The NFL is gonna have to fix FA and the Cap. This can't last.

Someone mentioned the other day that Gurley, Goff and Donald, just those three players, will consume a third of the cap in the not too distant future. That kind of concentration can work in the NBA, but not in the NFL. NBA teams typically max out at 15 players, and it's CW that you need three superstars to make a run at the Title. The CW doesn't always work out, of course, but that's the theory. In the NFL, however, you need a lot more than that, with 22 starters and 31 bench/ST guys to deal with. At the very least, NFL teams are going to weaken the quality of their rosters if they have that kind of steep hierarchy and concentration of available assets targeted for so few.

The theory of a "growing pie" doesn't hold up, either. It's simply not growing fast enough to keep up with higher and higher player salaries. As mentioned before, I'd definitely rather see the players making the bucks than the boys in suits, and would love to see greater equality all the way down to rank and file staff, but this just isn't sustainable. Agents are going to kill the Golden Goose, as they keep resetting "the market," which is a fiction, btw. There is no such thing. It's arbitrary, highly contingent and conditional, and changes with the wind. Studies have shown that the end result of business deals are different depending upon time of day, what the actors eat, drink, how much sleep they get, etc. etc.

Anyway . . . I don't know the answer, but I'm guessing it would help to extend the years a bit that a team can hold onto its draft picks, and get rid of the various levels. I think a five-year range is better, with no "restricted," "sub-restricted," "son of restricted" levels in the mix. Do your five years and then your free. Something like that. I'd also set up hard ratio rules that teams have to meet . . . limiting the gap between top and bottom player-salaries, and tie the entire cap to league revenues/profits as they do in the NBA.

Again, I just don't see this as sustainable if they don't do something, and I want my team to be able to concentrate on playing the game, not finessing the roster due to arbitrary "market" forces.


Thoughts?