An NFL agent who was watching ESPN this afternoon (it’s good to know that agents screw off as much as the rest of us) advises us that Chris Mortensen was discussing the Jake Long contract, and that Mort at one point addressed the issue of the skyrocketing rookie contracts by stating definitively that players are very happy with the money paid to rookies, and that he has never heard a peep from anyone who wants to change the system.

Said our source, “I don’t represent a single player that agrees with Mort.  I guess he is talking to the wrong people.”

The reality is that any player — including any of the few rookies who instantly become the highest-paid players in the league at their respective positions — would (or at least should) be in favor of restricting the windfalls paid to unproven players.

The reason is simple. Since the NFL uses a hard salary cap, such restrictions on the money paid to players who aren’t yet in the league would create more money for the players who are. And since the rules appear in a CBA voted on by players who are in the league, and none who aren’t, the issue (if ever properly presented to the rank-and-file) would results in a landslide.

The only players who benefit from the current system are the handful every year of those who have no vote in whether the system should continue. Players who are proving themselves every day shouldn’t care at all ensuring that kids who have never done a thing at the NFL level will be able to become instant multi-millionaires while eating up a lot of the cap space for which the rest of them are jockeying.

But the system remains in place because the NFLPA hasn’t tried to change it. And we believe that the NFLPA hasn’t tried to change it because a handful of agents (including the guy who represents this year’s first recipient of the golden ticket from a bottle of Pawtucket Pat) want to maintain that stream of commissions from the big-money deals that get paid to the first ten or so first-round picks every year.