Last week at this time, we were still scratching our heads about why the Falcons felt compelled to sign rookie quarterback Matt Ryan to a six-year deal by the close of business on Tuesday, May 20 — the same day on which the league’s owners voted 32-0 to opt out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement two years earlier.

We think we’ve finally figured it out.

The first piece of the puzzle came courtesy of Alex Marvez of FOXSports.com, who reported on May 22 that the opt out prevents guaranteed money from being pushed into 2013.  This means that a six-year deal signed in 2008 cannot have a guaranteed base salary for the sixth and final year of the contract.

“The opportunity to do a six-year deal was going to get a lot more complicated,” Falcons president Rich McKay said regarding the team’s effort to finalize Ryan’s deal before 4:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.  “I couldn’t say you couldn’t do it.  I’m not saying you could do it.  I’m sure there’s a way.  We just hadn’t figured it out yet.”

The rest of the answer comes from the combined effect of the annual rookie wage pool (which gives the team a total amount of first-year money to devote to all of its rookies) and the rule that limits the annual growth of the rookie’s contract to 25 percent of the first-year salary, excluding the signing bonus proration.

In recent years, this dynamic has prompted many of the teams negotiating contracts at the top of the draft to give the players no signing bonuses at all, so that the foundation for the future growth of the players’ salaries would be maximized.

And for some of the deals at the top of the draft, the teams have calculated the maximum available salaries under each year of the deal, and then the teams have guaranteed the entire amount.

In Ryan’s case, the only way to get the amount of guaranteed money that Ryan (and his agent, Tom Condon) wanted on a six-year deal was to execute a six-year deal that contained a fully-guaranteed salary in year six.  Since no amount of the year-six salary could be guaranteed after the opt out became effective on Tuesday, May 20, the maximum deal length as a practical matter would have been five years.

Lost in the rush to get Ryan’s deal done was that he received substantially more guaranteed money than any other rookie in the history of the league.  But even though Rams defensive end Chris Long was drafted one spot higher than Ryan, Long won’t see $34.75 million or more in guaranteed money, because he won’t be able to do a six-year deal with guaranteed money in year six.

Instead, look for Long’s deal to be five years in duration, and to have guaranteed money falling somewhere between Jake Long’s average of $6 million per year in guaranteed money and Ryan’s average of $5.792 million.  Splitting the difference, the annual average on the guaranteed money would be $5.895 million, resulting in total guaranteed money on a five-year deal of  $29.479 million.

So even though the CBA permits picks No. 1 through No. 16 to be signed to six-year deals, don’t count on many/any of them happening at the top of the draft.  And as the picks slide past the big-money deals in the top five or so picks, the reality is that many of last year’s deals had durations of only five years, anyway.

Then there’s the Darelle Revis clusterfudge contract at No. 14, which might prompt the agent for Bears left tackle Chris Williams (this year’s No. 14) to lobby for a deal that voids to four years with obscene buy-back amounts for years five and/or six.  As mentioned above, however, it will be impossible for the bought-back salary in year six to be guaranteed.

For the Falcons, getting the deal done before May 20 meant locking Ryan up for six years instead of five.  And this means that they’d be able to use the franchise tag on him in year seven, if they can’t work out an extension. 

Still, making the deal six years in duration and giving him the maximum amount of guaranteed money only raises the stakes on the coin-flip proposition that arises from taking a quarterback at the top of round one.