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Originally Posted by 53Fan
The salaries AND the strike. Supposedly....the NFL is setup with revenue sharing etc.to help teams in the smaller markets. I agree that owners like Snyder drive prices up, some people have more money than sense, but didn't smaller market teams do ok before the cap? I mean, Buffalo went to 3 SB's before the cap didn't they? A lot of these markets have a bad product even with the cap because their owners don't WANT to spend. Fortunately other owners don't go as far as Snyder, if they did, we wouldn't have so much deadcap over these lousy deals we've made. Snyder always pays more than the other owners and it usually backfires. I think it's more Snyder than the league as a whole and fortunately no one wants his results. I think he makes a good case for not overspending. But hell...I don't know that much about it. I could be wrong.  |
That and the advent of free agency. It wasn't as hard for small market teams to compete back then because through shrewd drafting they could assemble and KEEP a strong team even without spending as much as the big market teams. Once FA came in, the salary's sky rocketed and you cannot assemble a team over a long period. You have a couple years to get good before the strong contributors leave for greener pastures.
There is no way Dallas of the 90's, The Bills of the late 80s, or the Steelers of the 70s could have been competitive long term with free agency. Even the Skins would have had trouble since it's unlikely we could have retained the Hogs for a long period.