jeffdees

Caleb Williams was the first overall pick in the 2024 draft and signed his rookie contract with the Bears without an agent. That's absolutely unheard of at the top of a draft. The agent runs the negotiation and takes their commission and the players union let that commission go right up to 3% of the contract. Williams used lawyers rather than an agent. He described the setup on The Pivot podcast at the time of that draft. I don't have an agent. I have all the other things in place. I have my lawyers. I have my attorneys. I have my financial advisor. I have my accountants. I have my marketing. I have my PR and crisis. I have it all. The agent label isn't there. He gave a run down of the legal side of it. I've got five lawyers. I know what I've got and I know who I'm paying. Four days prior to signing he was asked by Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune who was running the negotiations and his answer was at his own Caleb Cares Hero Awards event. "My lawyers, my attorney and the head of the Bears and everyone up there at the top is dealing with that." That's not my position that I'm handling. The players' union have a rule which complicates that answer in that a lawyer who is not a certified agent is not entitled to negotiate with a club on a player's behalf. Williams signed on Wednesday July 17th, 2024, two days prior to the Bears starting their training camp practices. It's a four year, $39m contract (all guaranteed), with a $25.5m signing bonus. An agent taking the 3% maximum could have taken circa $1.17m on that deal. There was one request that Chicago refused. Williams wanted the Bears to agree in writing that they would never franchise tag him once his rookie contract expired. No rookie in league history has ever had that clause. The franchise tag is the mechanism that keeps a player from picking his own team. It allows a club to hold him for another year at a set price whether he wants to stay or not and a club can use it three times. Chicago also has a fifth year option on him for the 2028 season. Added together those would keep him in Chicago through 2031. Bears GM Ryan Poles was asked about the requests two days after the signing and didn't find anything in it at all odd. It's very common for different things to be asked for at the very start of the negotiations. It wasn't in any way all that surprising in terms of what was being asked for. The money in a first overall rookie contract is pretty much all sorted before you even get to the table, as the CBA will have already set the figure for that draft slot and there's very little scope for negotiation. What Williams used his leverage on was a say as to where he'd be working at 28. He was 22, had five lawyers and no certified agent and made that request in his very first negotiation.

Josh Allen passed Tom Brady today. But the number people in Buffalo will remember isn’t 102 wins. It’s $17. That number is about his grandmother. Here’s the full story. Today, the Buffalo Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens 36-10. With that win, Allen reached 102 wins through his first nine seasons, including playoffs. Brady had 101. Only Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson have more. But let’s go back a few years, to a week Allen will never forget. His grandmother, Patricia Allen, passed away unexpectedly. Less than a day later, he had a game against the Seattle Seahawks. He played anyway. He threw for 415 yards in a 44-34 win, one of the best games of his career. The news didn’t come out until after the game, when head coach Sean McDermott told reporters that Allen’s family had suffered a loss and word spread about his grandmother. Then Bills fans, known as Bills Mafia, did something no one asked them to do. They started donating to Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, giving in $17 increments for his jersey number. By the end of the first night, hundreds of donations had come in. Within days, there were more than 20,000. The hospital added a special button on its website that automatically selected $17. One of the hospital’s leaders explained why. "Josh is a person who truly cares about our community and the health of the families and kids" Allen replied on social media. "At a loss for words. Buffalo, I love you." Then he joined in, donating $17,000 of his own and pushing the total past $500,000. That same week, he said this about Buffalo: "I know my family is forever ingrained here, myself included." He also said he wants to play in Buffalo for as long as possible. The donations kept coming. By the end of December, the fund in her name had passed $1 million. The Bills later said it grew to over $1.4 million. The hospital renamed part of its 10th floor the Patricia Allen Pediatric Recovery Wing. The money supports the pediatric critical care team. Later, when the wing opened, Allen visited in person. He had already shared what it meant to him. "The donations made to OCH in honor of my grandmother would make her so proud." Here’s the honest part: Allen never asked for any of this. Fans started it themselves, and much of the money came from people who had never even been to Buffalo. That’s exactly what makes it special. He’s passed Brady now, and he’ll probably pass a few more names before he’s done. But in Buffalo, a hospital wing now bears his grandmother’s name, built one $17 donation at a time.

Gardner Minshew comes off the bench for the Arizona Cardinals today, the Cardinals down 24 to 10 in the 4th quarter and he goes and throws 3 TDs. Arizona win 33 to 30 in OT. In 7th grade Minshew and his dad taught themselves Mike Leach's air raid and ran it in flag football in Brandon, Mississippi. His mum Kim is a middle school maths teacher and played basketball at Mississippi State. His dad Flint is a contractor. College went completely sideways for him on four separate occasions. He committed to Troy and just didn't show up for a single game. Went to Northwest Mississippi Community College where the coach told him he probably wouldn't start and he got the job the very next week. Threw for 3,288 yards and won the JUCO national championship. He went to East Carolina, backed up, started and then had to share the job. By 2018 he had one year of eligibility remaining and had already decided how that was going to end. He was going to go to Alabama, spend a season with Nick Saban holding a clipboard and then go be a coach somewhere. Then the phone rang. It was Mike Leach at Washington State and Leach asked him if he wanted to come and lead the nation in passing. He went. Led the nation in passing at 397.6 yards per game, 4,776 yards and 38 TDs, won the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year and finished 5th in the Heisman voting. Go back a year to the night before the 2019 draft, which was a draft he wasn't in. He posted this. "365 days to prove why my name should be called." 365 days later he was drafted by Jacksonville in the 6th round (178th overall). Be absolutely clear about what's happened since, because that's the actual job. Minshew has been on the roster in Jacksonville, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Kansas City and now Arizona. He's started games for all of them bar one. He's never been the long term answer at any of them. He got absolutely brilliant at the other thing. Knowing the entire playbook without taking a single rep in it all week. Warming up in the 3rd quarter of a game where his team was losing by two scores, because someone had to be ready. Arizona released Kyler Murray in the offseason and picked up Minshew as a free agent. Brissett has been the guy taking the snaps. Minshew went in for Brissett today. 1st TD 5 yards to Allgeier at 10:52. 2nd TD 14 yards to McBride at 2:16. 3rd TD 13 yards to Wilson at 10 seconds, tied it. Chad Ryland then missed the extra point that would have won it, went out in OT and kicked a 42 yard field goal. Twenty years ago a kid in Mississippi was running Mike Leach's offense in flag football as his dad thought it looked like fun.