Bonuses for 2011 NFL rookies are far cry from previous years - Ingles

As owners and players were wrapping up their 10-year collective bargaining agreement, both sides were quick to point out that the new, hard-to-beat rookie compensation system wasn't a wage scale.

Whatever you call it, it's a wage scale, and it's a wage scale that makes it hard to hold out. All of the 254 draft choices were under contract by Thursday, Aug. 4. The system saved hundreds of millions of dollars compared with past drafts.

Call it what you want. It worked.

Both sides agreed that the savings of the new rookie compensation system would be split. The players would get about 50 percent in a performance pool. Retired players would get the rest. The young would be helping the old under this new system.

The fascinating part is how agents had to work with a wage scale to do the deals. Overall, $210 million was spent on first-rounders in signing bonuses. It started with Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers getting $14.518 million along with a $375,000 base. Von Miller of the Denver Broncos received a $13.733 million signing bonus. Marcell Dareus of the Bills, the third pick in the draft, cashed in on $13.341 million.

That's a far cry from the $50 million of guarantees given to the first pick in the 2010 draft, Sam Bradford of the St. Louis Rams. The No. 1 in drafts from 2006 to 2010 received $180.844 million in guarantees. The 32 players in the first round of the 2011 draft received $210 million total.

The signing bonuses paid for the entire draft totaled $301 million, a considerable relief to owners. As it turned out, each draft slot received less than the higher deal, and it went that way throughout the draft.

Players were willing to fix the problems created by a rookie pool that had gone haywire. Owners got what they wanted -- a rookie wage scale. (source John Clayton – ESPN)