Three League Veteran Trends - An Opinion Piece With No Metrics
Veterans Market Collapse
Before we entered the 2010 draft, 18 of the 32 teams in the league were in a cap position with less than $10m in space. 5 of those 18 are actually in the red and will have to address this. All of this is before elements such as signing rookies, post-draft free agency and veteran minimum contracts. This cap crunch has seen the value of veterans plummet. For a variety of reasons, there are a number of veterans bouncing around the league with salaries excluding bonus that just cannot fit into the current cap situation for over half of the league.
It used to be that hot seat teams were natural suitors for veterans, looking for win-now players to provide short-term solutions to the GM's contractual pressures. This meant for decent mid-draft value, teams could move talented veterans on to teams who saw spending a 4th rounder on a regressing but talented player as excellent value to fix their pending problems. But player contract demands rarely align with the reality of the league. Veterans attract larger contracts on average due to the way contracts are calculated and that invaribly means contracts start to get towards $10M plus bonus for a season by the time they start regressing.
While we're seeing a cap crunch, we're also seeing a glut of the first generation of players for SFL starting to hit regression which is also flooding the market, as teams look to shed regressing players faster than the players themselves are retiring. In the end, these players who once provided win-now capacity for a reasonable price, are no longer viable as the teams likely to take them are not willing to sink a large proportion of their remaining cap space into handling their burgeoning contracts. The bottom to the veteran market has dropped and only when these players are offered for a "Best Offer", often resulting in a trade value of a 6th or 7th round pick it can be hard for some GMs to reconcile with. But as they say, it's better to get something than nothing at all and getting a 7th round pick is still better than sending your once proud veteran starter to free agency without any form of compensation.
Except One Veteran Market
The exception to the rule are quarterbacks. Unlike other positions, a veteran quarterback is spun gold for a team. Key attributes like awareness and throwing accuracy can make or a break a season by simply being 5 points apart. And with half the league currently either on the hot seat or within one losing season of being on it, there is literally no appetite for people to invest in the development of a young quarterback. There are literally multiple seasons of pain for a team that chooses to develope a quarterback into a winning starter and general managers just do not have seasons to spend on such an endeavour. On a rare occassion, a low awareness quarterback can be supported by their team and find success (such as the San Diego Chargers with a rookie Brady Quinn making the Super Bowl in 2007) but you cannot keep the ball out of a quarterbacks hands all season and eventually a GM is going to have to hope they do not screw up too badly.
Of all the positions, quarterback seems to be the one position that almost has an on-off switch to being good. Unlike any other position, no physical attributes can offset a lack of awareness (such as an athletic freak cornerback can makeup for a rookie's awareness). Combined with the current hot seat situation, veteran quarterbacks will continue to be moved each offseason.
We are approaching a nexus though in this situation. There is only so long the OG quarterbacks of the SFL are going to stick around. It is a finite resource and the league is heading to a situation where the best rated quarterbacks in the league will be a handful that have been started by teams since their they were rookies and a decent collection of quarterbacks that are 2-3 seasons of full progression behind where they should be because teams bitterly held onto their veteran QB and started them for a higher chance of a winning sesaon and keeping their jobs safe. The landscape we see as this happens will be very interesting indeed.
All Good Things Come To An End
The first era of the SFL is starting to come to an end. We've already seen the veterans of the SFL 2002 season disappear and we're now starting to see the rookies of that season begin to move into veteran and retirement phase. The league's leaders are all now players that have been recruited through SFL drafts. Sure, a large portion of starting quarterbacks are original era players but even those are starting to face the mortality of their careers. What will it mean for the league? I believe there will be a dynamic shift in players within the league. The reliance of long standing talented players who helped kickstart the league will have to be dropped. But behind those players is a much diverse generation of players that were competing for starting spots with first era players and as such a greater quanity of them haven't had the game time to progress.
Will this more diverse group create a downward trend in player talent? Unlikely. As teams begin to lose their long-standing starters to regression, cap pressure and retirement, I suspect a large proportion of them will bootstrap those positions from the draft. I believe the third era of players from the next 2-3 seasons of draft will create a wave of players very similar to the first era as teams are forced to actually start these new players from their first game to their last because there is no existing option as an alternative.
As these first era players begin to fade from the rosters of teams, I would expect the cap crunch to ease slightly because the average level of talent in the second era of players just isn't the same as the first era as the first era players kept a number of second era players out of starting roles. With a lower average talent comes with it a lower average contractual cost. Players will still attract overpriced salaries through UFA, but that's how it will always work. But teams will be filled more with younger third era players who, on average, will demand a smaller average contract in their formative years.
Of course...
Of course, the above is all finger-in-the-air, off-the-cuff musings of someone just paying subjective attention to the league's veteran status. The above could also be complete malarky and be proven wrong in a very short period of time. Either way, as the first era of SFL comes to a close, it's going to make for a very interesting a dynamic new era for the league.
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