The answer is that agents and teams are both to blame. Brown accuses agents of trying to look good for potential future clients. They sometimes posture and bluster their way through negotiations, needlessly delaying a player signing and then trumpeting the eventual deal as a triumph of their skill, when in reality it was a foregone conclusion. Agents get a cut of the action,'' Brown said. Their main job is to recruit players, not to bargain.
Bargaining is done by the system.
It's amazing they won't admit that. Bengals director of player personnel Jim Lippincott, who negotiates many of the team's lower-round deals, recalled one such bargaining moment from a few years ago. An agent flew to Cincinnati to negotiate a deal for a third-round pick. I stood up to shake his hand and he said, 'I can't do it. Segal said he considers the attributes of a player and the needs of the team that drafted him, as well as the history of what that pick was paid the previous year.