An analysis of Aaron's contract

[FlaPack]

Ball followed the “Green Bay Way” when it came to contract structure. Andrew Brandt wrote about this multiple times, cash out was always inline to avoid cap issues, pretty much the same philosophy Brandt had during his time in GB. You bring up Bennett / Cook issue but you can also throw in Mack negotiations which screamed cash flow

The history in GB has always been to use roster bonus as the smart way to manage the cap and also avoid void years. Well as we all know void years is now part of way GB does business and I cannot see Ball making that decision on his own or for that matter even advocating for it. It’s smacks in the philosophy/ culture of how that FO has worked in the past. Pre Murphy. Ball arrived one year after Murphy which gave him (Murphy) the puppet he needed.

Ball gets a budget from Murphy and his job is to manage that budget and with the situation with Rodgers, Murphy is the one who authorized $101m guaranteed at signing, I have a hard time seeing Ball with that authority. And to be blunt the structure, not using void years was probably the smart play, yeah you get some dead money, unavoidable since much of the cash was from a previous contract. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.

The structure of the organization which Murphy created gave him ruling power on both finances, roster management and to a great degree scouting and personnel.

 

[Cheesedog]

Ball is a very under the radar, low key clown. Highly valued by TT for his approach to player negotiations, he reportedly was punching way above his weight when TT was in mental decline, taking a lead role in the decision to let Jared Cook go and replace him with Martellus Bennett in 2017. His preference for strung out negotiations and initial low ball offers is well known in the agent community and it probably played a big role in frustrating Adams, who believed he was above that sort of cookie cutter approach to negotiations. Murphy considered Ball for the GM job before deciding to split elements of the role among Ball and Gute, while taking on ultimate decision making for himself.

I'd love to see him out the door along with Murphy, two old sticks in the mud whose time has come and gone. Say what you want about Gute, I will take him to task for every blown draft pick, but I personally like him, and I think he has shown more willingness to bring in new blood on his team than anyone else in this ossified org in a good long time.

Not maybe absolutely frustrated Adams. Not to mention insulted him. One of the reasons I think after awhile Adams just said f it I’m out…

 

[FlaPack]

Ball is a very under the radar, low key clown. Highly valued by TT for his approach to player negotiations, he reportedly was punching way above his weight when TT was in mental decline, taking a lead role in the decision to let Jared Cook go and replace him with Martellus Bennett in 2017. His preference for strung out negotiations and initial low ball offers is well known in the agent community and it probably played a big role in frustrating Adams, who believed he was above that sort of cookie cutter approach to negotiations. Murphy considered Ball for the GM job before deciding to split elements of the role among Ball and Gute, while taking on ultimate decision making for himself.

I'd love to see him out the door along with Murphy, two old sticks in the mud whose time has come and gone. Say what you want about Gute, I will take him to task for every blown draft pick, but I personally like him, and I think he has shown more willingness to bring in new blood on his team than anyone else in this ossified org in a good long time.

As to the perception with agents this is pretty accurate. And the word that I will add in along with low ball was / is lack of flexibility. The roster bonus thing was not well popular nor was the the perceived inability to add void years in to work the cap.

 

[rpiotr01]

The other side of it with Ball was that the Packers were also known as a team that would generally meet the asking price of their own FAs, so the process became something of a farce. As Pack just said they were very inflexible on structure and remained so until recently but overall it was predictable - Ball would start low, stay there, and at the last minute come up to what the player wanted. With a guy like Adams, who is very proud and very confident, it must've been insulting like CD said, like I know and you know and everyone knows you're gonna come around eventually, why keep playing this game? But they played the game until the end and by the time they came up, the player was over it and wanted out.