Rich Tandler of CSNWashington.com is fully aware of the recent report indicating that Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins will not sign a long-term deal with Washington prior to the July 15 deadline, which means that he will play the 2016 season under the franchise tag. However, Tandler is not ruling out the possibility of a multi-year contract just yet. As he observes, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, who reported that the Cousins-Redskins impasse would not be resolved this week, said more or less the same thing about the Demaryius Thomas negotiations last year, only to see Thomas sign a five-year contract with Denver right before the deadline.
Florio, though, is not the only one to report that Cousins would play out the 2016 season on his franchise tender. ESPN’s Adam Schefter, for instance, has said the same thing for at least a month. But as Tandler notes, deadlines drive deals, and both Cousins and the Redskins still have plenty of incentive to get a deal done in the next couple of days.
Now let’s take a look at a few more notes from around the league, beginning with another franchise-tagged player:
- Jason Cole of Bleacher Report has a non-update update on Von Miller, tweeting that there is no news of any kind to pass along on the negotiations between the Broncos star and the club today. Mike Klis of 9News.com, though, reports that there is a reason for that lack of news. Klis says that the two parties are expected to think about where they are in negotiations today, but not necessarily talk about it. Talks are expected to resume tomorrow, as neither side wants to jeopardize the progress that has been made in recent days.
- We heard several days ago that contract talks between the Broncos and wideout Emmanuel Sanders have been put on hold, and Mark Kiszla of The Denver Post opines that although Sanders deserves top dollar, he will probably have to leave Denver as a free agent after the 2016 season to find it. As Kiszla writes, the Broncos’ way of doing business doesn’t seem to be quite as generous now that Pat Bowlen is no longer in charge of day-to-day operations.
- Andrew Mason of DenverBroncos.com looks at how the Broncos might go about replacing Malik Jackson, and Mason writes that the Broncos will likely turn to a committee approach, with Vance Walker at the head of the committee.
- Texans superstar J.J. Watt‘s six-year, $100MM deal was “handled perfectly” in 2014, Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com writes. Fitzgerald goes on to explain how Houston got away with “highway robbery” in that contract, perhaps exploiting Watt’s desire to be a $100MM player to gain a favorable contractual structure. As such, Fitzgerald believes Watt’s deal is the best one on the Texans’ books, whereas new quarterback Brock Osweiler‘s much-ballyhooed contract is the worst.