Cover 3 is a weekly feature column written by PewterReport.com’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat writer Trevor Sikkema published every Tuesday. The column, as its name suggests, comes in three phases: a statistical observation, an in-depth film breakdown, and a “this or that” segment where the writer asks the reader to chose between two options.

SIKKEMA’S STAT OF THE WEEK

The scene starts off with a group of people around a barrel fire in the streets of Staten Island, New York at night. It’s a project-like setting with run down walls, chain-link fences and graffiti up, down and along the concrete of the surrounding area. As the piano interlude fades in and the beats times up, the group begins to rhyme their struggles; their up bringing; what they had to do just to survive in the environment you see. As the visual story goes on through verses and hooks, the scene suddenly changes from a run-down dark area to a bright room.

The men from the previous setting were still there wearing their same clothes, but this time they were around a large table, not a barrel fire. There wasn’t graffiti on the walls, but paintings and diamonds. The middle wasn’t fueled with fire, but with high-class champagne. As the chorus enters, Method Man reminds you of how such a scene change is possible with a simple phrase that has lived on, even beyond Wu-Tang Clan’s prime of music fame.

“Cash rules everything around me.”

The phrase is timeless, universal, even. It has so much truth and use stored into its five simple words that I’m here connecting a 90’s hip-hop lyric to a football article about cap space. But, even beyond the excuse to paint a picturesque opening paragraph, cash is king, and there is no place where that is more true than in professional sports.

Bucs GM Jason Licht & CB Vernon Hargreaves III – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

With the 2017 NFL Draft nearly upon us, I wanted to take the time to make sure Buccaneers fans knew exactly what was coming money-wise for whatever draft pick their team may end up selecting. However, this stat of the week won’t just stop at predicting what each allotted draft selection will be making in their first contract, but also gather the contractual information around the league by position to more accurately assign value to what type of players should be picked where in the NFL draft, as told by the league itself based on how they manage their money.

Let’s start with the basics. You’ve probably heard over the past few years that rookie contracts aren’t what they used to be. Gone are the days of the No. 1 overall pick making $76 million on a six-year deal with $50 million of it fully guaranteed before they even step on the field (*cough cough* Sam Bradford). And we should thank the football gods that that is no longer the case because the structure – or lack thereof – of limitations on how to not manipulate rookie deals in the previous CBA was awful.

Previously under the old CBA, the NFL allowed the teams to be the ones to determine what their own salary cap for their rookies would be – this is called the “rookie pool”. The main theme of the rookie contract structure was that the league allowed a player’s cap hit to rise by 25 percent of his first year’s cap hit which, in theory, should have kept rookie salaries in check. But, instead of everything being regulated by round, teams could move the cap numbers that they created for all of their draft picks and focus it towards any pick they wanted to with little consequences. 

With no restrictions on how much money could be in that cap, agents for the top players drafted were able to manipulate the system through player-friendly contract clauses. They would use option bonuses, guaranteed money advances, players voids, buyback, etc. to get even more hypothetical money from beyond the total rookie pool since all of those extra parts of the deal wouldn’t be on the books during that first year of the contract. Technically, through all these clauses, the salary cap hit for year one was still below the 25 percent and under regulation, but the loop holes were so wide that it’s as if there wasn’t any regulation at all.

Now the system is much more structured. Instead of the team being able to relocate their rookie pool cash wherever they please, the total numbers of the deal and years of the contract are all regulated by the league by pick selection. So, this is why when Jameis Winston was drafted in 2015, he wasn’t signing a deal for anywhere near the number Bradford was. However, on the flip side, though these contracts have less negotiation room for the players and agents in terms of total money (basically zero room, really) rookie contracts are now fully guaranteed for their designated duration.

Since the rookie pool is regulated by the league, it flows as the total cash allowed does either up or down. If the league decides to raise each team’s overall salary cap for the next season, the rookie pool salary cap will rise as well relative to the percentage increase. So, with the league raising the salary cap for 2017, expect the rookies in the first round this year (more so in the Top 10) to make a little more money than the guys last year.

Using a formula from Spotrac.com, here’s the projected contracts for each pick this year, regardless of which player or position is being selected at the spot.

Quantifying Contracts

The difference in how rookies get their first professional deals didn’t just change the amount of money they make or where it came from, but it also changed how each NFL team should be looking at the draft with value in mind.

When you talk about contracts, worth, value, all of that, the main indicator of value or desire for an asset lies within the guaranteed money. How much guaranteed money a player and his agent can negotiate and how much of that money a team is willing to sign away right off the bat is pretty much a dead give away for how coveted or valued a player is from both sides – good players can demand guarantees.

Bucs QB Jameis Winston – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

With that in mind and knowing that all rookie contract are fully guaranteed, there is a new element to weigh in the back of each team’s mind that did not exist before this current CBA and that is positional value relative to where they are being picked based off the already set amount of money they are going to receive – I know that was a mouthful, but I’ll explain.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Most of us know the narrative that is being floated around that some people just don’t like the idea of using a first round pick on a running back. In today’s NFL, rushing attacks are becoming more and more by committee with specializing players in situational roles rather than finding a bell cow back who gets 90-95 percent of the team’s carries that year. Plus factoring in that the shelf life for running backs in the NFL is about three years on average, and you might be convinced that you could properly invest value elsewhere with a high pick.

Now, even beyond all that information, now you have to factor in rookie deals. After being picked No. 4 overall in last year’s draft, Cowboys’ running back Ezekiel Elliott has the best running back contract in the entire NFL in terms of security and guaranteed money. Because Elliott was drafted so high, he was given a contract of $24,965,720. Of which $16,347,885 of that came in the from of a signing bonus – but all of it is guaranteed over the course of his also previously structured four-year deal (with a fifth-year option as all first-round picks have). In fact, Elliott is making more than $6.5 million more than the second-best running back contract in the league which belongs to LeSean McCoy. That gap is crazy wide.

Let’s move on to this year. There’s talk that LSU’s Leonard Fournette will be the first running back off the board. Some project him to go as high as No. 4 to match where Elliott went. If Fournette in fact goes No. 4 to the Jacksonville Jaguars, he is estimated to sign a contract totaling $27,030,534, which, again, would give him the best running back contract in the entire league before he even takes one snap.

Something there doesn’t add up. The NFL can say they covet Fournette all they want, but if given the chance to take Fournette or Le’Veon Bell or David Johnson, they’d take the other two before Fournette. But they’re about to pay Fournette more than double whatever those backs making? (And, yes, I know those two are playing on lower deals, but even when they’re re-signed, I doubt their next contract is anything close to the guaranteed money given to a running back taken Top 10.) The NFL seems to be saying one thing with their mouth, but saying the opposite with their wallet.

LSU RB Leonard Fournette – Photo by: Getty Images

Picking a running back anywhere after pick No. 10 would still give them nice contracts, but nothing like overpaying them to be in the Top 10, if selected there. The same can be said with other positions, too. Running back was just once example. Now that the contracts are fully guaranteed, NFL teams still have be carful in who they pick, but in a different way. Now, they’re not worried about it in terms of what they’ll have to potentially negotiate, but rather, what they can’t, and how the position they’re drafting at the money value their being picked at has to line up with how the rest of the league is being paid at that position.

They fact of the matter is, yes, you want to pick the best players in the draft. But, when it comes to value, quarterbacks, pass rushers wide receivers and maybe cornerbacks are the picks you want to make more often than not in the top half of the first round before the money starts to even out. That is, if you want to be getting the most bang for your buck. And that’s not from my mouth, that’s from NFL team’s bank statements. They can tell you one thing, but their paper trail might say another.

Words lie, money doesn’t. The value is there.