WR market

[jblaze]

The CBA and cap have nothing to do with this. I'm talking about positional players and standards/baselines for pay set by precedent that there are understandings between GM's and front office. It hurts everyone if one person overpays and sets a baseline above what their market value is.
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I understand what you are saying but you are missing my point so I was possibly unclear.

In a regular market it hurts the consumers as a group if GM and Chrysler agrees that a truck shouldn't cost less than $30k. Simple concept pretty sure we agree

In the NFL labor market - as a group the NFL players are not negatively impacted if GMs agree that WRs will get no more than $10 million per year (I realize you said it isn't this explicit but I am taking it a bit further to make my argument).

There is $130 million available for the year. The money will be spent - either this year or when it is rolled over for future years. So as a group the players will basically get the $130 million. If you price collude all you do is impact how much WRs get / QBs but your total spend is the same. If the price goes up for one group it means it goes down for the other group.

So GB has a crappy defense. It is in their interest if the defensive players are cheap
Miami has a crappy offense. It is in their interest if the offensive players are cheap

Different teams have different agenda's. Overall they are spending the same amount. Some people need WRs so they will spend more on them, others need DBs so they spend more there. The only thing accomplished by spending less on a group is spending more on others

There is no reason for price collusion in the NFL even at the individual position levels and the market is filled with buyers (owners) with different interests. This isn't OPEC where everyone is selling the same thing

That explains it better and I understand what you're saying now. I think that there are a ton of min players, vet min players and under 1m players so you can only pay so many so I think it's wiser to pay less on the upper end so you can pay more guys. So instead of having 6 players at 8m per year or you could have 8 players at 6m. I think that helps everyone, creates parity and creates more income equality across the board.

But you're right, it's all relative and working with the same pot of money although it does fluctuate some between teams.