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Anyone up for a refresher in Saints history can pore through this new 538.com article and accompanying video that revisit Ricky Williams's controversial rookie contract and conclude, not surprisingly, that it was a bad deal:
Ricky Williams’s Awful NFL Contract Never Gave Him A Chance
How Ricky Williams’s Infamous Contract Got Made
Williams never lived up to the hype of his contract. He was traded from New Orleans to Miami in 2002, and although he rushed for over 10,000 yards during his career — one of only 29 players to do so — he had only one Pro Bowl season, in 2002. He retired in 2004, due in part to a failed test for marijuana, returned in 2005, missed the entire 2006 season for another marijuana violation, and retired for good before the 2012 season.
But if Ricky had matched the high expectations set out for him, and had consistently played for the seven years of his contract instead of bouncing in and out of the league, could the deal have paid off? FiveThirtyEight obtained a copy of the deal, and we calculated how much every running back since 1989 could have earned from it.1 And we can say without reservation: Ricky Williams got screwed. Williams definitely underperformed expectations during his career, but only a fraction of that $68 million was achievable at all, even to the greatest running backs in recent memory.
The NFL is a deeply player-unfriendly league. Large rosters, short careers and a weak union mean that players are less financially stable than their NBA and MLB peers when their careers are over (although the extent of this financially instability is still being debated). Ricky Williams got a particularly bad deal, but the way in which it was bad — a fantastical max value propped up by hard-to-reach incentives and a lack of guarantees — are true of many less notable signings. Just last year the Bills made headlines by signing quarterback Tyrod Taylor to a six-year extension worth up to $92 million. Of course, only $9.5 million of that is guaranteed. According to NFL.com report’s Ian Rapoport, who broke the news, “there’s a lot of prove-it in the deal.”
Ricky Williams’s Awful NFL Contract Never Gave Him A Chance
How Ricky Williams’s Infamous Contract Got Made