Earlier this week, in response to renewed questions about the failure of other teams to make an effort to sign quarterback Lamar Jackson to an offer sheet in the offseason, we made the case that it was all about collusion. Some of you said, “Prove it.”
Well, the NFL Players Association is trying to.
Per multiple sources, a collusion grievance filed in November 2022 remains pending. The NFLPA alleges that teams agreed to not make fully-guaranteed contracts available to “certain quarterbacks” after the Browns gave Deshaun Watson a five-year, fully-guaranteed contract in March 2022.
Sworn testimony has been harvested via depositions, we’re told. The list of witnesses who have been questioned isn’t known, but it would make sense to assume that people with knowledge of the courtship, or lack thereof, of Lamar Jackson would have gotten an invitation to the party — including Lamar himself.
Cases like this usually aren’t proven with a smoking gun, because people are smart enough not to admit to collusion or to put the trail of evidence in writing. Circumstantial evidence becomes very important, such as the public complaints by owners made after the Browns gave Watson a fully-guaranteed, $230 million contract.
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the union and the teams agree to certain rules. Terms like the salary cap, the franchise tag, and the draft restrict player movement, but the players have agreed to those devices. If the teams agree among themselves to extra limitations on free enterprise that aren’t specifically permitted by the CBA, that’s when collusion potentially happens.
Although Lamar eventually got a great deal from the Ravens, he could have (and arguably should have) gotten an even better deal, if someone had aggressively pursued him, the way the Browns aggressively pursued Watson. Even though every owner of every team will claim that the goal is to win the Super Bowl, the broader, unspoken goal is to keep the players from having too much power.
If the Watson contract had become a trend and not an aberration, the pendulum would have swung too far to the players for the owners’ liking. Even without proof that the owners affirmatively agreed to refrain from offering fully-guaranteed contracts to veteran franchise quarterbacks, at some point the chronic failure to do so points to one conclusion: They’re doing not what’s best for the individual businesses, but what’s best for the collective business.
And that is collusion.
