Elvis Dumervil‘s agent just made an $8 million mistake.
After negotiating with the Broncos all week on a potential contract restructuring, Dumervil finally agreed to take a $4 million pay cut on Friday reducing his salary from $12 million to $8 million for the upcoming season. Only his agent didn’t get the paperwork over in time, according to Mike Klis of the Denver Post.
Why, you ask? Because apparently the NFL’s still operating like this is the mid-1990s.
The Broncos released Dumervil after not receiving a faxed copy of the contract by their 2 p.m. deadline, which just so happened to be the time his full $12 million salary would have become guaranteed. Now, he’s officially a free agent and free to sign with any team basically except for the Broncos.
Maybe Dumervil and his reps were trying to pull a fast one on the Broncos, keeping the big money they thought they deserved. Or Dumervil’s agent is just not very handy with old fax machines. Either way, now he’s out $8 million in guaranteed money and a 29-year-old pass rusher is unlikely to find that sort of dough in this market.
The entire situation seems foolish, but the use of the fax machine is the most confusing of all. What is this the 1990s? Since when did fax machines become a viable means of communication again? Never mind an efficient one.
Technology has developed to such a point that you can send a message to a friend in Denver instantaneously from almost anywhere in the world. Yet, for some reason, Dumervil’s agent couldn’t send a fax to Broncos headquarters within 35 minutes.
We don’t have enough information yet to properly assign blame, but if I’m picking sides then the use of fax machines altogether gets my vote. Hey NFL, you’re a $9 billion industry, let’s catch up to the 21st century already.
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