The Benefits of making the Eagles and sticking with the team…

Eagles’ new head coach is having a ball right now.

“I feel good,” Doug Pederson said, “about the things we’re doing and what we’ve been able to accomplish. I know there is a lot more ahead, and I’m excited to put it all together and work with these guys. I’m enjoying this.”

Pederson is referring to the organization’s recent success in re-signing and extending the contracts of veteran players he considers crucial to the foundation of a winning team.

Pederson has reason to pat himself on the back seeing as how he personally reached out to the veterans involved and convinced them of his sincere desire to retain their services.

The good feeling around the Eagles right now transcends the typical “honeymoon” a new head coach gets with the media and fans. That’s because the emergence of version 2.0 of Howie Roseman as the personnel guru is the bigger part of the story. It seems Howie wasn’t kidding about two months ago when he promised to play nice this time around. He’s working well with the new coach and he’s efficiently finding ways to engineer win-win contracts with players and their agents.

Steady as she goes—the waters will get a little choppy as Doug and Howie maneuver through free agent shopping and the draft. For now they make a beautiful team.
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For your weekend tutorial reading, I recommend a piece Fran Duffy just put up at the “other” Eagle Eye at PE.com called “It’s A Subpackage League”. Duffy explains why the traditional definitions of a 4-3 defense or a 3-4 defense have changed. He’s also got some cool visuals to illustrate his analyses.

Duffy points out how last season, the Eagles’ defense “was in nickel (five defensive backs) or dime (six defensive backs) 65 percent of the time. Their opponents, believe it or not, were in subgroups for 90 percent (!) of the time. The Eagles’ offense rarely saw team’s base defenses…”

Coverage subpackages are all about matching up with slot receivers, tight ends and running backs who are part of the opponent’s passing game. You need an athletic defensive back to cover the slot receiver or a subpackage linebacker to cover a receiver coming out of the backfield. Duffy takes you through all the combinations of coverages.

There are also Defensive Line subpackages on obvious passing downs which are designed to get one-gap pressure on the quarterback. That’s when you essentially can’t differentiate between a 4-3 and a 3-4 base alignment—it all looks and works the same when you’re rushing upfield to attack the QB.

Duffy spends a big part of his essay describing safety Malcolm Jenkins’ role when he sometimes slides into a slot cornerback position:

“It’s common knowledge that the value of the slot corner is higher than ever before, with almost every team considering the position a starter on defense. Teams handle that in a couple of different ways. Some defensive coordinators have designated slot cornerbacks who come in and step right into the slot. Others take a starting outside cornerback or safety in base and slide them into the slot in subpackages. The extra defensive back then takes their place outside or on the back end.”

That “slider” role played by Jenkins worked out well many times for the Eagles defense last season.

As for subpackage linebackers being adept in coverage, Duffy points out why you are seeing 250-260 pound linebackers going “the way of the dinosaur” and teams scouting instead for the 230-240 pound range in cover linebackers. Only 17 of the 115 “off-the-ball” linebackers drafted in the last five years weighed in at over 245 pounds either at the Scouting Combine or at their Pro Day.

It’s a great article for continuing education and I have only touched on a few of the things Fran Duffy taught me in his piece.
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This started out as a fact-finding mission proposed by GK Brizer to answer one question: what constitutes a qualifying “credited season” in the formula which determines if a player has put in enough credited seasons to earn a pension?

Welp, the answer is you must be on the team’s gameday roster for at least 3 games in one season to earn a “credited season”—and you need at least 3 “credited seasons” to qualify for a pension.

The NFL pension plan is available to retired players at age 55, but they get a much higher annual payout (about 3 times higher!) if they wait until age 65 to file their pension claim.

The more “credited seasons” you have the higher your payout will be. I used for the sake of simplicity the example of a 10-year player—$201,453 annually at age 65 or $76,920 annually at age 55.

But then I got curious about all the other benefits former players are eligible for.  That, and I was interested in finding out what minimum salaries rookies and league veterans will be receiving in 2016.

Here are a few of my findings sourced from The Nixon Report, an NFL Alumni publication which is compiled by former player Jeff Nixon:

In 2016, rookies will earn $450,000. Players with one year of service earn $525,000; Two years $590,000; Three years $675,000; Four to six years $760,000; Seven to nine years $885,000. For players with 10 years or more of service, the minimum salary is $985,000.

Did you know vested players also have an Annuity Plan?

• Annuity Plan: $525,000 for a 10-year player as an example—(this amount does not include earned interest which will accrue) This benefit is for players that have at least 4 credited seasons. The amounts are $65,000 annually for each of the years 2011-2013. $80,000 for each of the years 2014-2017, and $95,000 for each year from 2018-2020. For the purposes of this example, a rookie in 2011 would begin receiving the owner contribution to his Annuity from 2015 to 2020. If a player who was already vested in 2010, played until 2020 they would have $800,000 in their Annuity.

I did not know that!

I also did not know players had a “Second Career Savings Plan”…

• Second Career Savings Plan: $256,000 in owner contributions and $85,333 in player contributions, for a total of $341,333. Owners match 2 dollars for every 1 dollar a player contributes – up to the following limits: $24,000 for each of the years 2011-2014, $26,000 for each of the years 2015-2018 and $28,000 for each of the years 2019-2020; i.e., a player would need to deduct $13,000 from their salary and put it into the savings plan in order to receive the maximum owner contribution of $26,000 in 2016. 

There are other benefits which I was unaware of:

Group Licensing Agreement: $12,000 on average each year for active players (based on an annual royalty of $12,000 paid equally to all active players for allowing the League to use their images for marketing and promotion of the NFL.)

Individual Licensing Agreements through NFL Players, Inc.: $10,000 to $20,000 on average each active year (Many active players also take advantage of the individual marketing opportunities offered by the NFLPA.)

5 years of Free Medical Insurance after retirement:  Average $15,000 value per year for Family Coverage.

Those were some benefits which jumped out at me as previously unknown. There is also a whole extra category of “Disability Benefits” and “Severance Benefits Due To Injury” which are so voluminous they could fill a small book.  If you want to dig into the Injury stuff, it’s all there at the Jeff Nixon link above.