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You are correct it is speculation, but several sources have said that he is essentially trying to get UFA money when he is not a UFA. For two reasons, he should be willing to take a big discount if he wants to cash in right now. First, teams don't view the tender year of 2016 as a year they will just rip up and start from scratch; this is just precedent. Second, teams will need to trade for him, and so giving up assets would only make sense if they were going to get a bargain. Otherwise, they would just wait until UFA and not need to worry about that.
No, this is not confirmed, as really nothing is. But it does appear from the outside that Butler's agent does not have realistic expectations. Players typically take pretty deep discounts for a long-term extension before they hit UFA. See the Chris Harris deal or the Rob Gronkowski deal. His asking price, combined with the compensation the Patriots would demand, is making this a non-starter. It would have been a better strategy to set his price low and then let teams compete to set his real market value as a RFA.
I think my skepticism comes from the fact that I can see how easy it is to use the mediots, so I don't trust anything unless I see it spoken or written by the supposed source.
A good example is the Schefter story about the Pats not trading Garoppolo. In spite of that story coming from a reliable person, there are still many here who think it's posturing by Belichick to drive up the price. There's really no way of knowing for sure.
Right now it looks like Butler is just testing the waters, but if he doesn't sign the offer things will change. Until then it seems like a whole lot of nothing.