How NFL Teams Are Using Insurance to Create Cap Space

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Aaron Rodgers was injured four snaps into his tenure as the new quarterback of the Jets, he not only missed, virtually, the entire 2023 season, but cost the team up to $22 million dollars in lost production. A fate the Jets could have mitigated by taking out an insurance policy on Rodgers. Rodgers' situation is one that stands out amid a trend of teams buying insurance policies on star players around the NFL. The practice — which is becoming more popular as the sums of guaranteed money in players’ contracts increases — can soothe the bite of losing a player to injury, while also creating cap space for strategic front offices. Today, Senior ESPN reporter Kayln Kahler breaks down how these policies actually work, and explains why some teams have bought into the trend, while others opt out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kaleer, what's your favorite insurance commercial?
0:07.4	Flow, are we on?
0:09.4	GECCO?
0:10.4	I guess I would say the GECCO.
0:11.4	I think he's cute.
0:12.4	So I think whenever he comes on my screen I like it I find the caveman a little unsettling
0:17.0	I had this experience the other night I was in a barn college football was on and I looked over and it was like the caveman with real
0:24.7	announcers and that was like really unsettling and I was like wait what am I
0:29.6	looking at took me a while to realize it was a commercial so that one I'm not a fan of so I have to go with a gecko I think.
0:35.3	I wrote a story in 2021 like literally 5,000 words about tag team bringing back
0:40.8	scoop there it is it was legitimately one of the most fun assignments I ever had in my life
0:46.4	Turns out the guy who does the scoop deal that thing
0:50.1	He was a college baseball player. Point being, insurance and sports have all sorts of
0:55.4	linkages that people don't realize beyond just the commercials you see on your TV
0:58.3	every day. That's right, and now insurance policies and sports are actually being used to create cap space out of thin air. The GEICO gecko geckos and flows of the insurance world once relegated to commercial
1:19.6	breaks are becoming a part of the fabric of NFL games as well,
1:24.5	with a rising trend of teams taking out insurance policies on their players.
1:29.5	Senior ESPN reporter Kaylin Kaler unfurled the taboo topic by speaking with club executives
1:35.8	and insurance agents alike.
1:38.2	Today, she paints us a picture of how these policies actually work, and how for teams that have them and
1:45.2	teams that don't these insurance policies are starting to affect their wins
1:49.1	losses and bottom lines as a team.
	...

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