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How restricted free agents work


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And thus why Michael Turner will be a 1st & 3rd round tender - I would suspect SD will tender an offer to him in the range of $2.5M to make sure that another team doesn't vulture him and to set the bar on his trade value high, and then make a sign-and-trade move for a high to middle second rounder for him.

 

It would have been nice if the article would have had some discussion of poison pills, since they are usually a motivating factor in a significant amount of RFA movement.

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agreed, it was more geared toward the Bills example, which was interesting in itself. They can effectively move up and get a better pick than they used to trade for the guy in their example.

 

The Hutchinson stuff with the Vikes would be cool to hear about as well.

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The Hutchinson stuff with the Vikes would be cool to hear about as well.

 

 

 

Ahhhh, the classic "poison pill" signing by MIN.

 

MIN made a serious commitment when it went after Hutchinson. Hutchinson was a RFA with SEA and MIN decided that he would be an intergral part of their O-line, so they signed Hutchinson to an offer sheet. The offer was $49M with a $16M signing bonus, the largest guaranteed bonus ever offered to an O-lineman to that date.

 

Here's the kicker, though, and the really intriguing part: MIN set up the contract such that if Hutchinson wan't the highest paid O-lineman on the team, a clause in the contract would kick in and make the ENTIRE $49M guaranteed - which would be the largest guaranteed sum ever paid to any player by a large, large margin (about 50% more than Peyton Manning got in guaranteed money with his huge contract).

 

That was the "poison pill" - SEA would have to match MIN's offer exactly or Hutch goes to MIN. And the problem that SEA had was that Walter Jones was under contract for a substantial sum for the foreseeable future. That means if SEA would have matched the tender by MIN, it also meant that Hutchinson's contract with SEA would have had to exceed Jones'.

 

There's no way SEA could have committed that much cap space to 2 O-linemen. They had no choice but to let Hutchinson go, despite how much they wanted to keep him. They even appealed to the NFL to overturn the tender because of its guaranteed structure, but the NFL ruled in MIN's favor & upheld the offer.

 

Now SEA later tried a little intrigue themselves, by offering nate Burleson of MIN a "poison pill" type of contract, which many figured was driven as much by revenge against MIN as it was a desire to acquire Burleson. Of course, MIN let Burleson go and SEA hasn't exactly reaped the rewards from the Burleson signing as MIN has from the Hutchinson signing. But don't think the bad taste in SEA's mouth is going to go away soon - people in the NFL have very long memories for this kind of thing...

 

Who says contracts & FA signings can't be great fun to watch play out?

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Well, considering they banned "poison pills", this should be slightly less interesting than anticipated. It did, however, make me feel like walking through the Vikings front office with a shotgun, before using it on Steve Hutchinson and ultimately myself. Thanks for bringing back the great memories.

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Well, considering they banned "poison pills", this should be slightly less interesting than anticipated.

 

 

Please elaborate.

 

link

 

Thus, they would have triggered the "poison pill" clause immediately, and would have been forced, by NFL rules, to guarantee Hutchinson's entire salary. Since doing so would have destroyed their salary cap, they could not match the offer. Moreover, since they only used their transition tag, rather than naming Hutchinson a franchise player, they received no compensation from Minnesota for their loss. Seattle retaliated, though, by signing Minnesota wide receiver Nate Burleson to an offer sheet containing a similar ploy. These contracts prompted criticism of the legality of this maneuver, but no action has been taken to ban such clauses from contracts.

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Well, considering they banned "poison pills", this should be slightly less interesting than anticipated.

 

 

When/How did they ban them?

 

It did, however, make me feel like walking through the Vikings front office with a shotgun, before using it on Steve Hutchinson and ultimately myself. Thanks for bringing back the great memories.

 

 

Just yourself will suffice. :D

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Well, considering they banned "poison pills", this should be slightly less interesting than anticipated. It did, however, make me feel like walking through the Vikings front office with a shotgun, before using it on Steve Hutchinson and ultimately myself. Thanks for bringing back the great memories.

 

 

THe poison pill was the idea of Hutchinson's agent. I'm not sure why they were motivated to do that. I was also disappointed in the new idea of a poison pill and that it could work against the Vikes more than help them in this one situation.

 

As far as Burleson, the Vikes gave them a minimum tender that practically sealed his fate.

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