Hey! Hey! Welcome to They See Me Pollin’ with Women of Fantasy Football and Club Fantasy! I’m your fabulous contributor, Kelly Singh, and you can find me on Twitter @KellyInPhoenix. Every week, I’ll be tweeting out a poll to the fantasy football community in order to get their feelings on various topics. Then, I’ll share the results here in a quick and mildly entertaining wrap-up! This week, we’re discussing NFL rookie contracts.
Our topic actually ended up becoming two polls because of the interesting results of the first. The initial poll revolved around NFL rookie contracts and whether or not a rookie should stick with his contract or exercise their right to negotiate for more money. I’ll get into the results below, but the early data led us to the decision to release a second follow-up poll on how these negotiations affect fantasy teams. Let’s get into it!
Q: With the ongoing Kyler situation, do you think players should honor their NFL rookie contract or play hardball before it ends?
Half of the fantasy football community that participated in the poll felt like rookies should play hardball when it comes to their contracts, but they should do it with less drama. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a fair amount of drama around high-profile players and their rookie contracts. For example, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray removed all mention of the team from his social media profiles while he is in negotiations. It caused quite a stir online and plenty of speculation on his next move. However, the Cards social media team handled it in stride and made a similar move on their Instagram, trolling Kyler in a way.
The discussion mainly revolved around validating that players should negotiate but not create so much drama in the comments. There were some excellent points about the player having actually earned a raise in pay or not. If you’d like to see the comments on the original poll, click here.
Results:
Honor it. 21%
Hardball, but less drama. 50%
It’s a contractual right. 24%
Other. 5%
Q2: A player on your Dynasty team is holding out for more money and will likely miss games. How do you feel now?
With the results of the first poll heavily weighted towards players negotiating for more money (but with less drama)… we wanted to know if fantasy football team managers would feel any differently, should those players end up missing games. It turns out that the majority of participants still supported deserving rookie players in negotiating their NFL rookie contracts and getting that bag! So, while annoyed, managers still get it.
Results:
Good! They earned it! 29%
Annoyed, but I get it. 58%
Personally wronged. 13%
Other. 0%
And there you have it- a topic that the majority of you agree on, even if it were to affect your fantasy football team. Can you believe it!? We as a community don’t often seem to be on the same page. Still, on this topic, we seem to agree that rookies deserve the opportunity to renegotiate their NFL rookie contracts, even if it might affect our teams.
So… how did you feel about the results of this poll? Be sure to tweet at me and let me know. See you next week! xo