The myth of "Parity" in the NFL

Salary cap is working for the owners. they have an excuse to cap their offers to players. They aren't gonna change that short of a players strike.

The players union never should've agreed to the current system

 

This 1000%

The cap doesn’t guarantee parity. It just provides a more even playing field…which is WORLDS better than the baseball situation, where there is a HUGE disparity with how much money teams have to spend.

It will ALWAYS come down to being smarter and knowing what you’re doing. Always. You need a GM who knows how to identify talent. You need a coach who knows how to coach up players and play to their strengths. And in this league, you absolutely need a QB. No matter how good the GM or HC are, if you don’t have a QB who is above average, they ain’t gonna win shit.

So it’s those three things.

I fully get that the salary cap is as much about controlling player costs to the owners as it is about parity…no doubt there in my mind.

However, I think the cap system really does serve to provide a more even playing field. That’s it. It’s all you can ask for. But once you have that, then it’s up to the owners to find the right people for the job. And that’s where we have failed over and over and over and over.

I always say that GREAT doesn’t take long to show up. A GREAT QB will show you that inside of 2, maybe 3 years. Same for GREAT HC. Parcells took over a crappy NYG team and had them in the playoffs in 3 years. He did the same to the Pats and to us, where it only took him 2 years. Peyton led the league in interceptions his rookie year but showed promise, and in his second year he arrived. Brady started as a ball control guy and won a Super Bowl right away. GREAT doesn’t take 5 years to develop…it just doesn’t. Sure there are a few players maybe who blossomed a bit later, but for the most part, a GREAT player or HC will show that quickly.

 

Parity only works if all areas of a team are of similar importance - you can't afford to have stars at every position - the problem the NFL has is only one position really matters - the QB - if you have a great QB then it doesn't matter if the rest of the team is only "pretty good" you are still going to get to the playoffs and have success

Taking out one off teams, which can always be a bit of a fluke - look at who you have listed:

• Patriots 1996, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 - Brady
• Steelers 1995, 2005, 2008, 2010 - Big Ben
• Colts 2006, 2009 - Manning
• Broncos 1997, 1998, 2013, 2015 - Elway and Manning
• Chiefs 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 - Mahomes
• Ravens 2000, 2012 - Flacco - this is the one team that's had consistent success without an elite QB

All these teams had elite QBs (aside from the Ravens) on their roster.

The only way you will get parity in the NFL is to either:

• make rule changes so the QB is less critical (instead of making changes that have made it all about the QB)
• institute a rule that means QBs cannot be franchise tagged and cannot be signed to long term deals

Without that salary caps are largely pointless and the draft only helps if you manage to get lucky and land a franchise QB

 

Good post, just one small correction as 2000 was Dilfer.

 

It's funny in soccer as they have tried to introduce a similar concept to the salary cap called Financial Fair Play (FFP) which basically means teams cannot spend more than they earn - this is intended to ensure that they remain financially viable and don't go bust (because it isn't a closed shop like the NFL and revenues in the top league can be 100 times that in lower leagues teams were spending insane amounts of money to get promoted or to try and stay in the top league because if they get relegated often it means they cannot survive.

However it just doesn't work and all that has happened is the "big clubs" become almost insurmountable as they have the most revenue (from TV rights mostly) and so have the most money to spend so have the most success so have the most revenue etc etc and so other teams cannot challenge them as even if (like Newcastle) they have money to spend they are not allowed to spend it as they don't have as much revenue as the clubs that have been at the top for years.

 

cheers -also in 1995 O'Donnell was the QB for the Steelers but I didn't want to get too bogged down - but it is still crazy to see how much difference the QB makes to what is supposed to be a "team" sport - if you don't have a great QB then basically you're screwed and if you do then you're likely to have success, maybe not win a SB but at the least make the playoffs

 

Both of these things right here. 100%. It is definitely there to do two things, one of which is a bigger priority for the NFL: keep most of the money with the owners and not the players. But if we think for one second that the owners aren't on board with a salary cap for competitive purposes as well, so that Green Bay and Jacksonville and the like can compete with New York and Los Angeles, then we are being naïve. In a sport where management, scouting, and of course a top quarterback make all the difference, you have to give everybody the opportunity to at least take advantage of that.

The huge difference is that without a salary cap teams will spend here and there when they have a shot like the Padres have over the past couple of years in baseball. Within a few years, the Padres will be back to bottom feeders again because they can't compete with the bigger teams. Heck, they're already trading guys that they can't or won't afford to pay. The Yankees will always have a chance, even if they aren't winning. The Mets, well they are kind of like the Jets, they have no chance. Hell, they set records for single-season salary records twice over the past 30 years and had disastrous losing seasons both times.

But I'm digressing. The salary cap accomplishes every team having an even playing field and then being smart enough to hire the right people from there. Having no salary cap makes it much more difficult.

Let's not also forget that the only sport without a salary cap has dropped to third in popularity after being first by a wide margin for a century. Baseball was woven into the fabric of nearly everything in the country, and it's essentially dropped off the map in the last 30 years because people have gotten fed up with the labor disputes. Baseball's players union is so strong that it won every battle, but lost the war.

 

FFP was really dumb because it was a salary cap where the big market teams were given more to spend than the small market teams.

 

I could propose literally anything that's not currently in place and say there's no evidence to suggest that it won't bring about more parity. But the more important thing is that regardless of whether getting rid of the cap would or wouldn't bring about more parity, you're misrepresenting the point of the cap. It was never supposed to bring about parity in the sense of fewer dominant teams. It was supposed to give all the teams a chance to win on the merits, which it's done. The Chiefs being perennial winners and the Jets being perennial losers is what should happen when the Chiefs are run by the smartest people in the league, and the Jets are run by the dumbest.

 

the more you look at it the more it just seemed like a mechanism for the big clubs to make it incredibly difficult for anyone to usurp them - Newcastle has the richest owners in soccer but can't buy anyone as they don't have enough revenue to justify the spending (for the time being at least)

 

but it's not really a function of being "smart" it is a function of being lucky and landing a true franchise QB - yes the Chiefs did a good job of assessing Mahomes and took the risk to go up and get him but lots of supposedly smart well run teams have moved up to get QBs and they haven't panned out

the Jets are badly run but worse than that they are unlucky.

 

Luck plays a role too, but it plays a role whether there's a cap or not. Also the Chiefs were good even before they got Mahomes. They made the payoffs as a wild card in 2013 and 2015, and they won the division in 2016 and 2017, all with Alex Smith at QB.

 

Interesting…I don’t follow soccer much but without knowing anything about it, that rule just seems extremely stupid and totally rigged to keep the top teams at the top

But then, I guess it’s just one of many stupid rules that I find in soccer

 

I can only speak for myself, but my interpretation is that no one is trying to explain that to you. What we're doing is explaining why that is not the concern. You're more than welcome to continue to stick to that point and not consider the many good points that have been brought up by people in this thread if you wish.

 

Small market teams like the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Packers, etc. are good.

 

Exactly, that's the only reason we have a 7 seed in both conferences now. If we didn't have that, the Jets would have been mathematically eliminated shortly after Thanksgiving most likely. That extra playoff spot allowed us to limp on for another couple of weeks.

 

That is definitely not the only reason. The real reason, much more so than keeping fans interest into December which gambling and fantasy football accomplish, is the money generated by the extra games and the networks that pay to air them.