J.J. Watt Extension Prediction

And so the negotiation continues....

Agent-vs-Club-JJ-Watt-mock-negotiation-Part-II.html

Will the Texans accept the counterproposal?

AGENT (Joel): I’ve had an opportunity to review your offer with J.J. We appreciate the spirit in which it was made as the common goal should be to ensure that J.J. stays in Houston for a long time. Your proposal doesn’t satisfy one of our primary concerns. We aren’t interested in a contract extension in the $12 million per year range because it doesn’t adequately address the Andre Johnson problem I mentioned to you in our previous discussions.

Any salary comparisons for J.J. should be with the top of the non-quarterback market. For example, the average of the three highest paid non-quarterbacks (Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald and Mario Williams) is $16,122,500 per year. $49,416,667 is the average in guarantees with their deals.

I don’t accept your notion that a deal resetting the market place must occur when a player is in a contract year, hits free agency or has been franchised. The San Francisco 49ers set the inside linebacker market with Patrick Willis in 2010 when he had two years remaining on his five-year rookie contract. Willis signed a five-year, $50 million extension containing $29 million in guarantees. As you know, there were special structural challenges with the deal because of the uncapped year. It’s been almost four years and that deal has held up, unlike in Andre Johnson’s case. Willis still sets the inside linebacker market.

More recently, the Green Bay Packers reset the quarterback market in 2013 when Aaron Rodgers signed a five-year, $110 million extension with two years left on his contract. Additionally, Chris Johnson set a new salary standard for running backs in 2011 with two years left on his five-year rookie deal. He signed a four-year extension averaging $13,493,750 per year when the top of the running market was Steven Jackson’s five-year extension averaging $8,619,500 per year. The average salary in these three deals is 18.02% more than the average salary in their predecessors’ deals as the highest paid at their respective positions.

I believe the Texans are equipped to handle a contract that adequately reflects J.J.’s true value. With the trade of Matt Schaub, $17 million and $19 million salary cap numbers have been wiped off the books in 2015 and 2016, which may have made a deal for J.J. more challenging. Barring something unforeseen, your organization should have a young quarterback on his first contract (with modest cap numbers) at the helm over the next few years.

We believe the following contract below is more appropriate for a player of J.J.’s caliber.



Base salaries in yellow are guaranteed for Skill, Injury and Cap-No Offsets; $5 million of 2017 base salary is guaranteed for Skill, Injury and Cap-No Offset.

A deal of this magnitude for J.J. shouldn’t prevent the Texans from being competitive, especially considering the lack of a high-priced quarterback on the roster for the foreseeable future and your expertise at managing the cap. I have attempted to keep the percentage of Total Running Cash in J.J’s proposal consistent with the five-year extensions Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Willis received that reset their respective markets while having two years remaining on their contracts.

I’m open to different contract structures, including use of an option bonus. However, any option bonus structure should provide the same type of security Jonathan Stewart received in the five-year extension he signed with the Carolina Panthers in 2012.

CLUB (Ari): Joel, thank you for the offer, but we do not understand how you justify $18.5 million per year for J.J. while he has two years remaining on his contract. We believe that with J.J. and some of our other pieces and the No. 1 overall pick we have the ability to start building something special here, but that requires every player, coach and staff buying into the Texans Way. Although we understand your point that currently we do not have a quarterback under contract with a large salary, that doesn’t mean we will pay that money to one player. We are not interested in paying individuals, but rather players that understand that they are part of the team and every dollar spent on them is one less dollar that goes to helping them bring in a player to help us all reach our ultimate goal. We want to be fair with players and prudent in safeguarding the team’s ability to become a consistent contender and will spend that money to build our team in that pursuit.

First, let me address that the Andre Johnson situation you mentioned was unique because his initial contract was a deal that was done without an agent, thus creating a situation that ultimately was changed. Andre originally signed a six-year contract extension, a longer term than what we have been speaking about for J.J. The shorter term contract we are speaking about for J.J. should also alleviate some of your concern about the Johnson situation.

In response to Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson and Mario Williams, none of those players had two years remaining on their current deals when they signed their new contracts. Fitzgerald and Johnson were entering the final year of their respective contracts and both signed contract extensions that added seven new years. Mario Williams was a free agent who signed a six-year deal as opposed to the five-year extension we are speaking about.

Even though we do not believe wide receivers are relevant to this conversation, we must clarify that the guarantee you mention for Calvin Johnson is inaccurate. Calvin Johnson signed a seven-year extension with $48.75 million guaranteed at signing, not the $53.25 million that you mentioned, which likely came about by inadvertently adding the money that becomes guaranteed if the club chooses to exercise their buy-back of the last two years of the contract - a decision the Lions do not need to make until 2017. In addition, after the Lions exercise the option in year two of the deal, the remaining $11.5 million yet to be earned of the $48.75 million guaranteed becomes guaranteed for injury only, thus reducing the effective fully guaranteed amount to $37.25 million.

Furthermore, if we were going to look at Johnson, Fitzgerald and Williams, it would only be fair to prorate the guaranteed dollars to what they would be for a five-year contract since each one of those players signed longer deals. Calvin Johnson’s per year guarantee is $6.965 million (seven years/$48.75m), Larry Fitzgerald’s is $6.429 million and Mario Williams’ guarantee would be at a prorated amount of $8.33 million. If you average those three numbers, you get $7.242 million on a guarantee per year, then multiplying that amount by five new years, the guarantee amount is roughly $36.2 million. A guarantee amount of $36.2 million is substantially less than the $55 million your proposal asks for and is derived using your own methodology. Finally, this still does not account for the portion of those guarantee numbers that are guaranteed for injury only.

As you mentioned, Patrick Willis had many structural challenges which no doubt led to part of his increased average per year. In addition, $13.5 million of the $29 million guaranteed was guaranteed for injury only, not fully guaranteed as you are asking for. This is the case with many of the contracts you mention. For instance, Mario Williams had only $39.4 million fully guaranteed at any point in his deal and only $24.9 million was fully guaranteed at the time of signing.

We would finally like to narrow the scope of this discussion to defensive players. If you are going to bring up wide receivers and every other top contract in the league, I will bring up the top contracts at other positions such as Rob Gronkowski, who did his deal with two years remaining and signed for an average of $9 million per year, or the newly signed Earl Thomas, who just inked a contract in the last year of his rookie deal becoming the highest paid safety at $10 million per year. We do not believe these comparisons will benefit either side, thus, let’s try and narrow the scope of this discussion to front seven defenders. In this regard, we acknowledge that Mario Williams signed a six-year deal in 2012 for $96 million after becoming a free agent as we have discussed previously. In addition, Clay Matthews signed a five-year extension with Green Bay in 2013 in the last year of his rookie contract. Matthews’ new contract had a new money average of $13.2 million per year and guaranteed $20.5 million, a guarantee that our initial offer surpassed. We believe focusing on these types of defenders will help us work towards our common goal.

Finally, we must note that as much as we truly want to do a deal with J.J., any deal will have an offset in the guarantee language. This is a club policy and not something we will change. We appreciate that you may feel differently about this, however this is the only way a contract of any sort will be done by us. We have put it in deals for Duane Brown, Brian Cushing and Johnathan Joseph and will not deviate. If this is unacceptable to J.J., we do not need to continue our talks.

In an attempt to bridge the gap between our differences, we are open to increasing our guarantee and potentially increasing the cash flow over the first two years, but the average per year on the deal would have to be much closer to our average per year. We do not believe you are giving due consideration to the fact(s) that J.J. is under contract for the next two years and if we franchise him in 2016, even assuming a franchise amount of $16 million, his total pay for the next three years is a little under $25 million, with the majority of that coming in the franchise year. We seek your thoughts and insight on how we can collectively solve our differences and come to a meeting of the minds on this agreement.

Next Week—Will the two sides come closer to an agreement?

 

Part III of the negotiation

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AGENT (Joel): I’m willing to work with you on the structural framework of J.J.’s deal. My degree of structural flexibility will largely hinge on the financial components of the contract. I’m not looking at the contract’s structure in a vacuum.

I’m curious about how the team’s policy on offsets will work if you remain at the top of the draft or a quarterback is selected with another high pick in the event of a trade. Quarterbacks taken in the top-five since the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement implemented the rookie wage scale haven’t signed contracts with offsets. Your first round pick shouldn’t be treated more favorably than J.J. would be with a new deal.

All of the top non-quarterback contracts are relevant to the negotiations because J.J. has transcended his position with his extraordinary play. I wouldn’t be resistant to narrowing the scope of our discussions if J.J. was just an above average player.

There isn’t any compelling reason why J.J. should sign a contract extension in the $12 million per year range. J.J. isn’t interested in signing a new deal that will quickly become obsolete as salaries continue to escalate for the game’s best players.

Ndamukong Suh is currently having talks with the Detroit Lions about an extension. He’s earned almost $52 million in his four NFL seasons from his rookie contract. I can’t see Suh taking a pay cut from the rookie deal he got as an unproven commodity after he’s become the NFL’s best defensive tackle. I expect Suh’s deal will make him one of the NFL’s five highest-paid non-quarterbacks. If franchise player Greg Hardy signs a long term deal with the Carolina Panthers, it will likely exceed Charles Johnson’s $12,666,667 average per year with more than $32 million in guarantees. As you know, $30 million of Johnson’s guaranteed money was a signing bonus.

Chris Long’s four-year extension averaging slightly over $12 million per year containing $36.75 million in guarantees should serve as a starting point for Robert Quinn, who was taken three picks after J.J. in the 2011 draft. I’m sure you will point out that Long had $23.55 million fully guaranteed at signing. Since his $13.2 million 2014 base salary became fully guaranteed five days after Super Bowl XLVII (February 8, 2013), I consider him having $36.75 million practically fully guaranteed at signing. The likelihood of the Rams cutting Long before the full guarantee in 2014 kicked in was infinitesimal because his $13.25 million 2013 base salary was already fully guaranteed. Since Long signed his deal in 2012 when the salary cap was $120.6 million, I really look at Quinn’s worse case scenario as an extension averaging close to $13.3 million per year with slightly more than $40.5 million in guarantees. That’s basically the equivalent of Long’s deal with a $133 million salary cap.

Most, if not all, of the top young wide receivers with rookie contracts (Dez Bryant, A.J. Green, Julio Jones, Demaryius Thomas) should top the five-year extension averaging $12,843,500 per year Percy Harvin signed in his trade to the Seattle Seahawks on their next deals. It won’t be a surprise if at least one of these receivers gets a deal in the Larry Fitzgerald/Calvin Johnson neighborhood.

The amount of guaranteed money in your initial offer is also insufficient. Since $8,876,385 of the $22 million fully guaranteed is J.J.’s own guaranteed money, the new guaranteed money is merely $13,123,615. Although J.J.’s $6.969 million 2015 base salary is only guaranteed for injury right now, you and I both know that there isn’t a scenario where that salary won’t become fully guaranteed. This exact issue didn’t exist with Duane Brown or Brian Cushing because their existing contracts didn’t contain guaranteed money when they received their extensions.

It’s disingenuous to mention Clay Matthews’ guaranteed money without recognizing that it’s an anomaly because of Green Bay’s structural conventions and how it compares generally with the other top outside linebacker deals in existence when he signed. Besides Aaron Rodgers, the Packers don’t have a player on a veteran contract with guaranteed money outside of the first year of the deal.

DeMarcus Ware’s six-year extension with the Dallas Cowboys contained $40 million in guarantees. The $40 million was practically fully guaranteed because they weren’t cutting him one season into the deal after giving him $25 million more than he was scheduled to make in the last year of his rookie contract (his contract year). Terrell Suggs had $37.1 million guaranteed in his six-year deal. The $23 million in an option bonus was practically fully guaranteed at signing considering the last time the Baltimore Ravens didn’t pay an option bonus was with Elvis Grbac in 2001. Tamba Hali had $35 million guaranteed in the five-year deal he signed in 2011. He was in a similar situation as Chris Long because $19 million in base salary became fully guaranteed two days after the start of the waiver system in 2012 (February 7). I know that those guarantees voided because of Hali’s one game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, but that doesn’t negate how the deal was structured.

J.J. is well aware of the different negotiating dynamics with players who got new contracts after their third NFL season when they had two years left on their rookie deals. Things went so smoothly with Patrick Willis that he signed his extension approximately three months before training camp started while Chris Johnson had to force the Titans’ hand in order to get a new deal.

I hope you sincerely take our concerns into consideration when making another offer.

CLUB (Ari): Joel, you make valid points in your argument. Especially in regards to your point about J.J.’s guarantee for injury only being essentially guaranteed because we both agree there likely isn’t much of a chance outside of injury that he will not be on our roster in 2015. Since we agree with your assessment that J.J. will likely be on the roster in 2015 unless a serious injury occurs, our sides should have no problem agreeing to guarantee the money in future years for injury only until the 5th day of that league year. This will allow us to substantially increase our offer in terms of guaranteed dollars, because we would avoid funding the money to the league for deferred compensation purposes. Thus, in the spirit of compromise and consideration of your views we have increased the guarantee amount in our offer substantially.

In regards to the pass rushers you mention, Terrell Suggs and Demarcus Ware both signed contracts with six new years which increased their total guarantee amount. In addition, both Terrell Suggs ($10.6 million/year) and Tamba Hali ($10.6 million) took substantially less on an average per year than our initial offer, not to mention our new proposal which has a higher average per year than all of the pass rushers you mention. Further, I do take exception with your thoughts on Clay Matthews, as he is the most recent dominant pass rusher to sign a contract. And although you may not like how that contract is structured, it is part of the landscape. Finally, there are other teams that do things similar to the Packers, the Steelers being one of them.

To answer your question about offset, as previously mentioned this is a deal breaker for us. As for your question about our draft picks, it’s something we have had in every first round deal including J.J.’s rookie deal as you know. In addition, the No. 1 overall pick last year had offset in his deal.

In regards to Patrick Willis, in addition to the other points we have made about his contract, he had $750,000 in 46-man per game roster bonuses in each new year of the deal, which means the deal can be reduced by a total of $3.75 million if he is not active for every game, which in turn would reduce his contract’s new money average per year to $9.25 million a year. This is a component we have not put into our deal for J.J., thus not reducing J.J’s opportunity to earn every dollar of his contract if he misses games.

Furthermore, we don’t base deals on hypothetical scenarios, such as the ones you mention for Robert Quinn and the young receivers. If J.J. feels more comfortable playing the 2014 season under his current contract while the players you mention do or do not receive contracts, then we will oblige J.J.’s wishes and wait until 2015 to pursue a contract. However that would be J.J.’s choice, not ours.

In listening to your concerns and how you view J.J.’s current contract’s guarantee, we have attempted to bridge the gap and have moved substantially in guaranteed dollars. This substantial move in guarantee dollars was done to show we are serious about doing a deal now, however, please do interpret this one-time move to indicate future movement. Our offer has substantial movement in both guaranteed dollars and New Money Average Per Year. Thus, if our current offer is not considered a serious attempt to sign J.J., we are not sure how to reach an agreement with two years remaining on his current contract.

The offer presented below will give J.J. $35 million in guaranteed money and pay $27 million over the next two years; $18 million more in cash over what he is scheduled to make during the next two seasons. Please find our offer below. We look forward to hearing your thoughts after you and J.J. have reviewed this proposal. Thank you.

 

Part IV of the negotiation

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AGENT (Joel): Thank you for another offer that doesn’t alleviate our Andre Johnson concern. Making a distinction between his six-year extension and your offer of five new years is meaningless. The same problem would have existed for him with a five-year extension.

Your new offer is below the latest non-QB data point. As you know, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman recently signed a four-year, $56 million extension ($14 million average per year) with $40 million in guarantees. This deal is more evidence of the changing market conditions for the game’s top players.

Patrick Peterson, the fifth overall pick in J.J.’s draft class, has been anticipating that he would get a new contract this off-season. He’s going to try to make Sherman’s reign as the NFL’s highest-paid defensive back a short one. Unlike Sherman, he is clearly the best player in his team’s secondary.

I have a hard time believing Ndamukong Suh will accept anything below Sherman’s deal. It’s more likely that Suh will eclipse the $15 million average per year an aging Richard Seymour received on a fully guaranteed two-year deal from Oakland in 2011 than he will take an extension under Sherman’s.

You can choose to ignore that salaries are going to continue escalating for the best players. That approach won’t be conducive to us reaching an agreement. I appreciate that J.J. is under contract for two more years. I just view the anticipated changes in the salary landscape for top non-quarterbacks in the coming years as an overriding consideration.

I recognize that you raised the overall amount in guarantees from $22 million to $36 million. Reducing the amount fully guaranteed at signing from $22 million to $17 million is counterproductive.

The offer below contains substantial concessions structurally. Although I have reservations about the organization’s ability to maintain the policy on offsets with rookie first-round selection Jadeveon Clowney because Greg Robinson (Rams) and Blake Bortles (Jaguars) will probably sign contracts without offsets, I’m willing to accommodate you on the issue.

I’ve also accepted the concept of conditional guarantees by significantly lowering the amount fully guaranteed at signing. Once again, I’ve tried to keep the percentage of Total Running Cash at the beginning of the proposal consistent with the five-year extensions Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Willis received with two years remaining on their contracts. In the later years, I’ve adopted a percentage of Total Running Cash comparable to those years in your new offer.



CLUB (Ari): Joel, with all due respect, J.J. Watt having an agent should alleviate the Andre Johnson concern that you continually mention. If you or your client does not wish to do a deal two years early because other players may sign for higher amounts after J.J. signs, then we suggest waiting.

We appreciate the walk down memory lane of old Raiders contracts. However, you failed to mention the contract that Nnamdi Asomugha signed in 2009 as an Oakland Raider at an average over $15 million per year. An average that Richard Sherman’s new contract did not eclipse event though he is currently the highest paid CB in football. Thus, your point about contracts at the top of the marketplace always increasing is not certain, especially when the top of the market contract has a free agent premium for playing in one of the less attractive free agency destinations such as Buffalo.

As I have mentioned before, if you are attempting to take into account contracts that are to be negotiated in the future or looking to make J.J. the highest paid non-QB in the league, it’s probably best for everyone to continue these conversations after the season. Your numbers are astronomically high, and as Darrelle Revis’ misguided one-year pirate voyage showed, a high average is not always a benefit to the player. This is something we are attempting to avoid in J.J.’s deal. Part of our reason for extending J.J. is the fact that we believe he is the type of player our team can build around, but that also means we believe he is a player that realizes that making a great salary while allowing his club to continually compete is better than being the highest-paid player without the possibility of the team getting better because he is taking up too many resources.

None of your arguments justify a deal of the magnitude you are asking for when weighed with the facts that two years currently remain on J.J’s contract or the fact that over the next three years J.J. would receive roughly $25 million if we franchise him (something we would prefer not to do). Our current offer is significantly more than that three-year amount in both cash to be paid over that same period and guarantees in an effort to show how serious we are in doing this deal.

In addition, by playing in Houston, J.J. benefits from the fact that Texas does not have a state income tax which provides him with a savings of as much as 13.3 percent over players that play in other states, or more specifically, J.J. will save 8.82 percent in New York where Mario Williams signed. 8.82 percent is the equivalent to $1.4 million per year. Thus, J.J. Watt making $14.6 million per season would be the equivalent of Mario Williams making $16 million per year in New York.

In regards to your recognition of the conditional guarantees structure, we are happy you see that this is a way we can accommodate increasing our overall guarantee amount. However, it will have to guarantee for skill and cap in that league year just as the deals for Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas that were recently signed have been.

In an attempt to demonstrate our seriousness, we have increased our guarantee to $40 million, with $19 million paid in the first year, increasing our average per year to over $14.2 million a year in new money. If you take into account the savings J.J. receives because of the lack of a state income tax, this deal is equivalent to roughly $15.6 million if he were to sign a deal in New York.

We sincerely would like to get a deal done with J.J. However, if you feel that the contract we are proposing will create a dilemma in the future, and J.J. does not want an additional $20+ million dollars in the years that he is currently under contract for, then we appreciate the time you’ve spent on this, but feel it’s probably in everyone’s best interest to wait until after the season to continue our talks. If you do not find our current offer to be adequate, your counteroffer will have to reflect a significant reduction in regards to the total package if we have any hope in finding common ground.



Next Week—Will the two sides come closer to making J.J. Watt the highest-paid non-quarterback in football?

 

Here's a breakdown of each offer, if you don't want to scroll through it all:

Spoiler

Club #1


Club #2


Club #3


Agent #1


Agent #2


Agent #3A


Agent 3B

Part V of the negotiation (damn, this things become a novel!)

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AGENT (Joel): I’ve discussed your latest proposal with J.J. We have no choice but to question the organization’s seriousness about getting a deal done based on the offers you’ve made.

The new money average of your latest offer (almost $14.225 million per year) is below the $14,372,038 average yearly salary of the 10 highest paid non-quarterbacks. Just to alleviate any confusion, I took the sum of the total new money in the top 10 deals (by average per year) and divided it by the total number of new contract years (52 years) to arrive at this figure.

The 10 players used are as follows: Calvin Johnson ($16,207,143-average/7-year extension), Larry Fitzgerald ($16,142,857-average/7-year extension), Mario Williams ($16 million/6 years), Adrian Peterson ($14,213,333/6-year extension), Richard Sherman ($14 million/4-year extension), Joe Haden $13.5 million/5-year extension), Greg Hardy ($13.116 million/1-year), Clay Matthews ($13 million/5-year extension), Charles Johnson ($12,666,667/6-years) and Haloti Ngata ($12.2 million/5-years ).

The calculations are favorable to you because I excluded Ndamukong Suh’s rookie contract and Darrelle Revis’ two-year, $32 million deal with the New England Patriots. I’m considering Revis’ contract as only for one year at $12 million since it’s unlikely he’ll play 2015 under his scheduled $20 million salary. I also didn’t include Percy Harvin’s $12,843,500 new money average because I recognize that some teams value new deals which are a part of a trade differently. Instead of focusing on the new money, the total amount that will be paid to the player over the length of a deal by the acquiring team can be more of a priority. Because of this, Harvin is valued at $11,166,667 per year for these purposes. By the way, the average yearly salary of the top 10 would be $14,720,073 with the excluded players.

Since there aren’t 10 non-quarterbacks better than J.J., these figures are just more evidence of how inappropriate the deals you have been proposing are for a player of J.J.’s caliber. For your information, the average yearly salary of the top five non-quarterbacks using the parameters is $15,457,667. As you may not know, J.J. heads Pro Football Focus’ list of the NFL’s top 101 players for the second straight year. J.J.’s ranking is further confirmation that he doesn’t have any peers. The average of the top five non-quarterbacks also isn’t an appropriate gauge for J.J.

I strongly disagree with your contention that Mario Williams’ deal has a “Free Agent premium for playing in one of the less attractive free agency destinations.” His contract is more of a function of having free agent visits with other teams lined up after Buffalo than your suggestion. Williams was going to get his money wherever he signed.

I don’t find your state income tax argument compelling. I’ve never entertained such discussions in a negotiation. J.J’s contract won’t be the first. By the way, you neglected to account for the salary cap being $120.6 million when Williams signed his contract with your adjustments to his deal. An equivalent deal with the current $133 million salary cap would average slightly more that $17.645 million.

Bringing up Nnamdi Asomugha’s 2009 contract with the Oakland Raiders doesn’t change that salaries are going to continue escalating for the NFL’s best players. Otherwise, Haden wouldn’t have signed a five-year, $67.5 million contract extension last week with $45,078,193 in guarantees. The only real exception will be at running back. Instead of only two $10 million per year cornerbacks in the NFL (Revis and Brandon Carr), that number has doubled in the last couple of weeks with Sherman and Haden’s deals.

There isn’t going to be some sort of general market correction similar to what happened specifically with the top of the cornerback market in 2011 as the salary cap increases. Asomugha went from $14.296 million per year on his Oakland deal to $12 million per year after signing with the Philadelphia Eagles for five years. As you know, the third year of Asomugha’s Raiders deal voided to make it a two-year deal with a franchise tag prohibition because certain Not Likely To Be Earned incentives weren’t met.

If J.J. is the type of player a team can build around as you say, then you shouldn’t have any problem paying J.J. like the other players that teams are built around, which are usually quarterbacks. Please spare me from any more talk about how it would be so hard to stay competitive with the highest paid defensive player because it has been done. The Indianapolis Colts had five winning seasons and one Super Bowl appearance while Dwight Freeney played under a deal that made him the NFL’s highest paid defensive player in 2007. He remained as one of the highest paid defensive players for the duration of the deal.

After looking at the roster, I don’t see how J.J. would be taking up too many resources by paying him like a centerpiece player considering some of the highest priced talent on the team could be leaving in the next couple of years. Andre Johnson will be 34-years-old when his contract expires after the 2016 season. Given that he’s disgruntled, it’s wouldn’t be a surprise if he was playing elsewhere in 2015. His 2015 cap number is slightly over $16 million while his dead money is a little more than $7.3 million. Arian Foster may not see the last two years of his contract if he doesn’t return to form from his back injury. Johnathan Joseph’s contract is also up after the 2015 season. Kareem Jackson, whose contract expires after the upcoming season, seems to be the only possible Texans free agent in the next couple of years that could command a significant deal. As I’ve said before, a high-priced quarterback won’t be an issue for awhile.

Since you’ve acknowledged that J.J. would receive roughly $25 million over three years with a franchise tag, it might be more constructive if you shifted your focus to (1) how much money above this $25 million should be necessary for J.J. to give up four unrestricted years (2017-2020) now and (2) what is a fair value today of unrestricted years in the future for the game’s best non-quarterback. An extra $13 million over the next three years and valuing J.J.’s unrestricted years at $13.75 million per year with a team friendly structure isn’t enough for J.J. to sign away years in his prime where he would be a 31-year-old free agent if he completed his contract.

I’ve revised my offer to the following:



I don’t have any flexibility with the guarantees. In light of Haden receiving slight over $45 million in guarantees, I considered raising the amount of guarantees in the proposal. Guarantees for cornerbacks have increased dramatically with the Sherman and Haden deals. I’ve already made substantial concessions structurally, but insist on skill and cap guarantees similar to the most lucrative St. Louis Rams veteran deals (Chris Long and James Laurinaitis). Robert Quinn’s next contract will likely be structured in this manner.

You can call my numbers “astronomically high” as much as you want. Less than $17 million per year for the unrestricted years of the NFL’s best non-quarterback will seem extremely reasonable in a couple of years.

I also have an idea where we may be able to find common ground on a deal much closer to what you’ve been proposing. J.J. is willing to sign such a below market deal if you are willing to add a provision that gives him the right to void the remaining years of his contract if his new money average ever falls below the defensive end franchise tag number. For example, if the 2016 non-exclusive defensive end franchise tag is greater than J.J.’s new money average, he would have the discretionary right to void the remaining years of his contract (2017-2020) no later than two days before the start of the 2017 league year. Since no one will really know how much the salary cap will increase in the future until the numbers are actually set, the voidable provision wouldn’t be a factor until the latter years of the deal if this year’s cap increase is an anomaly.

Please also consider the offer below.



I’m not sure I agree that it will be in everyone’s best interest to table discussions if you have serious objections to either of my proposals. After J.J. successfully incurs the risk of injury and poor performance while playing another year on his rookie contract, I can assure you that the offers you are rejecting will seem like a bargain compared to the type of money we will be seeking once the season is over. As I said before, J.J. is cognizant of the different negotiating dynamics with players who got new contracts after their third NFL season when they had two years left on their rookie deals (Patrick Willis and Chris Johnson).

CLUB (Ari): Of course you don’t agree it’s in everyone’s best interest to table discussions because you want your cake and you want to eat it, too. First off, your offer of voiding the deal if the franchise tag number is higher than the average of this deal is simply a non-starter. Why would a club give any player $30 million dollars in years that he is already under contract for roughly $8.9 million just so the deal may void before the club gets any benefit of doing the new deal? You cannot possibly have a valid and justifiable explanation for this, and I’m actually concerned if you have led your client down this type of thought process. It actually offends us that you would make a comment such as us not taking this matter seriously when we have made multiple offers and have moved significantly in our proposals despite the fact that J.J. has two years remaining on his contract, a fact you continually discount. Furthermore, you may not find the tax argument persuasive. However, I guarantee that J.J’s financial advisor and his bank account find it persuasive when he gets to keep more of his earnings.

Although I could rebut the arguments you have made about the top 10 non-quarterbacks, the simple fact is only three of those players have higher averages per year than our last offer to J.J. and two of those players were in the last year of their contracts and the other was a free agent when they received those extensions. However, there is no point in continuing to go back and forth with you when you are asking for significantly more money than the averages you use to back your own arguments.

If $50 million guaranteed is something that is that important to you and J.J., it is something that we would consider, as long as the structure is as we have proposed with the guarantee initially being for injury only and then guaranteeing fully in that league year, a concept you have said you don’t believe is an issue, thus we are not sure why you continually argue about the structure except for you to beat your chest when recruiting. However, please note we will only consider a $50 million guarantee if your new money average per year comes down to an average closer to the top 10 average you mentioned above. If this is something you think you can work with, we look forward to seeing you present another offer within these parameters. If not, we appreciate your effort and will revisit the matter after the upcoming season.

AGENT (Joel): That’s the pot calling the kettle black. I understand that any deal J.J. signed wouldn’t stand up for its duration, but it’s ridiculous to expect a player who has the most run stuffs and sacks in the NFL over the last two seasons to agree to a deal that will quickly become obsolete. Good luck naming another current player capable of accomplishing this feat. At least you finally made an offer that exceeds the average in the deal a 30-year-old Julius Peppers signed a little over four years ago (barely and with less in guarantees).

A deal close to your number with the team-friendly structure that you want is an impossibility. Right now, it has to be deal closer to your number with a player-friendly structure or a deal closer to my number where I’m making structural concessions. For the record, we don’t consider something near the average of the top five non-quarterbacks close enough to my number. However, we could probably live with third day of the waiver period for the guarantees under the right circumstance. $50 million in guarantees is justifiable considering there weren’t any cornerbacks with $30 million in guarantees two weeks ago.

My second option was an attempt at being creative by coming up with an alternative to a straight deal, which is a lot more than can be said of your attempts at signing J.J. for a relative bargain. My general concept is still valid. J.J. might have thought twice about rejecting your offers with the inclusion of salary escalators or Not Likely To Be Earned Incentives, or higher salaries with some sort of salary de-escalators.

I’m not going to counter my own offer because it’s an unreasonable request. If you want to table discussions for now, that’s your prerogative.

J.J. is paying close attention to Patrick Peterson’s negotiations since he is a Pro Bowl-caliber player taken in the first round of his draft class. It will speak volumes to J.J. if the Arizona Cardinals give Peterson a deal comparable to or better than your last offer during this off-season.