Follow Up on the $250 million club post

Special for Josh:

#1 Draft pick, Matt Stafford signed with Detroit Lions for either 17 million  guaranteed,  or 41.7 million guaranteed. Based on what I’ve heard from insiders it was the 41.7 number.  That can easily go to  $78 million if he has an average first six years.  And if he can get Detroit to the playoffs in the first three or four years that contract will be re-written.  Even if General Motors has to contribute to do it.

Detroit is going all out to help Stafford because the Lions were a terrible team in 2009 as we all know.  They’ve brought in eleven free agents so far and six of those are on defense….so Matt will hopefully have a better chance to get rid of the ball than last’s year’s QB’s did.  Stafford is a great young man with a head that knows football.  Livernois and Grand River Ave aren’t Broadway…. that’s for sure … but Detroit is hungry for a hero and they’ll treat him like Bobby Layne if he gets the job done.

USC’s “Playboy” Mark Sanchez, as the tabloids have tagged him,  got $28 million guaranteed  and the total on that contract could easily exceed $50 mm  in the first 5 years.  If Mark does well and has a couple of blow out years you can bet your house the contract will be  renegotiated and it won’t be renegotiated down!  

Is he the playboy the internet says he is? I don’t think so.  He’s a good kid who just got all the money in the world and a heck of a stage to spend it on. New York, New York its a wonderful town…if you don’t let it down!

Now if he follows in Leinart’s tracks, which some want to say he might, he’ll still do well enough to stick around for the five years and he’ll have to get by on $50 “mil.”   Probably most readers are too young to remember Joe Namath coming to the NFL … with knees so bad there were questions if he’d even be able to play…yet he signed with the Jets for the UNHEARD OF PRICE of $400,000!  The biggest contract in NFL history at the time…and it turned out to be a great bargain for New York.

Well Sanchez signed for 12 ½ times as much as “Broadway Joe” and he already has more stories about girlfriends than Joe did in his entire career.  Joe had too much class to talk about all the girls. I’ve seen a few of Mark’s girlfriends and the #1 “hottie” is a ‘drop dead’ schoolteacher who works at Phil Trani’s restaurant in Long Beach. I’m told she still gets calls regularly from Sanchez.  (Not sure if she still picks up on those calls?}

So my $250 Million club has a total on the first two contracts, of the six guys in the photo, of  over $128 million. That’s on their ‘ORIGINAL’ signing contracts. Not too bad.

The other four outstanding players in that photo, all who opted not to go into the 2009 draft were: QB Chase Daniel, Missouri,  QB Bobby Reid, Texas Southern, QB Colt McCoy, Texas and USC’s #1 wide receiver Damian Williams, who will make this year’s Trojan QB, Aaron Corp look good all year.  Corp is so fleet afoot that it may cost Williams a few TD’s  but rest assured the pro scouts will see enough to insure him of an 8 figure contract in 2010. 

 

So you see why I still stand behind that “$250 Million Club”  estimate; heck it could go to $252 million maybe?