Last week, the Giants made the decision to bench Daniel Jones for the rest of the season, with the reason clearly being that he had $23 million of his 2025 salary protected for injury only. This move was not well received by some of his teammates, and Jones ultimately requested to be released, which the Giants graciously granted to him.
This is a situation that did no good for anyone involved, and considering how more frequent these situations are becoming, it is making me look at the concept of guaranteeing salary for injury only with increased scrutiny. By doing so, it provides teams an incentive to do what the Giants did with Jones, and it makes me consider whether this is a contract mechanism that should be phased out.
How often do injury guarantee triggers vs. benching happen?
Although we do not have precise numbers on how many contracts have had injury only guarantees, I would roughly estimate that there have been at least about 300 contracts in OTC’s database have contained them, and probably more than that, since there are up to 136 currently active contracts with future injury only guarantees in them.
So how many such guarantees do we know have triggered? It’s very rare. The most notable such guarantee to trigger was from Alex Smith’s devastating leg injury in 2018. Smith had a $16 million injury only guarantee on his 2020 salary, and the extensive recovery time that was required to heal that injury caused it to trigger. Suffice to say, this was a highly serious injury that mercifully is one that is also very rare.
Contrast this to the times we’ve seen players benched in order to avoid these triggers. In addition to Jones this season, just last season we saw it with the Raiders benching Jimmy Garoppolo, and the Broncos benching Russell Wilson. The Raiders had back to back seasons of benching of quarterbacks with Derek Carr at the end of 2022. Tyrod Taylor suffered the same fate in 2016. Back in the 2011 CBA, when fifth year options were guaranteed for injury only, Robert Griffin III got benched for all of 2015 despite the team picking up the option just months earlier. There have also been players that have been forced into renegotiations due to injury guarantees. Colin Kaepernick was benched in 2016 until he agreed to waive an injury guarantee on his 2017 salary, in exchange for securing free agency next season.
Jaylon Smith, meanwhile, was an extremely rare player that both got a injury guarantee to trigger, and was forced out of another one. He was cut in the middle of the 2021 season, with a $9.2 million injury guarantee on his 2022 salary on the line. However, as OTC discovered, he also got his 2021 injury guarantee to trigger due to wrist surgery that he had undergone.
On balance, this sort of injury protection hardly ever results in any sort of “guarantee”, and what’s more common than that is play that could end up leading a team to bench a player, with all the attention that it draws to all parties involved.
What could replace injury guarantees?
Consider this other contract mechanism, that would accomplish the same goal of forcing teams to choose whether or not to commit to a player’s upcoming season, usually near the start of the new league year. A team and a player could instead set up a roster bonus or option bonus (depending on whether or not there’s a desire to prorate) around the same date, where payment would be obligated past that same that. When the actual payment of the cash from the bonus is made could be separately negotiated, if there are concerns about moving money away from game check structures.
By doing this, the goal of forcing the team to make a commitment to a season around the start of free agency is retained, but the incentive to bench to avoid injury is taken away. This strikes me as a much more reasonable agreement to be had, that can obviate the possibility of drama coming from a midseason benching.
The only drawback that I see comes from the interests of agents. They are eager to emphasize the total amount of possible guarantees in a contract, and initial reports of “$[#] million guaranteed” are widely understood to include both full guarantees and injury only guarantees. Ideally, agents would stand down from this practice, but there’s a collective action problem involved in advertising fewer possible guarantees than competitors. Perhaps some sort of language quirk that would emphasize the strength of when roster bonuses or option bonuses become obligated to be paid. But in exchange, agents would be not setting up their clients for this potential benching risk.