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Fraley: NFL teams having trouble signing rookies; are Cowboys in trouble?

11:46 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A generation of smooth dealings with draft choices is about to end for the Cowboys and their NFL partners.

Column by GERRY FRALEY / The Dallas Morning News




With training camps opening this week, league-wide negotiations with top draft picks remain stalled. Of the 64 players taken in the first two rounds of this year's draft, only two second-rounders have signed.

The Cowboys' top two selections – wide receiver Dez Bryant and inside linebacker Sean Lee – are among the mass of unsigned talent. Extended holdouts among these 62 players, including the first 35 selections, are an increasingly real possibility.

"We're always optimistic about getting something done," said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys' chief operating officer and director of player personnel, on Tuesday. "We're going to camp early this year, and there aren't a lot [of contracts] to use for comparison."

The hang-up for all sides?

No one can say for certain when the 2011 season begins.

The salary-cap era included a rookie salary pool. To increase their flexibility with rookies, teams came up with a loophole. Divide the signing bonus into two payments: one for reaching a deal and an option bonus on the first day of the next NFL business year, usually March 1. That bonus did not come out of the rookie pool.

The rookie salary pool remains this season, but everything else has changed in the final and "uncapped" year of the collective-bargaining agreement. With the labor deal expiring after the coming Super Bowl, there is no set starting date for the next NFL business year, and the possibility of a lockout looms.

Teams would like to continue the split bonus payment to rookies. On the other side of the negotiating table, agents do not want a client waiting for a bonus that may not be paid for years.

Mid- and late-round choices have signed at a higher-than-usual pace because their signing bonuses are workable. The Cowboys gave offensive tackle Sam Young, a sixth-round pick, a signing bonus of $110,500.

The money mushrooms with first- and second-round picks. The challenge is to be creative. The fear is of the unknown. No one can say what the new basic agreement will include. A bad deal now could haunt a team.

"The CBA issues are slowing the pace of negotiations some," said agent Eugene Parker, who counts Bryant among his high-profile clients. "It's going to take compromise and creativity to get these deals done."

For nearly 20 years, with or without a salary cap, the Cowboys have done that. Their usual modus operandi has been to get the lower-round picks done early and finish the first- and second-rounders on the opening day of camp. They have not had a first- or second-round pick miss more than two training-camp practices because of a holdout since linebacker Darrin Smith in 1993.

The Cowboys' last extended rookie holdouts came in 1990, when running back Emmitt Smith, wide receiver Alexander Wright and defensive tackle Jimmie Jones all missed a significant portion of training camp. Smith stayed out for 48 days and had resumed work on a degree in public recreation at Florida when he signed less than a week before opening day.

By Game 2, Smith was the starter and on his way to the Hall of Fame. The Cowboys cannot count on Bryant and Lee to repeat that remarkable acceleration. The sooner each is in camp, the more the club can count on him as a rookie.

Bryant needs an extended camp to shake off the rust. He did not play after Sept. 19 last season at Oklahoma State because of lying to the NCAA about his contact with Deion Sanders.

Lee needs an extended camp to learn on the job. Lee will have different obligations, particularly on pass defense, with the Cowboys than he did at Penn State.

With five exhibitions, one more than usual, the Cowboys have the advantage of a longer camp. That means nothing if Bryant and Lee are nowhere to be seen.

Two sides to the story

The slow pace of signings by high draft picks is a consequence of the expiring basic agreement. A look at the positions of the NFL and the National Football League Players Association:

NFL

• Continue to receive $1 billion off the top of total revenue, which was about $8.5 billion last season, to grow the game through endeavors such as stadium construction.

• Receive an additional 17 percent of remaining revenue for "cost credit" to address other issues.

• A return to the salary cap after this uncapped season.

• A rookie wage scale.

NFLPA

• Continue to devote $1 billion from total revenue to help the game grow.

• Rejection of the "cost credits," maintaining they would roll back salaries to the level of 1993.

• Return to salary cap is "virtually impossible," executive director DeMaurice Smith said but not out of the question.

• Willing to discuss a rookie salary scale.
 
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