Agree. Hes in camp now, thats all i care.

When you sell your house, is the market value the highest offer you receive or an average of the other lower offers?

It's the highest. That's the one you take. That's the market value.


He wasn't on the free market - he had restrictions. The Lions could match, there was potential for required draft pick compensation. Both of those restrictions make him less attractive for teams to try and do a deal with him.

Back to the house analogy, if you were selling your house and said to potential buyers: "someone else has an option over the house, so once we have agreed our deal we will have to go to that guy and see if they want to buy at that price and you may have to pay that guy money too" do you think you get the same number of offers or do you think a lot of people think "I can't be bothered spending the time and money progressing a potential deal for this house when I may get trumped anyway"?


We will find out in less than a year's time whether Cliff made the right decision or not. Either way, he has no obligation whatsoever (IMO) to take a decision that he believes is less than the best he can get just because it would benefit the Lions. I would love for him to have that attitude, but I can't criticise him at all for not having it.

Your analogy is flawed... When you buy a house you're not tied to the Buyer for the length of the deal and both sides walk away clean at closing, this isn't the case here. In this sense the player relies upon the team for a great number of things - to put teammates around him, to implement a scheme that works for him, and to use him in a way that is beneficial for his career. Going to a crappy team can be a career ender, or at the very least a career "slower" in what amounts to be a very short time span.

The "best offers" often come from clubs that aren't as good, with lower level talent, that aren't going anywhere. While it may be slightly more money, it doesn't mean it's a good career decision. Players often take less to play for good teams, where success is more likely, and it frequently pays off for them. Also, all of these guys are multi, multi millionaires - losing week after week would effect anyone that takes pride in their work. There's a certain amount of piece of mind that comes with winning. For a 10% discount, getting all of that from the Lions seems cheap to me, not to mention the stability and lack of need to move your family.

wjb - completely agree with everything you say there. The analogy was purely around salary expectations, not the other things that (as you rightly say) are also (or at least, should be also) important for a player.

If Cliff has another good year and then moves to a crappy team for a couple of million a year more than the Lions are offering but then his career nosedives, he'll have made a pretty silly decision IMO.

But we will find out whether a team (or teams) will offer more than the Lions, how much more they will offer and the standard of the teams making those offers next season. Avril didn't get the chance to find that out properly this offseason, so in that respect I maintain that the market for him hasn't been set and it is difficult for us to judge based on our estimations of how other teams will view him whether he has been unrealistic in his demands this past off season or not.

Cliff DID get offered a market value deal. How do I know this? Right now, based on his tender deal he is getting $10.6M for one year. He was offered a deal worth $30M for three years, basically $10M per season.

His Franchise Tag offer is an average of the salaries this season for the top 5 DEs in the NFL.

Is Cliff Avril a top 5 DE? No, he is not. His stats show it. He had his best year as a Lion, and it was his ONLY really good season. To me, that doesn't even remotely qualify him as an elite performer, or a top DE. But as of right now, he's being paid as a top 5 DE.

So, in answer to your question, Avril WAS offered market value, based on the average yearly salary in that deal. What he wanted was a bigger slice of the guaranteed pie. NO TEAM in the NFL is going to fully guarantee a 3 year deal for a player when they are paying him 8 figures a season. But that's essentially what Cliff was holding out hope for. He wanted the bulk of that three year deal guaranteed.

I'd like to see any of you walk into a potential employers office, demand to be paid in the top 1% at your position in the entire country, and when the employer offers you slightly less per year for a three year deal, demand that they guarnantee 75% or more of that, even if you get sick and can't work another day for them.

Let me know how that works out for you.

you cant really compare playing in the NFL to a regular job.

What are you talking about? I worry about a career-ending injury whenever I reach for a donut in the morning.

Then why say that we should see things from Avril's point of view? That is asking people who work a regular job, and probably won't earn $20M in two lifetimes to be sympathetic with a guy who turned down exactly that.

Your a COP? LOL.