This time of year is generally fairly quiet when it comes to NFL stories, but July 15 is a notable exception, as the deadline arrives for players on the franchise tag to sign multiyear contracts. If those players don’t sign multiyear deals today, they have to play the 2015 season on a one-year pact, assuming they play at all.
While reports earlier this week expressed pessimism about the number of deals that would come together today, four of 2015’s five franchised players ended up signing extensions, with two of them getting finalized in the hour before the 3:00pm CT deadline.
Here’s a recap of today’s action, along with the contract details we know so far:
Extended:
Dez Bryant, WR (Cowboys)
Franchise tender: $12.823MM
New contract (full story): Five years, $70MM. $14MM per year.
Details: $32MM fully guaranteed at signing ($20MM signing bonus). $45MM guaranteed by March 2016.
Stephen Gostkowski, K (Patriots)
Franchise tender: $4.59MM
New contract (full story): Four years, $17.2MM. $4.3MM per year.
Justin Houston, OLB (Chiefs)
Franchise tender: $13.195MM
New contract (full story): Six years, $101MM. $16.833MM per year.
Details: $32.5MM fully guaranteed at signing ($20.5MM signing bonus). $43MM guaranteed by March 2016. $52.5MM overall guarantee.
Demaryius Thomas, WR (Broncos)
Franchise tender: $12.823MM
New contract (full story): Five years, $70MM. $14MM per year.
Details: $35MM fully guaranteed at signing. $43.5MM overall guarantee.
Not extended:
Jason Pierre-Paul, DE (Giants)
Franchise tender: $14.813MM
Tender remains unsigned — terms of the one-year agreement can be altered if both sides agree.
They get paid Millions of $$$ to catch a ball, while Our injured US Soldiers barely get even 1/10th of that for putting their lives on the line for The Freedom to get paid to play a game.
Why ??!!!
I really didn’t think we’d see 80% of the franchise-tagged players get signed — and who knows, had JPP not gotten injured, we could have seen all five get under contract. Houston seemed like a good bet to be extended from the start, but I didn’t figure either of the pass-catchers (especially Thomas) would come to an agreement.
Maybe there is more to the collusion talks than we know…reason why they got the deals done…we may never know now
It’s true, we’ll never know what went on, but it’s definitely interesting that Dez and DT have eerily similar deals.
The Thomas extension was a huge surprise to me, especially with the big gap between the two sides we’ve been hearing about.
I don’t think they ever expected to match Megatron’s deal, but the fact that they were arguing that as a comp showed that they wanted a lot more than the Wallace deal. In the end I guess they pretty much met in the middle of those 2 deals in terms of AAV.