$50 Million Dollar Baby

Overall number one NFL draft pick Sam Bradford from the Oklahoma Sooners is reportedly going to be the highest paid player in football without ever even playing a down in the league.

The St. Louis Rams are probably going to have to give Bradford a deal in the neighborhood of $50 million, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. It’s a sign that rookie contracts are continuing to rise in the NFL. Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford who was taken as the first overall draft pick last year was given a contract worth $41.5 million.

It is utterly ridiculous to think that Bradford could make more money than Super Bowl winning quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Drew Brees.

It’s dangerous for teams like the Rams to basically be forced into signing these outrageous contracts by agents and players when overall number one picks can prove to be busts. Bradford could easily become a great quarterback like Peyton Manning or Troy Aikman, but he could just as easily become a bust like JaMarcus Russell, David Carr and Tim Couch.

It’s also dangerous for the Rams to give Bradford so much money because he’s already proven to be injury prone. Bradford was seriously injured in his final year at college with the Sooners and forced to miss the majority of the season. He’ll surely be knocked around like a rag doll in the NFL, especially with the Rams only having the 24th projected offensive line in the league, according to football.about.com.

It would seem that the only real way for the NFL to avoid the rising rookie salaries would be to go to a rookie scale salary like the NBA does. In the NBA the draft picks have there own assigned salaries that ensures that the first overall pick makes more than the second pick and the second pick makes more than the third and so on. The contracts are each for two years with team options for a third and fourth.

The NBA has it 100 percent right when it comes to rookie contracts. The NFL desperately needs to go that route to ensure that unproven players like Bradford aren’t the richest athletes in the sport.