It’s no longer a big deal – Austin Corbett, Damion Ratley and Simeon Thomas sign
By Steve King
It used to be a big deal.
A huge deal – more significant than you can describe with words.
To be sure, when the Browns – or any other NFL team – signed any of its picks in the NFL Draft, it was a cause for celebration. No holdouts. They’ll be at training camp on time.
Now, not so much. It’s just a little, no-big-deal note in this day and age, which is the reaction that almost every Browns fan had when the club announced on Sunday that it had signed three of their choices in the recent draft.
The trio includes offensive lineman Austin Corbett, the Nevada product who was the first pick of the second round, at No. 33 overall; and two sixth-rounders in Damion Ratley, a wide receiver from Texas A&M who was taken at No. 175, and Simeon Thomas, a cornerback from Louisiana Lafayette tabbed 13 spots later at 188.
These are the first of the Browns’ nine draft picks to sign, so six more, including the two-first rounders in quarterback Baker Mayfield and cornerback Denzel Ward from Ohio State and Nordonia High School, are still out there.
Don’t worry, none of those guys – including Mayfield and Ward – will be holdouts. It does them no good to do that.
Why? Because, of course, there is a salary cap now. As part of the last Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and the NFL Players Union, there is a pool of money from which all the picks must be made paid, and where a player was selected pretty much determines what those contract details – what that level of play — will be. That’s so the big money can go to the veterans, whose service in the league has earned them the right to make more money than untested rookies. And that’s exactly the way it should be.
As such, these negotiations have all the intrigue of watching C-Span. Wake me when they’re over.
But back in the pre-rookie salary cap days, when there was no cap on what these draft choices could be paid, holdouts of the top picks – even if they lasted just a day or two into training camp — was almost a given. It was a series of high-stakes poker games between teams’ chief negotiators and the picks’ high-powered agents. Neither side was going to blink, ever.
Now those blinks have turned into winks, with both sides agreeing to get a deal done because they have no choice but to do so.
