What Is A "Prove-It" Contract?

[King Colt]

"The Indianapolis Colts signed Kamar Aiken to a prove-it contract, and the wide receiver believes he didn't get a decent chance to show his talents during his tenure with the Baltimore Ravens."

 

OK what is it? Anyone know the ins and out of a Prove It deal or was that just the writer's choice of words?

[jvan1973]

One year deal.

[Fluke_33]

17 minutes ago, King Colt said:

"The Indianapolis Colts signed Kamar Aiken to a prove-it contract, and the wide receiver believes he didn't get a decent chance to show his talents during his tenure with the Baltimore Ravens."

 

OK what is it? Anyone know the ins and out of a Prove It deal or was that just the writer's choice of words?

It's not a legal term of art for a contract or anything.  Just a player betting on themselves to get more in free agency the next year. 

[horseshoeblue22]

Typically a one or two year deal with a moderate salary but low guarantees. Say, a good (but not top of the line) player hits the market and is not getting the kind of offers they were expecting...the "prove-it" deal is an appealing option. Usually entails that the player expects to have more success and better stat-lines in a new situation with a new team, but the end-game result is to spend the time on that short term deal to establish themselves and make them look more appealing the next time they hit FA.

[Clem-Dog]

Dontari Poe signed a 1 year prove-it deal.

[21isSuperman]

2 hours ago, King Colt said:

"The Indianapolis Colts signed Kamar Aiken to a prove-it contract, and the wide receiver believes he didn't get a decent chance to show his talents during his tenure with the Baltimore Ravens."

 

OK what is it? Anyone know the ins and out of a Prove It deal or was that just the writer's choice of words?

It's as the name suggests.  The Colts don't make a huge investment into the player and the player signs a prove-it deal to show that they are worthy of a bigger contract.  Give Aiken a 1 year deal, he might go out and have 1000+ yards and 8+ TDs and that great performance will result in a team giving him a longer deal and more money because he proved himself

[Valpo2004]

21 hours ago, King Colt said:

"The Indianapolis Colts signed Kamar Aiken to a prove-it contract, and the wide receiver believes he didn't get a decent chance to show his talents during his tenure with the Baltimore Ravens."

 

OK what is it? Anyone know the ins and out of a Prove It deal or was that just the writer's choice of words?

 

Usually means a 1 year deal with very little to no guaranteed money and thus little to no risk to the team. 

 

The idea is that a player who feels like his production in the past was hampered by something out of his control, injuries, lack of playing time, bad scheme fit, bad QB,  etc can come play for your team for 1 year to prove that they where in fact only being held back by those things out of their control and try to get a bigger contract out of you or someone else.

 

In the case of Aiken, he feels and has some evidence that he was held back by lack of playing time.  He was forced towards the top of the depth chart one year due to injuries and that year he put up almost 1000 yards.  But all of his other years he's sat buried on the depth chart with little playing time. 

 

It could also refer to a contract where a lot of the money in it is based on performance incentives.