With millions in one-way contractual commitments about to be made when free agency opens at noon ET, it’s important to keep one thing in mind.
Plenty of the reports regarding the deals reached between players and their new teams may overstate the value of the deals.
It’s part of the dynamic that has unfolded in recent years for “insiders.” Those who will rush to Twitter with the news won’t pause to verify the accuracy of the numbers. Instead, we’ll see a flurry of nearly identical tweets with this structure: "[Player] has reached agreement to sign with [team], per sources. [Name and Twitter handle of agent] negotiated the deal.”
The agent is almost always the unnamed source for such reports, with a two-pronged quid pro quo: (1) mention the agent’s name in the tweet; and (2) pass along the provided information as to the value of the deal without question.
As a result, there will be inflated numbers, because agents use their deals done now to recruit new clients later. The truth about the various deals, which will surface later, doesn’t matter.
And the reporters view as an occupational hazard the possibility of periodically passing bad information onto the audience. For those who choose to allow their Twitter pages to become a collective P.R. tool for the agents who want to trumpet the deals they’ve done to the widest possible crowds, a few bad apples are going to land in the bushel.
Our goal will be to get the real terms of the biggest deals and break them down, with analysis as to the true value. The most important factors are signing bonus, full guarantee at signing, and three-year cash flow. Most all other terms are something the team can avoid if it believes the player has underperformed in the early years of the contract. (If the player has overperformed, or if the market dramatically increases, some teams will shrug and say, “You signed it.”)
Also, plenty of multi-year deals are essentially one-year commitments, with the team able to walk away after the first season. That’s how Sam Darnold’s three-year contract with Seattle was structured, for example.
Regardless, some of the numbers you’ll see over the next two days aren’t real. The problem is it’s not immediately obvious which deals are real, and which are embellished. That’s because, in the early wave of free agency, no one asks — and no one tells.
