Everyone who follows football around these parts is feeling bad for Texans’ TE Owen Daniels, who blew out an ACL in this past Sunday’s game against Buffalo. He is done for the remainder of the season.
At the time of the injury, Daniels was having the best season of his four-year career and was leading NFL tight ends in receiving yardage.
But what is really bad about Daniels’ situation is that he and his agent rolled the dice and rejected the Texans’ offer of at least $15 million in guaranteed money for signing a multi-year contract before the beginning of this season. As a result, Daniels is playing this season under a one-year club tender called for by the collective bargaining agreement that pays him $2.8 million.
Daniels and his agent apparent rationale in rejecting the offer was that the Texans were low-balling in comparison to what other first-tier tight ends have received over the past couple of seasons. So, they decided that Daniels should take the risk of injury and play well this season so that, after the season, he could force the Texans either to match a higher offer from another team or let him go to the higher bidder.
But given the high risk of injury in the NFL, how could Daniels and his agent leave at least $12.2 million on the negotiating table? What were they thinking?
Now, Daniels will probably not be able to a complete season at full strength until the 2011 season. And there is no certainty that another lucrative offer will be awaiting him then even if he fully recovers from the injury and plays well.
I don’t like the NFL compensation system. I believe it is far too highly-regulated. The system wrongly prevents the players who endure terrible physical risk and create most of the wealth for the owners from offering their services to the highest bidder.
But what I like even less is muddled thinking that results in a huge financial loss for a talented young man such as Daniels.
I agree that the NFL compensation system is too highly regulated, but those distortions are largely caused by the demands of the player’s union.
Two years ago, Tony Gonzalez signed a 5 year deal worth $35 million, $17 million of which is guaranteed. With the economy the way it is, league revenue (to my knowledge) isn’t high enough to justify a salary package to Owen Daniels that is much more that that given to Tony Gonzalez. It would seem that Daniels received soem very bad advice from his agent and is not paying the price.
Contrast the situation Daniels is in with those of Sam Bradford this year, Matt Leinart a few years ago and Ricky Williams back in his Master P days. Each of these players took risks and paid dearly for them.
Football is a business. Owen Daniels made a bad business decision. Its that plain and simple. I don’t feel sorry for him. Business is business and he screwed up.
Charles, I agree that the NFL players union has not done a good job of mitigating the anti-trust methods that the NFL owners have used over the years to hold down player salaries. The players would likely do better without the union and simply enforce anti-trust laws against the anti-competitive NFL compensation system.
I feel sorry for Daniels because the obvious nature of his poor business decision reflects that he and his agent did not understand how to hedge the high injury risk. I suspect that such inferior business risk analysis is a product of the anti-competitive nature of the NFL compensation system.