Second round is current battleground for fully-guaranteed contracts

The collusion grievance, which found that the NFL/Management Council encouraged teams to violate the CBA, flowed from an effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts. And there’s an ongoing effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts.

The vast majority of all 2025 draft picks have signed their four-year rookie deals. In round two, 30 of the selections have yet to sign.

The problem is that, for the first time ever, a second-round pick has gotten a fully-guaranteed contract. It started with Texans receiver Jayden Higgins, the second pick in round two. That sparked a fully-guaranteed contract for Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the first pick in the second round.

For the next 30 picks, nothing has happened. Obviously, the players and their agents want as many of the deals as possible to be fully guaranteed. The teams want to draw the line as close to the third pick in round two (Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori) as possible.

There’s no colluding to be done, since the common goal of limited guaranteed deals is obvious. Still, it’s the current battleground when it comes to whether the full four years of a contract will be guaranteed.

None of the players will take something less than a fully-guaranteed deal below Emmanwori, because they don’t want to be responsible for ending the run of fully-guaranteed deals. And every team will want to be the one that successfully held the rope and won the full-guarantee tug-o-war.

Eventually, someone will have to blink. It’ll probably start later in the round, with players who wouldn’t expect to get a full guarantee anyway. And then it could work its way up the ladder.

At some point, a player is going to insist on a fully-guaranteed deal and the team is going to insist on not fully guaranteeing the deal and there will be no middle ground.

In a roundabout way, the mere existence of this problem proves that collusion, if it’s happening, is far from universal. The Texans created the predicament by becoming the first team to give a fully-guaranteed contract to a second-round pick. If all 32 teams were in cahoots on a plan to limit fully-guaranteed contracts, the Texans never would have done that.

However it plays out from here, one thing is clear. There won’t be any emails or other written communications encouraging the teams to resist giving players fully-guaranteed deals. Documents like that nearly created a major problem for the NFL.

It would still be a major problem, if the NFLPA had any inclination to capitalize on the leverage they’ve secured.