I recently read an article in USA Today, which outlined the 2001 player and team salaries for each and every team in the NFL, and to be frank, I was pretty amazed. As I perused through the article, noting the numerous overpaid, underachieving players in the NFL, I came to a startling, yet pleasing realization.

The San Francisco 49ers had one of the lowest payrolls in all of the NFL in 2001.

How many 12-4 teams can boldly make that statement? Not too many, that’s for damn sure.

Also, when was the last time the Niners had a team payroll that was among the lowest 4 or 5 in the league? I am not sure on that one, but I can make a good wager that it was at least 10-12 years ago.

Things are good in Niner-land right now, our key players are signed, we are out of salary cap prison, the team is winning again, and free agents are becoming more and more attracted to the team.

Consider this, in the NFC West, the team salaries for 2001 break down like this:

St. Louis Rams – $82, 344,655

Seattle Seahawks - $81,034,664

Arizona Cardinals - $74,891,809

San Francisco 49ers - $50,374,331

(Do you realize the magnitude of these numbers? I mean, the Niners are almost 32 MILLION dollars less in payroll than the Rams, and yet we still managed to win only 2 fewer games than they did last season! Are you not astounded? I know I am.)

To further that, here are the regular season records for those same teams:

St. Louis Rams 14-2

Seattle Seahawks 9-7

Arizona Cardinals 7-9

San Francisco 49ers 12-4

You wanna talk about more bang for the buck? Well, look no further than the 49ers 2001 season my friends.

(Now granted two of those teams played in different divisions/conferences last year, the salary to win ration remains the same, which is pretty much the point of this whole rambling. So bear with me, ok?)

Ok, so lets bust those numbers up a little, shall we? (Gr. 12 Accounting don’t fail me now!)

Cost per win:

$10,698,829 – Arizona Cardinals

$9,003,851 – Seattle Seahawks

$5,881,761 – St. Louis Rams

$4,197,860 – San Francisco 49ers

Are you kidding me? Nearly 10.7 MILLION per win? I never went to business school or anything, but even I know that paying that much per win is NOT good business. I guess I can’t be too hard on the Cards, I mean, I don’t have a seething hatred toward them like I do toward the Rams or Cowboys, and I guess they aren’t the worst team in the league cost per win...

(that honor goes to the Panthers at about 64.35 MILLION per win. Yes, that is as funny as it sounds.)

...so I have to cut them some slack... well, sort of.

But on the other hand we have the 49ers cost per win, which is less than half of what both the Cards and the Seahawks figured to shell out. I think that the Niners are a picture of efficiency for when it comes to rebuilding through youth and the draft. Don’t you agree?

Average Salary per team:

$1,421,661 – Seattle Seahawks

$1,349,912 – St. Louis Rams

$1,227,735 – Arizona Cardinals

$915,897 – San Francisco 49ers

Ok, so here we have a little more relative statistic. Now from a players point of view, playing for any team in this division BUT the 49ers would be good, because the average salary is well over the one million dollar mark, but from a business point of view, the Niners are again, a much better run business, due to their lower average salary. Now, some teams are handcuffed to these salary numbers because of large bloated contracts for aging veterans, but that isn’t really the case for any of these teams. Now granted there are a few fat cats on these rosters, but they are much lower in comparison to the rest of the league.

Now the Niners are a completely different story. They have finally shed all of their dead money, and now only have highly paid, highly effective players on their roster. Case in point: The back up QB position. The 49ers paid their back up QB, Tim Rattay, $314,493 in 2001, where the rest of the teams fared like this:

Rams – Jamie Martin - $477,000

Seahawks – Trent Dilfer - $1,500,000

Cardinals – Dave Brown - $851,920

There again, we see that the Niners have only their highly effective players being highly paid. But this is not the only position where this is the case, but I am going to spare you the monotonous journey into number crunching (a la Grade 9 Algebra) and ask that you just take my word for it, ok?

Now please believe me when I say that I fully realize that this a moot point. Last year’s salaries and results will have absolutely no bearing on this year’s results, or salaries for that matter. I just wanted to illustrate the amazing effectiveness that the Niners brain trust was able to extract from their players, all the while paying them a lesser amount in comparison to other teams. In today’s NFL, when you are able to see that happen, let alone make that happen, it is truly a breath of fresh air.

That breath of fresh air is just what the doctor ordered for the NFL as a whole, and the Niners were more than glad to deliver. Now, I just hope they can deliver just was well on the field THIS season…

Until Next Time…