Age discrimination is alive in the NFL, and we're not talking about team employees who are 50 or older. Rather, it's the players reaching 30 and beyond who are generally being left behind in the early sprint of big bucks, massive guarantees and long-term free agent signings, especially if such players have an injury history.
One player who surprisingly bucked that trend this week is future Hall of Fame safety Earl Thomas, who is signing with Baltimore for $55 million over four years ($13.75 million per year) with $32 million guaranteed.
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The six-time Pro Bowler had to be grimacing early in the week as he watched a bunch of safeties lacking his pedigree land huge free-agent contracts. Landon Collins led the way, going to the Redskins for six years and $84 million with $44.5 million guaranteed. Tyrann Mathieu agreed to a deal with the Chiefs for the same $14 million per year ($42 million over three years). Lesser-known Adrian Amos is set to receive $37 million over four years from the Packers.
The common denominators among those three players: They are all 25 or 26 and relatively injury-free.
Thomas, on the other hand, will turn 30 in May. After not missing a game in his first six seasons, he wound up on injured reserve with broken legs in two of the last three years. He also sustained other injuries that forced him to miss 19 regular-season games from 2016-18. He had major shoulder surgery in the 2015 offseason that forced him to miss the preseason.
That kind of injury history is scary to a general manager. But for Thomas to emerge with the deal he is receiving from the Ravens has to be encouraging to other players 30 or older who have had difficulty attracting a long-term contract this year.
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I don't like it, since I now work with an NFL agent group, but I understand where NFL GMs are coming from in their general approach to older players such as Michael Bennett, Danny Amendola, Eric Weddle and Terrell Suggs who are signing shorter deals (mostly for two years with low guaranteed money). In my GM years, I always tried to target free-agent players coming out of their rookie deals, as is the case with Collins.
Yes, Nick Foles got a four-year deal in Jacksonville with a $50 million guarantee, and he is three months older than Thomas. But with so many top QBs in their 30s and even 40s, age is not as big a factor for them. And Antonio Brown (who turns 31 in July) somehow managed to extricate himself from Pittsburgh and get $12 million added to his contract, plus $30 million in new guarantees from Oakland. But these are exceptions to the general rule in the NFL.
Thomas now joins that fortunate group.
Thomas was hoping to land with his home-state Cowboys, and he did not reach his reported $15 million-per-year asking price, or even the Collins and Mathieu average per year. But he has to be relieved with what the Ravens are paying him.
If I were a GM negotiating a deal with Thomas, given his injury history, I would have offered closer to $10 million per year between signing bonus and base salary on a two-year deal with big incentives that could get him to the coveted $14 million-per-year level. I would have included $125,000 per game started, which could add $2 million per season and an incentive that combined a Pro Bowl selection with the team making the playoffs for another $2 million.
I suspect that's what Jerry and Stephen Jones were thinking in Dallas, but it is clearly not the structure Thomas or his agent were seeking and ultimately received from a Ravens team needing to add a playmaker on defense after releasing starting safety Weddle (who signed with the Rams) and losing an excellent pass-rusher in Za'Darius Smith (who is signing with Green Bay).
I thought Thomas might wind up with a one-year, prove-it deal similar to what his former Seattle teammate Sheldon Richardson got in Minnesota last season for an $8 million salary. Richardson was productive enough to convince the Browns to sign him this year to a three-year, $36 million deal with $21.5 million guaranteed.
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What makes the amount of the Thomas signing extra surprising to me is how he damaged his reputation with a nasty training camp holdout last summer, plus the bad look he created when he flipped off his own Seattle sideline in September as he was carted off the field after breaking his leg in Arizona.
While Thomas had to wait a few days to get his deal done, there was no need to throw a pity party for him. He has been well paid during his career. He was fortunate to be a highly compensated first-round pick in the last year before the rookie salary scale came into effect. Then he signed the four-year, $40 million extension in 2014 that made him the highest-paid safety in the league at the time.
Still, it had to be unnerving for him to watch other players get paid such huge amounts. He saw less accomplished players such as 25-year-old offensive tackle Trent Brown — basically a one-year success in New England with no Pro Bowls on his resume — hit the jackpot.
Such is life in the NFL for the vast majority of players as they approach and surpass 30, especially with an injury history.
But for Thomas, it wound up being like the old Rolling Stones song: “You can't always get what you want. But you can get what you need." All it takes is one team out of 32 to make it work out.
Jeff Diamond is a former president of the Titans and former vice president/general manager of the Vikings. He was selected NFL Executive of the Year in 1998. Diamond is currently a business and sports consultant who also does broadcast and online media work. He makes speaking appearances to corporate/civic groups and college classes on negotiation and sports business/sports management. He is the former chairman and CEO of The Ingram Group. Follow Jeff on Twitter: @jeffdiamondNFL.
