Things could get messy as players get their lawyers involved to see how the NFL owners colluding to keep guaranteed contracts down may have impacted their wallets.
Years after an investigation into whether the NFL colluded against players to keep guaranteed contracts down, and despite the NFL and NFLPA‘s best interest to keep the results of the investigation from going public, we are now learning that the evidence showed there was, at the very least, an attempt at collusion. As some players have started looking into their legal options, it’s encouraging that the Eagles probably won’t be caught up in this given comments made recently by Jalen Hurts’ agent, Nicole Lynn.
Lynn recently spoke about how the quarterback was concerned with the structure of his big-money deal, and how it would affect his teammates. QB1 was specifically focused on how his contract would affect the salary cap and how the team would still be able to pay all of the talented players around him. Lynn explained that Hurts even wanted her to detail how the contract was structured before finalizing the deal.
The alleged collusion among owners goes back to the Browns signing Deshaun Watson to a fully guaranteed deal in 2022, and how it affected all the QBs looking for new deals afterward. The idea that the NFL owners were colluding against players earning more guaranteed money was perhaps the most obvious as Lamar Jackson negotiated with the Ravens on a new deal in 2023.
Jackson has consistently been one of the best quarterbacks in the league, and with Watson’s deal setting a new precedent, he asked Baltimore for more guaranteed money. As the Ravens let Jackson explore the idea of signing with another team, surprisingly — and in what became one of the biggest pieces of evidence of collusion — few teams were interested.
As Jackson was trying to gain leverage against the Ravens, the Eagles were working with Nicole Lynn to lock up Jalen Hurts for the foreseeable future. Hurts signed his new contract in April 2023, inking a 5-year, $255 million deal with nearly $180 million guaranteed. Hurts ended up setting a new bar in his own right, and Jackson later re-signed with Baltimore on a 5-year, $260 million deal with nearly $185 million guaranteed.
The Hurts deal was one of the first big quarterback contracts signed after the Browns guaranteed Watson‘s entire contract. And while the Eagles QB was the highest paid NFL player at the time, the guaranteed percentage was much lower than Watson’s amount. But that lower guarantee is also what allowed the team to structure the cap with enough space to still pay all of his teammates .
