The thing to remember about professional sports leagues is that they are never a cohesive whole with all having a harmonious relationship. Most often, it boils down to a constantly tense relationship between the owners of the team and the players who make the sport go. Throughout history, owners have often made it their mission to find ways to undercut players on matters of money. Baseball is the most notorious. They famously had reserve clauses for decades that basically said players could only play for one team. Then they had a case of collusion that saw them refuse to sign players from other teams to prevent free agency. It now appears a similar scandal is unfolding with the NFL, and the Chicago Bears are part of it.
According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk and Pablo Torre, evidence was discovered that a Special Arbitrator found the league guilty of colluding to prevent players from receiving fully guaranteed contracts. While the NFL avoided significant punishment due to a supposed lack of sufficient evidence, the reality is that it happened. Sadly, it's another reminder the owners will do anything to save a few bucks.
Although the NFL won, the NFL lost. As Droney wrote at pages 55 and 56 of the January 14, 2025 ruling, “There is little question that the NFL Management Council, with the blessing of the Commissioner, encouraged the 32 NFL Clubs to reduce guarantees in veterans’ contracts at the March 2022 annual owners’ meeting.”
In other words, the NFL wanted its member teams to collude.
That meeting happened only days after the Browns gave a five-year, fully-guaranteed, $230 million contract to quarterback Deshaun Watson. It also happened only two years after the NFLPA tried, for the second time, to make all player contracts fully guaranteed as part of the broader Collective Bargaining Agreement.
To date, the Chicago Bears have yet to fully guarantee a veteran contract.
The farthest they've gone is with their rookie deals for draft picks. That is hardly a major sacrifice since the rookie wage scale makes those contracts cheap. None of their most significant free agent moves in recent years have been fully guaranteed. It is hard to understand why. The Chicago Bears are one of the least cash-rich franchises in the league. George McCaskey and his family don't have tons of outside wealth. All of their prestige is from the team itself. From their perspective, they aren't equipped to hand out fully guaranteed deals, especially in such a physically taxing sport. It doesn't help that Deshaun Watson's contract is proving to be one of the worst in professional sports history.
While the league may get shamed in the public eye for such a blatant case of collusion, it is safe to say they won't feel too bad about it. Watson will serve as the perfect cautionary tale to keep teams in line. If the players want those fully guaranteed deals, they'll have to fight for them at the next Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2031.
