The San Francisco 49ers have been not so subtly devising a contract loophole to avoid paying full amounts of guaranteed money to released players. Several agents representing NFL players, including Doug Hendrickson, have gone on the record to denounce the practice.
Per Mike Florio in NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk, and also via The Athletic:
“The Niners’ contracts are bullsh-t,” [Wasserman agent] Hendrickson tells [The Athletic's] Tafur. “They are team-friendly deals, they do the triggers in April versus normally in March and no one has really had the leverage to change it.”
The Bay Area professional football franchise has been pushing guaranteed dates back to April weeks after the February waiver period, allowing the 49ers to search all of their options before releasing players in the post-guarantee timeline. Florio reports this practice has been done for “at least” the last five years.
The widely criticized practice was also used in 27-year-old quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo's deal, a five-year contract signed in 2018 that could make upwards of $137.5 million for the signal-caller. Rolling guarantee dates exist in Garoppolo's contract: The next one guarantees only $15.7 million of the $23.8 million for 2020 on April 1.
The 49ers could release Jimmy G before that date next year and find another veteran QB off the trash heap instead of paying the former Patriots backup his lucrative deal.
Fellow Wasserman agent C.J. LaBoy adds, in The Athletic, that former 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick “perpetuated” San Francisco's perceived malpractice due to the structure of the contract he signed in 2014.
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