As we close the book on another year in the business of the NFL, there is, as always, no shortage of topics demanding our attention. Here are my Top 10 Business of Football stories from the world’s more profitable and popular sports league in 2022.
1. Deshaun Watson’s discipline
The first major disciplinary matter since the new CBA revised the league’s personal conduct policy involved Watson, one of the league’s young stars, and his lawsuits stemming from accounts of sexual harassment and assault toward dozens of massage therapists over a 17-month span. Initial discipline was meted out by an arbiter jointly selected by the NFL and NFLPA, former judge Sue Robinson, making commissioner Roger Goodell only the “executioner” without also being judge and jury. Robinson termed Watson’s behavior “egregious” and even “predatory” but applied only a six-game suspension due to her view of the behavior as “non-violent.” Goodell exercised his appeal right to—wait for it—himself, and handpicked an appeal officer to apply harsher discipline. That appeal officer, however, never ruled, as a settlement of an 11-game suspension was reached. Although Watson was unrepentant in accepting the punishment, the league relented in pushing for the entire year (or more), perhaps just wanting to put this yearlong bad news cycle, complete with more than 50 settled civil lawsuits (between cases settled by the Texans and those settled by Watson), behind them.
2a. Deshaun Watson’s deal
The player described above signed the largest, most secure and strongest contract in NFL history, and it’s not even close. The title of “best contract in the NFL” does not go to Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, etc.; it goes to Watson. And as I have said before, due, in large part, to his own misbehavior. The fact that the Texans did not want Watson on their team created the perfect storm: Houston prequalified teams that would trade three first-round draft picks, and then those teams—the Panthers, Falcons, Saints and Browns—bid for Watson’s services. The Browns were originally out, and Watson had narrowed it to the Falcons and Saints. And then voila: The Browns were not only not out, but got him. Seeing the contract, we know why: the most guaranteed money ever ($230 million), the first fully guaranteed contract for a veteran of more than three years, and its $45 million bonus was not subject to forfeiture for a suspension that was sure to come. Even after the 11-game suspension, Watson pocketed $45.365 million in 2022, a staggering amount for a month and a half of games.
2b. Impact of Watson’s deal
From the moment the Browns and Watson inked that deal, the biggest question in the business of NFL player contracts was this: Would the Watson contract be precedent, at least for top-tier quarterbacks, or would it be an outlier, an aberration, as owners would certainly argue? To this point, the answer has clearly been the latter. There have been three quarterback extensions since the Watson contract, and all three—Derek Carr’s, Kyler Murray’s and Russell Wilson’s—have reverted to the traditional owner-friendly structure of NFL contracts, with only the early years of long-term contracts guaranteed (two or three years at most) and then all risk shifted to the player. The owners’ cry of “Outlier!” regarding the Watson contract, allowing them to avoid putting future guarantees in escrow as the Browns had to do, has been so loud that it drew an NFLPA grievance this month as they look for the smoking gun of teams colluding to avoid a Watson precedent. For now, however, Watson is not precedent, only an aberration. Unless…
3. Lamar’s lament
In negotiating his own contract without an agent, Lamar Jackson certainly could have—and probably did—argue that compared to Watson he was much more (1) productive, (2) healthy and (3) successful. And Jackson, unlike the agents for the three quarterbacks mentioned above, appeared to hold firm to demanding the Watson contract be precedent for him. Those arguments got him nowhere with the team, as they held to the outlier claim. Jackson shut down negotiations and said he would bet on himself. The problem for him, of course, is that NFL superstars who want to bet on themselves on the open market must also contend with the franchise tag. Jackson, with or without a traditional agent, appears stuck, a victim of the system and owners refusing to acknowledge precedent from the Watson contract. If the Ravens prevail here, Watson’s deal looks like it will fall in line with what the owners keep saying: an outlier.
4. Snyder’s end of days?
The hits kept coming for Dan Snyder, as the bill is coming due for decades of presiding over (and reportedly participating in) a toxic and misogynistic workplace. There was (1) a congressional investigation and scathing report; (2) another NFL investigation, after the report for the first one got buried; (3) a lawsuit from the Washington, D.C., attorney general; (4) a call for his ouster by Colts owner Jim Irsay and, perhaps most importantly, (5) zero traction for public stadium funding from either D.C., Maryland or Virginia. As I have said, the NFL is not going to vote him out; it doesn’t want to be in litigation for years to come. But he may well be “Sarvered”: my phrase for the NBA’s coordinated campaign to remove Suns and Mercury owner Robert Sarver who, coincidentally, was given the same discipline by the NBA that Snyder was by the NFL for the same misbehavior: presiding over a toxic and misogynistic workplace. The Commanders’ better-than-expected performance on the field has certainly helped Snyder; whatever he is paying coach Ron Rivera is not enough. Snyder is “exploring options” with reports he will sell; I’ll believe it when I see it.
5. New market for wide receivers
The top of the wide receiver market experienced a surge unlike any other position in 2022. The uptick began with a couple of “trade-and-sign” contracts for Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill. They moved from the Packers to the Raiders and the Chiefs to the Dolphins, respectively, for new contracts approaching $25 million per year, an echelon below only quarterbacks and a few defensive linemen. Then two more veterans approached that number: the Jaguars’ Christian Kirk, through free agency, and the Rams’ Cooper Kupp, through an extension. Then in April, the most impactful “trade and sign” of the year occurred: The Titans traded A.J. Brown, and the Eagles made him the first player still on a rookie contract to reach that plateau. Once that happened, three more receivers from Brown’s ’19 rookie class—DK Metcalf, Terry McLaurin and Deebo Samuel—all inked remarkably similar extensions mirroring that of Brown. While other skill positions—tight end and running back, for example—remain stagnant or are losing value, the top-tier wide receiver market exploded this year.
6. Broncos busting franchise value
The long-awaited sale of the Broncos resulted in the biggest check ever written to the league. The team was sold to Rob Walton, he of the Walmart family, for $4.65 billion, more than double the price of the previous sale of an NFL team, that of the Panthers to Dave Tepper for $2.275 billion in 2018. Walton is now the NFL’s wealthiest owner; Tepper is second, and in third place is Walton’s brother-in-law Stan Kroenke. Walton soon doubled down on the investment by rewarding Russell Wilson with a shiny new contract, an investment that has certainly not paid Walmart-like dividends. The Broncos, who just fired their coach before the end of his first season on the job, became both the NFL’s most valuable franchise and most disappointing team in the same year.
7. Bills’ and Titans’ stadium subsidies
Player contracts, even the most lucrative ones such as Watson’s, are couch-cushion money compared to what NFL owners receive from the public to build stadiums. With the leverage of an unspoken (or even spoken) threat to move the team, NFL owners are able to squeeze state and local municipalities to provide hundreds of millions to have their teams stay put. This year the Bills first set a new NFL record for public funding when they received a commitment for a staggering $850 million of stadium funding: $600 million from the state of New York and $250 million from Erie County. Later in the year, the Titans zoomed past that record; they will receive $500 million from the city of Nashville and another $760 million from revenue bonds to help build a new stadium. The teams are receiving massive stadium subsidies while their franchise values skyrocket with future profit going nowhere near the municipalities. It is an incredible business model: socialize cost; privatize profit.
8. Tom Brady’s wild ride
Soon after the 2021 season, ESPN reported that Brady would retire. The next day, the quarterback avoided the topic on his podcast. The day after that, he retired. Forty days later, he unretired. It was then revealed that—apparently unbeknownst to his employer, the Buccaneers—there was a plan for Brady and coach Sean Payton to go to the Dolphins, a plot foiled by the Brian Flores lawsuit filed against the NFL and Dolphins on Feb. 1. Brady reluctantly returned to the Bucs, albeit with a training camp hiatus. Oh, and he also signed a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox to broadcast NFL games whenever he decides to retire (without unretiring). And if that wasn’t enough, his endorsement of crypto exchange FTX came under scrutiny as that house of cards has collapsed, with Brady now a defendant in a couple of lawsuits. After 20 years of being muted living in the Land of Belichick, Brady is making up for lost time.
9. Rams’ implosion
I know, I know: They won a Super Bowl. I hear that every time I bring this up, as people say it was worth it. But is it really? The Rams, at 5–10, seem a shell of the team that won the Super Bowl 10 months ago, ravaged not only by injury but by declining performances of several players. And L.A. didn’t just go all in last year; it doubled down with top-of-market extensions this offseason for Matthew Stafford, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp. The Rams’ first-round draft pick, a likely top-10 pick, will go to the Lions as continuing compensation for Stafford. And although Baker Mayfield has given them a spark, they are contractually committed to Stafford, the league’s highest-paid player in 2022, for at least two more seasons. Yes, they won a Super Bowl, but there is such a fine line in these things, as they were a dropped interception from losing to the 49ers in the playoffs. The salary cap aftermath of this strategy not only bit them this year, but will do so for years to come.
10. YouTube in the fold
One of last year’s top stories was the completion of NFL media deals for a staggering cumulative number of $110 billion from Fox/ESPN/CBS/NBC/Amazon. There then remained only one still piece of the media puzzle: Sunday Ticket, a package being vacated by DirecTV. While Amazon was in the bidding, I sensed they would not be awarded the package: The NFL already has them in the fold on Thursday nights. The winner? Google, owner of YouTube TV, where the games will be shown. Google will pay $2 billion a year that could reach $2.5 billion a year depending on performance of the product. The NFL is now set with its most important partnerships for continued prosperity and profitability; it has decade-long labor and media deals, both extremely owner-friendly. These are salad days for NFL owners.
Looking ahead to 2023, there will undoubtedly be a new disciplinary case to focus on; new contracts for Lamar Jackson (or not), Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert; a new positional reset in the marketplace; and certainly new challenges in the NFL’s quest to continue the revenue pump going through daily and weekly controversies regarding officiating, gambling, concussions and more. The league has become, in many ways, too big to fail, as business booms no matter what the topic du jour may be.
The business of the NFL always wins.
