Why do you keep low balling him? The tag this year is more than that.
There will be a team that offerers close to $20M or even more. Bill was trying a last second effort to sign Thuney who got big money from KC. Bill will pay market if he likes the player enough.
I think because our tendency as fans is to think, come onnnnnnn, what is the DIFFERENCE? And it's SO GOOD for the team. (I saw later that Zip looked up the contracts & good for him.)
It's just such a strong instinct to make deals in our heads with imaginary agents/players who will be "team friendly." I want that to happen too. But I agree with guys saying 20M is pretty much the logical floor of this negotiation, if they do it *right now*, mainly because of the below.
JC is gonna enter negotiations wanting to reset the entire market. You might be able to negotiate him down to Latimore money if he would rather stay but someone is gonna offer a record deal.
If we're trying to prevent him from testing the waters, we have to threaten or use the franchise tag or just pay him a crap ton up front.
Look, you have the comps for what the houses with the same bedrooms/bathrooms sold for, same curb appeal, etc., on the street where you want to buy. You really want to buy your house for an average of the past 5 houses sold.
Only problem is, the neighborhood just got an upscale country club and they have discovered wish-granting fish in the stocked fish pond (the metaphor for the much higher cap next year and future years). The houses will cost more now.
Using the tag next year is a decent value move, but does not allow us to pay on an average of contracts set
before the wish-granting fish got into the pond, i.e, before the 14% rise in the cap. Instead, the cap takes the average
percentage of cap from the top five, averages them, and applies that percentage to the upcoming year's salary cap. So IF the top 5 average is 10% for cornerback... i.e., if they average 18.2M on a $182M cap... you would apply that to next year's $208M cap, and you'd have to pay him $20.8M for the single franchise year. (Cap gurus please correct me on this if I'm wrong somehow.)
It's decent value because
right now he'd be pacing the market - he's at the apogee of where his talent can position him, the current best option about to hit the market.
This becomes a tiny bit of a bargaining chip: He might take money that only puts him at the present top of the league, around that same money but on an APY basis, and we might get to lock him up in return, because of the threat of a $20.8 million year followed by a decline or an injury. So that protects against the possibility that, frustratingly, his one shot at that size payoff was at the top of this season's arc. I don't think he sees that as the likely narrative on him. He's an elite athlete. He will bet on himself, I think.
If he hit the open market this year, he'd be setting that market in open competition, against a $208M cap. From there, it's supply and demand, and various indemnification from downside risk (the guaranteed money factor.)
So all that to say (sigh,) he's not going to be cheap, no matter how much we want him to be.
