Death Panels for the NFL!

… or a more reasonable take on health care for those who get their bodies crunched every Sunday.

Stefan Fastis, of A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, pens an opinion piece in today’s New York Times about the issue of health care and injuries in today’s NFL.

N.F.L. players often get excellent medical treatment, but the primary goal is to return them to the field as quickly as possible. Players are often complicit in playing down the extent of their injuries. Fearful of losing their jobs — there are no guaranteed contracts in the N.F.L. — they return to the huddle still hurt.

I witnessed this play-first ethos when the Denver Broncos allowed me to join the team as a place-kicker during training camp in 2006 and write a book on the experience. One player told me that, the previous year, a team trainer had dismissed his complaints of a knee injury; a few days later, he tore an anterior cruciate ligament. Another Bronco, now retired, told me the team gave him a diagnosis of a minor calf strain; an outside doctor found it was a severe muscle tear.

Fastis recommends that the new CBA include a few common-sense provisions to give NFL players more opportunities to extend their careers:

1. Take away the team-employed doctors and replace them with a league-wide medical staff that focuses on the best interest of the players, rather than the team.
2. Doctors report their diagnoses directly to the players first before the team.
3. Require every team to report all injuries, no matter how small.  Good luck getting that one approved the Jets!

Filed under: non-guaranteed contracts, other CBA provisions, New York Jets, Stefan Fantis

FAQ: How Does the NFL Waiver Wire Work?

So, with the season just hours away, what happened to all the guys who have been released in the last weeks of the pre-season? Well, it depends.  If the player had been on the 53-man roster of a NFL team for at least 6 games each year for more than four separate seasons (that’s what the CBA calls an “accrued season”), then that player is automatically granted free agency and can sign with any team.  If you don’t have enough accrued seasons though, you go through the waiver wire, which gives first dibs to the team with the worst record from the previous season, second dibs to the second-worse team, and so on.  If you, um, missed it last year, the Detroit Lions took home the booby prize in 2008.

If you’re interested in learning more (about waivers), check out Article XXII of the current CBA which governs the league’s waiver wire.

Filed under: non-guaranteed contracts, CBA Article XXII

NFLPA Bulletin on Injury Rights

We’ve discussed this before, but the union has sent out a bulletin to players regarding their rights if they’re injured in training camp:

NFL rules allow for clubs to bring 80 players into their training camps to compete for a job. But those rosters must be drastically reduced by the end of the summer. Each team has to cut its roster to 75 players by September 1 and to 53 players by September 5.

However, the fact that the clubs need to slash their rosters by almost one-third often conflicts with the extremely high rate of injury experienced by players during the violent competition that takes place in training camp, and the clubs’ injury obligations under the NFL Player Contract.

By the end of summer camp, many clubs have a number of players who have sustained injuries and are unable to play. The NFL Player Contract’s injury guarantee provides that if a player is injured while performing services for his club, and the player promptly reports the injury, then the club must continue to pay the player’s: 1.) salary as long as he remains physically unable to play during that season; and 2.) all necessary treatment, rehabilitation, medical and hospital care relating to the injury.

During late August, clubs cut some injured players from their roster believing that they are healthy. If a player is cut while still injured and unable to play, he must file an injury grievance within 25 days after his release from the club to enforce his injury guarantee rights under his NFL Player Contract.

“If a player believes that his injury prevents him from playing, the player should call the NFLPA immediately after his release so that an injury grievance can be filed on his behalf,” said NFLPA Associate General Counsel and Regional Director Tom DePaso.

After the grievance is filed, the player will be sent to be examined by a “neutral physician.” If the neutral physician finds that the player remains injured, then the player will be given a hearing before an arbitrator to decide his case. An NFLPA attorney will represent the player at the hearing free of charge. Approximately 40 such injury grievances are filed each season to resolve these types of injury disputes.

So as the cut-down dates approach, players should be mindful of their injury rights and call the NFLPA legal department if they have questions.

Filed under: NFLPA, non-guaranteed contracts

How an Injury Settlement Works

Last week, we posted about Tebucky Jones’s lawsuit against the New England Patriots doctors and included a tidbit about “injury settlements” (the team is on the hook for a player’s salary for the extent of the injury and cannot just ‘cut’ him and save that player’s salary).  Truth is, I only had a vague sense of how that works.  Luckily for us, Jack Bechta, an experienced NFL agent breaks down the injury settlement process, including some of the trickier details:

One of the most important roles of an agent is to shine when his client gets hurt during camp, especially if he’s a down-the-line player who’s already a long shot to make the team. When a player in this category suffers a serious injury (out for six weeks or more), the team wants to part ways quickly and wash its hands of the liability.

When a team calls an agent and says it wants to do an “injury settlement,” that means the agent and either the GM or salary-cap manager have to come up with a time frame they think would be equivalent to the duration of the player’s injury. This process is greatly flawed because you have two non-medical professionals trying to forecast the healing time of an injury based on the team doctor’s prognosis. It’s the agent’s job to tell the team that the player would like a second opinion. Teams must agree to a second opinion but don’t always like it because 80 percent of the time the second doctor forecasts a much longer recovery.

Once both doctors’ opinions are in, a negotiation for the injury settlement begins. If the team doctor thinks the player will be fully recovered in six weeks and the second-opinion doctor says 10 weeks, both parties may agree on an eight-week settlement. So if a player was hurt on Aug. 15, he would be paid as if he was on the roster until Week 4 of the regular season. He’s then paid for four preseason games and four-sixteenths of what his salary would have been for that season.

He has some good war stories in this article.  In the comments, he answers questions about why a player would want to take an injury settlement vs. going on the injured reserved list and whether a team who cut an injured player can still sign him when he’s back to full health.  Good stuff.

Filed under: non-guaranteed contracts

Tebucky Jones Lawsuit Against Patriots Docs

Tebucky Jones, former New England Patriots DB, has sued the head Patriots physician and three other doctors for failing to diagnose a career-ending injury.  Jones tells the Boston Herald (MA) that “the practice of cutting players from NFL teams is more widespread than commonly believed.”

He alleges that doctors overlooked his injury to help save the Patriots money by cutting him while he was supposedly healthy.  As we all know, contracts are not guaranteed in the NFL and if a player is cut, he cannot collect any of the remaining contract despite his good faith negotiation.  An exception to this rule is if a player is cut while injured: the hurt player can file for an injury settlement with the team before he is released.  Even though this injury settlement is less than the remainder of the contract, it’s at least something.  Other cut players get nothing, no severance, nada.

Guaranteed/Non-Guaranteed Contracts should be a MAJOR bargaining point in the upcoming CBA.

Filed under: NFLPA, non-guaranteed contracts, New England Patriots, Tebucky Jones