Well, let's see. If the Jags don't offer him a contract, I believe he becomes a UFA. So they have to offer him something. They only have so many days to sign him. Being the 3rd pick, they are pretty much stuck on what they can pay him. Making the contract guaranteed does not hurt the Jags in the salary cap in anyway. Making a possible star player happy is good business. He is at the moment the 12th highest paid player on the Jags. Making the first contract of the top draft picks guaranteed is not that far fetched. Blake Bortles is. Anthoney Barrs is. Odell Beckhams is. It's a common practice at this time to do it for top draft picks. This is nothing special.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000350347/article/2014-nfl-draft-firstround-signing-tracker
Well, those last 3 names you mentioned did not blow out an ACL and slated to miss 1/4 of the term of the contract
before a fully guaranteed contract was even signed.
You rightly note the Jags were somewhat hamstrung in terms of options. That's beside the point. You seem to recognize that the CBA guaranteed that he'd get a total contract value in that area. The total value of the contracts and signing bonuses drop in fairly regular increments as we move down from the top of the draft board. Fowler was bound to get that $15.3 mil signing bonus, plus or minus some very small amount, as fully guaranteed money, no matter what the Jags might want to do.
It's only that the rest of the deal was guaranteed is surprising, and sidesteps the broader point.
Whether the guarantee was $15.3 mil or $23.5 mil, that kind of money being guaranteed
before a contract is signed, with the pending hire having a serious temporary (if not permanent) disability, is rare on this planet and may be entirely unique.
Football players have short careers. So do movie actresses; nobody defends the seeming unfairness except other movie actresses. Roofers, garbage men, coal miners, et. al., work in dangerous professions or ones where there is are high disability rates at relatively young ages. They might get workers comp; maybe not.
When a football player has already pocketed something like $50 mil, has a contract to play for over $13 mil for the next year even if it is not guaranteed, and said player won't come to OTAs without a renegotiated deal with guarantees, that does not surprise me, and quite frankly I can't blame him. Business is business and negotiating can be hardball. What I don't understand is how any fan would
sympathize with said player's "plight".
There are kids on practice squads who get paid relative peanuts, work week-to-week without any guarantee and could be out of the league at any time, and might not even be able to read, as the adults around them looked the other way, pushing them through schools so they could play their sport while convincing them it was all OK. I might feel bad for one of those kids regarding his lifelong earnings prospects, depending on his personal circumstance, but certainly not Adrian Peterson or Dante Fowler.
