It’s unclear what will happen next with Melvin Gordon, but we now know one thing. The Chargers’ running back won’t be getting the extension he wants from Los Angeles this season.
Chargers GM Tom Telesco announced Sunday the team is postponing extension talks until after the season, according to Gilbert Manzano of the OC Register (Twitter link). The Chargers have been negotiating with Gordon this summer, although obviously they didn’t offer anything Gordon and his representatives were willing to accept. We heard back in July that the two sides were about $2-3MM apart in talks.
Those talks will now be tabled until the end of the season, if they’re ever brought back again at all. “When or if Melvin reports, he’ll play this season under his current contract, and we’ll just revisit it after the season,” Telesco said, via Eric D. Williams of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Telesco is playing hardball, and clearly isn’t going to budge. Just yesterday, word leaked that the Chargers had given the Wisconsin product permission to seek a trade.
That same report also indicated that Gordon hadn’t ruled out returning and playing out the final year of his rookie deal. He’s currently set to make $5.605MM under the fifth-year option. Of course even if Gordon is able to find a team willing to trade for him, they’d have to offer compensation that the Chargers want. He doesn’t have too much leverage at the moment, since if he doesn’t play this season his contract would simply toll to 2020.
Gordon had by far the best year of his career in 2018, and now he’s trying to cash in. The Chargers have remained firm in their stance and haven’t backed down, and appear content to enter the season with Austin Ekeler and second-year player Justin Jackson atop the depth chart. It’ll be interesting to see what Gordon does next, and how much time he’s willing to miss.
I wouldn’t budge if i am chargers. Dude has been below average for 3 seasons and was season a bust until last year. He needs to show he can replicate last years production to warrant a considerable payout. If not chargers can replace his production by committee.
Right?
Agreed. Chargers have the RBs necessary to do a committee. No need to pay top dollar for Gordon. Just sucks that the Chargers didn’t use that money in other ways.
That’s how every team should handled holdouts
Imagine if teams started to cut salaries based on performance? … well the other end of the spectrum is equally as ridiculous
honor your contract
period
Didn’t see you complaining when the Bills cut Shady over performance while he was still under contract.
I must’ve missed that press conference when the Bills announced this was the reason. I can only remember reading/hearing about it on websites & sports radio
good for the Chargers!!!!
The Chargers hardball approach has got them 2 playoffs wins in the past decade and with no heir for Rivers and no intentions of rewarding player performance, the next decade should be even worst for them.
Makes me laugh when people get so upset about players trying to cash in on a good year to get paid more. I don’t agree with the greed shown by some players like Gordon this year. He seems to have lost all respect for reasonable pay. But teams do it all the time to players. They cut players and cut salary (by making the player “agree” to a pay cut) all the time. They don’t honour contracts so why should players when they hold the upper hand. Teams could do away with most of this holdout stuff by guaranteeing contracts for the players. But they’ll never do that cause benefit more from this arrangement than they are hurt by it.