In reply to: if you're good enough to make it posted by cujaysfan
all other things being equal. You are adding an extra year of risk in college to get there. Of course, first-round picks might have to wait an extra year to get a bite of the apple.
the potential reward of a bigger contract. There really isn't a likely upside to the second contract in terms of numbers other than getting to it a year faster. As mentioned below, the extra year is made up for with the difference between a 3rd round and 1st round contract (all assumptions, obviously, but you have to go with the info you have at the time of the decision).
i'd think it would favor being paid if/when it occurs
Like I said, the difference between 1st and 3rd rounder is a significant amount of money. You have 1 year risk of injury there. Looking forward to your second contract, you have multiple years of potential for injury in addition to the potential that your skills will not translate as well to the NFL (where, if you're debating a jump as a 3rd rounder you, in theory, are making good progress at the college level). So in the first scenario, you're basically trading one year of risk/zero earnings versus trading multiple years of injury risk + translation to NFL risk for one year of your end-of-career contract money. It's certainly a difficult decision, but I still think the ability to jump from round 3 to round 1 money is a better investment than the investment of jumping in hopes of getting one extra end-of-career contract year. I think there are way more variables in the second scenario that you can't control/predict.
of the first round from 2017 (and pretend this is your 2018 salary) and the first pick of the 3rd round for 2017 (I'll give you a hint, the first rounder wins).
knowing where i'm slotted today vs the unknown of tomorrow vs the possibility of injury
against the unknown possibility that i might increase my position (or decrease)
and the intangibles of: i like my teammates, i like my coaches, i like college, i'd like to try to win a NC, etc
make it a difficult formula to overcome making the leap today if they're simply looking at the math of it
and like i said - whatever they decide is fine by me
But you can only make decisions based on what you know today, taking into account potential for the unknowns. If Coney/Tillery talked to the same scouts who are writing these articles about them, they'd get feedback that if they continue with their trajectory they could move from 3rd to 1st round. At that point, I think the math speaks for itself (if the last pick in the first round in 2018 invested all his bonus, he would have about $10 million more than the first pick of the 2017 3rd round in 2050 doing the same thing using your compound interest formula, even without that extra year. And that's just the guaranteed bonus). But there's no guarantees either way, I agree with that.