Originally Posted by
steelreserve
No one in the history of the league has actually sat out a season instead of signing the franchise tag, so not signing the tender is a non-issue.
He has ... availability issues, so a big contract is not without risk. It's not a bad idea to try to get another season's worth of data on what to expect before we shove a wheelbarrow full of cash his way.
By the way, does anyone else think the franchise tag cost seems screwy AGAIN in this case? The rule says the cost is the average of the top five salaries at the position, but what we had to offer Bell is almost double that, and significantly higher than the #1 salary. The average of the top 5 salaries for running backs was $7.06M by cap hit, $6.87M by average yearly value.
This is not the first time I have seen this happen. It doesn't matter whether you use cap hit for 2017 (which includes base salary and bonuses) or average value of the contract; the amount we had to offer Bell is still way higher. Cap hit for the top 5 highest-paid RBs is first on the list below; average value is second. In case they were using 2016 numbers, I checked that list too and it's not much different.
Le’Veon Bell - $12,120,000 / $12,120,000
LeSean McCoy - $8,875,000 / $8,010,000
Doug Martin - $7,000,000 / $7,150,000
DeMarco Murray - $6,950,000 / $6,312,000
Lamar Miller - $6,500,000 / $6,500,000
Chris Ivory - $6,000,000 / $6,400,000