Inevitably, at some point before the July 15 deadline, the Giants and Saquon Barkley will come to some kind of agreement on a contract or a tender. Barkley is more valuable to the Giants’ brand than the average running back, and the Giants’ desire to be the kind of place that keeps likable, highly drafted folks around for as long as possible is also above average.
On Barkley’s end, being a working running back with an above-average paycheck is better than being a Le’Veon Bell–like curiosity—someone who ultimately never recovered from an optics standpoint for sitting out an entire season in protest of the draconian franchise tag rules. Bell also got incredibly lucky from a financial standpoint, given his disadvantageous position, finding a desperate Jets club intent on bidding against itself. Barkley would have no such suitor.
As a football-viewing public going for this familiar ride, it’s a bit tiresome to watch the performance again. It’s formulaic, like a horror movie in which we are sure the protagonists will venture into the dangerous, dimly lit attic against all laws of common sense before somehow finding their way out. Someone from the team side leaks a “generous” offer that was turned down to embarrass the player or paint him as greedy. The player publicly stands his ground and pretends there is somewhere else he’d rather be, like moving his family and setting up a new life infrastructure is something he’d do for fun. Then, as the deadline approaches, we magically forget about the animosity of the previous months and all is well when the 11th-hour pact is reached. Unless it isn’t.
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While these machinations have a purpose—a general manager has a responsibility to their ownership to financially maximize each player, while a player has a responsibility to his family, agent and his players union as a whole to maximize a deal with a limited time frame for potential career earning—it’s worth wondering whether they still make sense, especially from the standpoint of an NFL team. Especially when there are so many tools that facilitate friendlier and more empowering negotiations. It’s also worth wondering whether it creates a kind of emotional hangover that can linger throughout the course of an NFL season.
As one NFL agent I spoke to said: “[A team’s] job is to win games, not negotiations.” The inference, of course, is that even a slightly happier, less emotionally and financially grinded-down player helps create a better environment. (And yes, I recognize quoting an agent wondering why teams don’t give players a little more money is like quoting a bank robber wondering why security has to be so tough on board the Brinks truck.) The agent described the “fight until the deadline” approach as a “mental crutch” for everyone involved, thus allowing unreasonable demands to become reasonable again for one side. How can this not create lingering resentment?
Would a team willing to end this charade, and thus earn itself a reputation as a more sensible and player-friendly organization, see the benefits compound over time, making up for any minor increase in financial expense? Similarly, if the fault is truly on the agent (perhaps, for example, Barkley’s camp sees him as a player who transcends the running back market instead of someone who simply deserves to top the market financially, which then places the agency in the camp of the unreasonable party), wouldn’t they be servicing their clients better by presenting more realistic scenarios instead of subjecting them to this hardline process in which feelings will get hurt? Isn’t a season in which a player feels happier and more respected by his employer ultimately more beneficial to everyone?
We’re seeing now that most employers across the country have figured out one basic truth: Working sucks. They have kept this in mind as they try to entice a workforce to come back to the office after three-plus years of home-cooked meals, midday walks and naps with the Zoom camera turned off. While some have approached the situation by penalizing workers, others have increased the perks to compensate for the aforementioned wisdom surrounding the soul-crushing potential of a 9-to-5 office grind. Charitable donations for office days served. Catered meals. More flexible hours. Summer Fridays. It is not nothing. Coming at negotiations from a more humble perspective, especially with the knowledge that working in football also kind of sucks (long hours, a very short window of earning power, 100% injury rate) would be far better than trying to defeat them in some capacity through a series of tactics and maneuvers.
I understand that NFL clubs are businesses, but it’s not hard to imagine that adopting the same attitude—that they are lucky to have the employee and are, thus, willing to pay for it—would lead to a healthier environment not only with the star player but throughout the locker room and organization. It’s not necessarily the franchises that spend the most money, it is the franchises that spend the money at their disposal in a way that conveys trust and respect and appreciation.
I also understand that arguably the most infamous and revered “culture” ever built in the NFL was that of Bill Belichick’s Patriots, which earned players’ trust by supplying them with valuable on-field intelligence and resources but was ultimately best known for its cutthroat, impersonal nature. Even the best player was routinely asked to take less money. But how many times have we seen that culture successfully re-created despite numerous attempts? I’m not advocating for a creation of the anti-Patriots, but I am asking teams whether applying that same rigor and cool depersonalization to their own setup has a better chance of immediate success than overt warmth and compassion.
Even small, subtle shifts in reframing the grounds on which the negotiations are based have led to massively successful changes in outcome perception (here’s an example that was recently cited in the Harvard Business Review). There is study after study about the benefits of an empowered and happy workforce.
Instead of seeking that out, though, all sides seem to prefer this familiar loop (it should be said, by the way, that the Giants-Saquon standoff has been on the friendly and respectful end of this spectrum, and that this is more of an entry point into discussing the larger topic). All sides prefer a situation where there is a winner and a loser. But what if a team wasn’t losing by giving a little more? What if a player wasn’t winning by defending an unreasonable position or listening to an agent willing to entertain as much? What if we realized that going in and spared ourselves a summer of anonymous insults and barbs which, no matter how inhuman and task-oriented we claim to be, will sit buried somewhere in our psyche?
Especially in the most competitive of environments, there is room—need, really—for peace. Recognizing that keeps everyone on the same team.
