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I'm sure lots of posters here have been following the Chargers / Joey Bosa negotiation debacle, but for those who haven't here's a quick summary. Also, every source that I'm citing here was pulled from the nfl subreddit. Don't want to take credit for other people's work, but I did want to share it here since I think it's a pretty interesting story.
The 2011 CBA was billed as pretty much eliminating first round draft holdouts, since it rigidly structured how much players could make based on draft slot. It pretty much succeeded in that respect, in that there is now only a very narrow range of negotiable issues that the player and team are likely to actually care about. Two of those things are the timing of bonus payments (pretty self-explanatory) and offset language (what amount of relief, if any, the team gets in the event that the player is released and signed elsewhere.
The Chargers drafted Bosa 3rd overall. They've spent the past few months trying to get Bosa to sign a contract that delays paying half of his bonus until the next league year, and also includes offset language. This breaks from precedent in that, since the new CBA was passed, no top 3 pick has signed a contract including both bonus deferral and offset language. Jared Goff has a bonus deferral included, but no offset language. Wentz has offset language, but no bonus deferral. Ezekiel Elliott, the 4th pick, signed a deal with both bonus deferral and offset language. On the face of it, it seems like Elliott signed a bad deal and the Chargers jumped on a lower-drafted player's bad contract as a precedent for what they can demand out of Bosa.
This all boiled over with the Chargers releasing a statement yesterday that's basically an attempt to paint Bosa as not-a-team-player, and themselves as the patient compromisers:
Basically, the Chargers decided to issue a misleading statement in an effort to smear their draft pick and shame him into signing a bad contract. That's a bold strategy. Point 3 was particularly disingenuous, since it compared Bosa's offer to the Chargers' own picks since 2011... and they haven't drafted in the top 10 since then. Purely as a function of where he was drafted, Bosa's contract should be significantly above any previous Chargers' rookie contract since then. PFT has kindly gone over point by point and demonstrated how every statement was misleading here:
Bosa has moved on deferral issue, but not enough for the Chargers
Naturally, some people are trying to spin this as Bosa being unwilling to compromise. Kevin Acee at the San Diego Union-Tribune, for example, tweeted this:
Reddit user CommuterTrain immediately clarified what was left unsaid: that the initial offer gave less than 42.5% of his bonus in 2016. So the Chargers essentially started from a completely asinine, absolute non-starter position, so that they could move a bit to the middle, still be in "it's an absolute steal if we get this" territory, and then smear Bosa for being 'unwilling to compromise'. Frankly, I think this is pretty compelling evidence that they've been negotiating in bad faith to try to force Bosa into a terrible deal from the start, but your mileage may vary.
Anyway, Bosa's representatives responded to the Chargers' statement with a statement of their own:
At this point, I think the well may be poisoned. The Chargers have made it clear that any subsequent offers will be worse than the one they just made, to reflect the fact that Bosa's been out too long to be a full contributor this season. Bosa has dug in his heels, saying that to the extent that's true it's only because the Chargers have been unwilling to come even close to an acceptable offer, all while delaying throughout. If the Chargers don't budge on this, I believe Bosa will sit out the year and re-enter the draft next season. If he does, there's nothing I would l would love more than for him to fall to us at #32 (knock on wood that we'll be drafting there, and I know it's implausible because he won't fall that far). I live among a bunch of Chargers fans who have been following this closely, and they're so exasperated with their ****ty owner and ****ty FO that they're genuinely wondering if this is a plot to piss them off so much that they don't even care when the team moves.
The 2011 CBA was billed as pretty much eliminating first round draft holdouts, since it rigidly structured how much players could make based on draft slot. It pretty much succeeded in that respect, in that there is now only a very narrow range of negotiable issues that the player and team are likely to actually care about. Two of those things are the timing of bonus payments (pretty self-explanatory) and offset language (what amount of relief, if any, the team gets in the event that the player is released and signed elsewhere.
The Chargers drafted Bosa 3rd overall. They've spent the past few months trying to get Bosa to sign a contract that delays paying half of his bonus until the next league year, and also includes offset language. This breaks from precedent in that, since the new CBA was passed, no top 3 pick has signed a contract including both bonus deferral and offset language. Jared Goff has a bonus deferral included, but no offset language. Wentz has offset language, but no bonus deferral. Ezekiel Elliott, the 4th pick, signed a deal with both bonus deferral and offset language. On the face of it, it seems like Elliott signed a bad deal and the Chargers jumped on a lower-drafted player's bad contract as a precedent for what they can demand out of Bosa.
This all boiled over with the Chargers releasing a statement yesterday that's basically an attempt to paint Bosa as not-a-team-player, and themselves as the patient compromisers:
Basically, the Chargers decided to issue a misleading statement in an effort to smear their draft pick and shame him into signing a bad contract. That's a bold strategy. Point 3 was particularly disingenuous, since it compared Bosa's offer to the Chargers' own picks since 2011... and they haven't drafted in the top 10 since then. Purely as a function of where he was drafted, Bosa's contract should be significantly above any previous Chargers' rookie contract since then. PFT has kindly gone over point by point and demonstrated how every statement was misleading here:
Bosa has moved on deferral issue, but not enough for the Chargers
Naturally, some people are trying to spin this as Bosa being unwilling to compromise. Kevin Acee at the San Diego Union-Tribune, for example, tweeted this:
Reddit user CommuterTrain immediately clarified what was left unsaid: that the initial offer gave less than 42.5% of his bonus in 2016. So the Chargers essentially started from a completely asinine, absolute non-starter position, so that they could move a bit to the middle, still be in "it's an absolute steal if we get this" territory, and then smear Bosa for being 'unwilling to compromise'. Frankly, I think this is pretty compelling evidence that they've been negotiating in bad faith to try to force Bosa into a terrible deal from the start, but your mileage may vary.
Anyway, Bosa's representatives responded to the Chargers' statement with a statement of their own:
At this point, I think the well may be poisoned. The Chargers have made it clear that any subsequent offers will be worse than the one they just made, to reflect the fact that Bosa's been out too long to be a full contributor this season. Bosa has dug in his heels, saying that to the extent that's true it's only because the Chargers have been unwilling to come even close to an acceptable offer, all while delaying throughout. If the Chargers don't budge on this, I believe Bosa will sit out the year and re-enter the draft next season. If he does, there's nothing I would l would love more than for him to fall to us at #32 (knock on wood that we'll be drafting there, and I know it's implausible because he won't fall that far). I live among a bunch of Chargers fans who have been following this closely, and they're so exasperated with their ****ty owner and ****ty FO that they're genuinely wondering if this is a plot to piss them off so much that they don't even care when the team moves.
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