If players want to represent themselves that’s their business. Even if it can be bad business.
The two players at the leading edge of the he-man-agent-haters club, Russell Okung and Richard Sherman, not only decided to handle their own contracts but also to proselytize that other players should do the same. Both, in their initial forays into self-negotiated deals (Okung with the Broncos and Sherman with the 49ers), did not do well.
Others have, like Bobby Wagner. Also, Lamar Jackson eventually got a market-value deal without having to give one, two, or three percent to an agent. (Various other players pretend to represent themselves, while essentially being represented by someone who is not properly certified by the NFL Players Association.)
Jackson’s contract has an average value of $52 million. It contains, however, $750,000 in annual bonuses from 2024 through 2027. He must participate in at least 80 percent of the voluntary workouts to get the money. This year, he didn’t. The money won’t be earned.
This raises a few fair questions. Did he know he’d have to be all-in for the offseason program to get that money? Did he want to hinge $3 million in total revenue to those payments? And could a good agent have gotten the Ravens to give Jackson the money without insisting on a sizable carrot for showing up to the April-to-June sessions?
Then there’s the question of whether Jackson realized he’d lose the money if he didn’t show up for at least 80 percent of the workouts. A good agent’s job would have been to make sure he knows — especially since an agent making the maximum three-percent fee would have had $22,500 riding on it.
If a good agent could have gotten the Ravens to ditch the workout bonuses, that would have gone a long way toward paying the agent’s fees. With $32.5 million in 2024 compensation, $750,000 equates to 2.3 percent of his total pay.
Based on the full contractual value of $52 million per year, the lost workout bonus counts as 1.4 percent of the 2024 portion of it.
If he doesn’t earn any of the workout bonuses under the contract, Jackson will lose $3 million. That counts as 1.153 percent of the full $260 million contract.
If Jackson could have gotten an agent to agree to represent him in exchange for a fee of one percent — and if that agent had been able to funnel the $3 million in workout-bonus money into base salary or option/offseason roster bonuses, the agent’s fees would have been covered.
With an extra $400,000 to spare.
