deserve to get as much as they can, while they can get it.
Players need to be protected against teams that will take full advantage of them, if they can. Good agents do that. Players also, at times, need to be protected from themselves. Good agents do that, too.
The players have group representation through the NFL Players Association. Has anyone ever suggested that the union should disband and the players should go it alone? If they shouldn’t go it alone collectively, why should they go it alone individually?
Here’s the bottom line. The owners would LOVE IT if all players represented themselves. (They’d also love to have no union representing all players.) If all deals were negotiated directly with players, most teams would inevitably gravitate around the spending minimum, and the owners with superyachts would eventually be able to trade them in for superduperyachts.