Reiss: Malcolm Butler plans to push for an adjustment to his contract

signbabybrady said:

I would put Malcolm ahead of Collins and Hightower. Mainly because I think if we only come away with 2/3 then getting one CB and one of the LBs leaves us in a better place.

And I don't think I'ld put Sheard ahead of any of the 3 because of snap counts which should go up for him this year and we'll see how his production correlates.

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The Boston Patriot said:

Maybe not more but just as valuable IMHO.

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robertweathers said:

Why don't the owners deserve the money? Aren't they assuming all the financial and capital risk? Players are already making millions..

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mgteich said:

And everyone told me just a couple of weeks ago that we had Butler for this year for peanuts and next year at the RFA rate. Further, I was told that Butler was the type of player who would accept this situation.

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JarOfMayo51 said:

That means he'd be the 26th highest paid CB.. almost paid as a #2.. i don't think they would view that as reasonable, hes a lot better than that

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IllegalContact said:

Buy low, sell high.....get Cyrus jones and Darryl Roberts up to speed and get a decent draft pick for butler after 2016 season

Collins and Hightower are more important

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BUSTAMOVE said:

He is not a free agent. He plays or he does not get paid and does not accumulate years of playing time delaying his restricted free agent status. If he wants to get paid now, he will take a #2 type of pay for two to three years and then go for the big payday. He has no leverage. Why would the Pat's just hand him the keys to the Bentley when he needs to drive a BMW for a few years. Hightower and Collins get paid now. They earned it. 4 or so years of service. Malcolm has two. Love the kid, but he is not an immediate priority unless he makes it worthwhile the Pat's.

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BobDigital said:

First i will link this for reference.

Cornerback Contracts and Salaries | Over The Cap

Here is what I think Butler should be paid. The elite of the elite CBs make about 15-14M a year these days. While that might be desperate teams willing to overpay a little that is what the absolute top of the market is today and we can expect salaries to continue to go up over time as the cap goes up. That is what guys like Revis, Peterson, Norman and Sherman make.

So the question is this "is Butler that good or likely to be that good". Well he generally is not that good right now and i don't think he will ever be top 5 cause he does have certain physical limitations. So the absolute top of the market is not for Butler now or in the future though i think we can expect him to improve just a bit more.

So what was Butler's play worth last year? He made a probowl and i would argue rightly so. He certainly belongs on the short list of considered names worth debating about at the least. I would say most people would say he was top 15 last year overall and arguably top 10 (I put him in the top 10 considering the competition he faced)

Lets see what the 10th highest paid CB made last year... Brandon Carr is #10 on that list and made 10.2M that year.

Looking at players who are established which i think are right there with Butler skill wise though their games might be different (this is now my own personal opinion) I put him with guys like Talib, Jenkins, Flowers and Harris. They make 9.5, 12,5, 9.1 & 8.5M respectively. So lets call it average close to 9.5M wichi is in line with that the #10 best paid CB made last year which fits.

Now lets assume any deal we make with Butler will factor in the cap going up and the longer the deal is the more we can likely save on a per year basis. Generally thought Butller is worth 10M a year now likely to be worth 12-13M in 5 years due to increased skill and raising of the cap.

So to pay him a fair deal for what he is worth would look like 9.5, 10, 11, 12, 12.5 or averaging out to 5 years 5 years 55M (11 per year). However we do have leverage to hold him to a little less but i think the more the Pats play ball with Butler the more likely he is to play ball with the Pats. Pay him a little more now to pay less later and give him more guaranteed to make the overall salary less.

right now he lets say he has a 3 yr deal where the 3rd year is 15m (franchise tag) the Pats will not pay 15 M so we get him cheap for 2 years if we play hard ball then he probably goes to seek top market since we didn't pay him and probably has hard feelings over it.

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BUSTAMOVE said:

He is not a free agent. He plays or he does not get paid and does not accumulate years of playing time delaying his restricted free agent status. If he wants to get paid now, he will take a #2 type of pay for two to three years and then go for the big payday. He has no leverage. Why would the Pat's just hand him the keys to the Bentley when he needs to drive a BMW for a few years. Hightower and Collins get paid now. They earned it. 4 or so years of service. Malcolm has two. Love the kid, but he is not an immediate priority unless he makes it worthwhile the Pat's.

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skinnydog said:

Butler has no leverage. The pats could get him for 3-4 years at about 5 per year right now.

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Miguel said:

From the CBA
"A player shall not receive an Accrued Season for any League Year in which the player is under contract to a Club and in which he failed to report to such Club at least thirty days prior to the first regular season game of that season"

Butler has to show up in order to have 2016 count as an Accrued season to become an RFA after this season.

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PatsBoy12 said:

This is such a sensitive topic because of the way this is shaping up with the Big Three (and Sheard and Ninko to a much lesser degree). Here's my stab it:

A) I'll start with Butler since this thread is about him primarily (though the order of importance could be argues ad nauseam). So you've apparently found this gem of an UDFA, right. He is so immense in the fourth quarter of the SB for the entire second half. He's batting down deep balls that were being caught when Arrington and Ryan were in the game, he has the awareness to tackle the receiver after what was another insane catch (as if we needed another one) and then makes perhaps the biggest play in SB history! What does he do for an encore, you ask? He goes out, after the team lost Revis, and performs better than Revis by playing out of his mind against some of the best the game has to offer.

B) You got Hightower. He showed two seasons ago how important he is to this team. This is a guy who many were beginning to grumble about. I was starting to read "bust" talk, and not the kind found in Canton. Everyone remember's Butler's interception, and rightfully so. But how many conversations have there been about the play before it? You know . . . the one where Hightower takes down Lynch with the same shoulder he busted earlier in the same game? Yeah, that play was just as important. It just wasn't the final play of the game. Had it been, we'd be discussing it in the same vein as the Butler INT. Hightower transforms the D. It was evident multiple times last season where the run D was atrocious without him, and an almost immovable object with him. Go back and watch what happened in the DEN game after he went down. That game alone illustrates his importance. And as if he wasn't good enough, we went ahead and became better in man coverage when asked to do that. He has only gotten better with each season, starting when Mayo went down with the first season-ender. Which leads me to the caveat. High has shown a propensity to get injured. He plays through the pain because he's a warrior, but he has missed time multiple times. If you are going to pay someone top notch money, then you kind of want him on the field a lot. I'm not willing yet to label him, but he's knocking on the "injury prone" door.

C) And then there's the freak. Every few years a guy enters the league who seems like he was bred for nothing else in this life or the next. He's the kind of physical specimen that you speculate has to have been created in a lab or is on something (sadly). He's so physically gifted that those of us who have played a sport on a semi-serious level can't help but feel a little envious . . . man, what we would do if we could play like that! And that guy is on your team. He makes plays all over the field and the run D instantly becomes a stout force when he's in the game. And he's not even the biggest LB you'll find. Yet he takes on blocks, blitzes as well as I've seen any MLB (since its usually 4-2-5) in the league in the last five years (I know there's a few really good guys to consider). He can blitz the gaps, rush from outside, stop the run and, to a degree that still needs some improvement, he can cover well enough. He's smart - just as smart as High - and they both share the same great instincts. He's YOUNG. We could have this swiss army knife for many years to come! He plays all four downs, is gifted with incredible physical gifts, is smart and keeps his head pretty low off the field.

Now, imagine they all want top dollar for their respective positions. Wow, I don't envy Kraft, BB and the financial guys. That's pretty tough. Still, I believe we can make it happen. And that's not just wishful thinking.

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Deus Irae said:

Please detail this financial and capital risk.

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Sciz said:

To be quite blunt, I don't think it's very relevant to talk about what Butler "deserves" relative to other CBs. Those other players were either on the open market or about to be, while Butler may not see unrestricted free agency until 2019. I think the only way he's getting anywhere near $12 million a year in the next 12 months is if another team offers that when he's an RFA next offseason. That's his best chance at getting what he "deserves," because there's just no business reason for the Pats to offer significantly more than what this year's salary, next year's RFA tender, and 2018's potential franchise tag would pay him.

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