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A little clarity Grbac will earn $13 million in first two years of new dealPosted: Wednesday March 07, 2001 3:43 PM
The confusing details of Elvis Grbac's five-year, $30 million contract with the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens have now come to light. But please bear with us as we try to explain them. On Tuesday, Grbac's agent, Jim Steiner, reported the deal as including an $11 million signing bonus. Technically or otherwise, that's incorrect. While conceptually the two sides negotiated an $11 million signing bonus, for salary-cap reasons the Ravens mandated that that portion of the deal be structured differently than a traditional signing bonus, which is guaranteed. In truth, the deal calls for a $5 million signing bonus, with another $6 million to be paid if the Ravens pick up their option on the final three years of the contract. That's where things get a little tricky. The Ravens must decide whether to pick up Grbac's option for 2003-2005 by March 2, 2002 -- during the offseason following his first year as a Raven. If they choose to retain Grbac for those three seasons, at that time they owe him the $6 million payment that Steiner considers signing bonus. And if they don't? In that case, the contract calls for a $6 million buyout clause covering the final three seasons of the deal. Thus, either way, the Ravens have committed to $13 million over the first two years of the deal, which includes Grbac's base salaries of $500,000 (2001) and $1.5 million (2002). Under any scenario, thanks to the buyout provision, Grbac's deal can not be a just a two-year, $7 million commitment as first reported here and elsewhere. For Baltimore there is one key out clause, albeit a rather unpalatable one. If Grbac is a bust in Baltimore this season and the Ravens decide to part ways with him after just one year, they could release him before March 2, 2002, having paid him only the $5 million signing bonus, plus his scheduled $500,000 base salary in 2001. He would clear $5.5 million for his one season as a Raven, which is about the annual going rate for a good starting quarterback in the NFL. But that scenario comes with the harsh reality that Baltimore would be sucking up a hefty $4 million hit of 2002 cap room due to the acceleration of Grbac's signing bonus. Not a move the Ravens are likely to make unless Grbac turns into the worst Baltimore quarterback since Marty Domres. What if the Ravens don't cut Grbac after 2001, but then declined to pick up his option in March 2002? Ain't happening. If that were the case, Baltimore would be stuck with an unrealistic $11.5 million salary-cap number for Grbac in 2002. That kind of cap number is what landed the former Kansas City Chief in the free-agent market in the first place. The bottom line? The Ravens are very likely to pick up his option next March and have anywhere from a three-to-five-year marriage with Grbac. With base salaries of $6 million in the final two seasons of the deal, Grbac may be a potential cap casualty like any other well-paid NFL veteran is late in his deal these days. "We did a legitimate cap-friendly deal with a low cap number in the first year [$1.5 million]," Ravens vice president of player personnel Ozzie Newsome said. "We got the guy we wanted and it's a five-year deal. It's the same kind of option deals that we have with Ray Lewis, Michael McCrary and Jermaine Lewis. "Why would I be so dumb as to carry a second-year cap number like [$11.5 million] if I wasn't going to keep the guy long term? We just have had to structure some deals that way for cap reasons." And why did Grbac accept the inherent risk, however slight, that the Ravens' contract includes? Because Baltimore dictated the deal could not have been done any other way. And Grbac desperately wanted to play for the Ravens. Case closed. His only other choice was Cincinnati, where he passed up millions more in first-year dollars in order to join the league champion Ravens. Grbac instructed his agent to get him to Baltimore and cut the best deal he could under the circumstances. Even if the contract lacked the straightforward ease of Brad Johnson's five-year, $28 million deal with Tampa Bay, which included $6.5 million of traditional, up-front signing bonus. "Elvis had to take some risk in order to become a Raven," Steiner said Wednesday. "They needed his first-year cap number to be low, and the deal wasn't going to happen unless we agreed to that structure. That was not negotiable. He's certainly not worried about his playing ability and he's totally covered relative to injury. Baltimore is where he wanted to play." Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.
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