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Rookie Salary Pool

NFL salary cap

From 2007: Raiders have most cap space to sign rookies

2008 discussed: Chiefs get largest rookie pool to pay draft picks

Note (5/8/08):  What follows is an explanation of the rookie pool which was overhauled in 2007. It's followed, first, by numbers for the 2007 season, when, the Raiders had the No. 1 overall pick as well as a total of 11 selections in all. Then, after touching on the figures for some past years—principally since the Raiders returned to Oakland—we set forth the rookie pool allotment numbers for 2008. For 2008 Oakland has $4,119,700 available to sign its rookies.  ¤¤

Within the regular NFL salary cap is a second, or sub-cap, for signing rookies (including draft picks, but also including undrafted rookies), which takes into account the number and placement in the draft order (termed the "slotting") of each team's picks. Each team gets a certain share of a predetermined total amount of money (the "rookie pool") to spend on its rookies. Since this money is counted against the overall cap, it's actually a cap within the cap; that is, it comes out of the salary cap rather than being an "over-and-above" amount. The calculations are done, and the judgment calls made, by the NFL Management Council, ordinarily right after the NFL draft, as soon as it can be ascertained which teams drafted players in exactly which slots over the seven rounds.

The Raiders' allotment for 2007—a year in which they had an almost unbelievable eleven draft picks, including the first pick in virtually every round—was $6.913. (The only set of figures we saw for 2007—which came from the "Rumor Mill" blog on ProFootballTalk.com—was uniformly rounded off to millions, in the manner of the foregoing number.) Couched in ESPN.com's definition language (which is surprisingly clear), this sum constitutes "the maximum in aggregate cap space that [a club] can spend on [its] draft choices and undrafted free agents." Oakland led the 2007 NFL rookie pool parade by a hefty margin; only two other clubs broke the $6 million figure in their allotments—Atlanta, No. 2, at $6.171, and Tampa Bay (3) at $6.102. Overall the 32 club allotments added up to $136.79 million.

By way of contrast, for 2006 Oakland (with seven draft picks) was allotted $4,504,263. In 2004 the Raiders had been allowed to spend up to $5,170,440 in cap money to sign their rookies (both drafted and undrafted); Oakland had nine draft picks that year. For 2005, with only seven picks—and three of those coming in the sixth round, with two of those three at the very bottom—the allocation to Oakland shrunk drastically, to the paltry sum of $3,482,560.

In 2002 the NFL allocated an average of about $3.8 million per team. The Raiders' 2002 allocation for signing rookies was $4,254,000.

For 2003, the total rookie pool was approximately $118.5 million, or an average of about $3.7 million per franchise. (The Raiders' piece of the pie worked out to $4,409,382.) You can see that the amount was essentially "flat" for two consecutive years, the intent (on the part of the NFLPA and the league) being to funnel more compensation to veteran players. This made it tougher for agents to negotiate substantial increases for the 2003 draft choices.

But as the overall salary cap rose significantly in 2004, so too did the rookie pool. This observer never did see that year's league-wide total figure, but the Raiders' share was up 17%.

For 1997 the Raiders were allotted $2.99 million to sign rookies. They had $4.8 million in 1998, and $2.5 million in 1999. You can see how much the amount varies from year to year depending on available draft choices.

ESPN writer Len Pasquarelli noted about the 2006 figures, "From a leaguewide [sic] standpoint, the total allocation of $133.38 million is an all-time high and it represents a 5 percent bump from the 2005 pool, with that rate of increase holding steady for the past two years. Before that, the rookie pool had been fairly 'flat,' with increases of just 2 percent." This means that the 2006 average allocation was $4,168,125 per club, making Oakland's cut for 2006 slightly above the average.

One of the ideas behind this whole scheme is to reduce rookie holdouts. A team can tell an agent with a straight face, "Hey, we can't pay your client any more than x dollars this year."

The scheme is also intended to put all NFL teams on a more or less equal footing in terms of being financially able to sign their draft picks.

The league minimum salary for a rookie—$295,000 as of 2008—also comes into play here. A team can pay a rookie no less than the league minimum, and no more than its rookie pool allotment less the minimum salary times the remaining number of unsigned rookies. Got that? There will be a quiz tomorrow.  

In practice any first-round draft picks will normally get the lion's share of the rookie money. Low-round draft choices won't make much more than the league minimum. Undrafted rookie free agents (called UDFAs in the parlance) often get only 10-day contracts while they struggle at mini-camps or other club "activities" to try to catch the eye of the coaching staff.

Veteran players hate the fact that teams traditionally use 98% of the rookie pool and push out veterans to get their draft picks signed. There's no rule that states a team has to use all of the rookie pool, yet teams do.

Here are the 2008 figures in order of pool size:

Sources: ESPN.com, "Rumor Mill" blog (ProFootballTalk.com)

Last updated Friday, May 9, 2008