On Wednesday, Shutdown Corner’s
Frank Schwab did a great job of updating the Joey Bosa situation — namely how the San Diego Chargers made this standoff public and ugly.
And
though it has been common for many in the media to slam the team and
side with the player, there is one undeniable fact: Bosa doesn’t have a
lot of leverage here.
Oh,
sure, these are the Chargers we’re talking about, and calling them a
well-run organization might not be able to be done with a straight face.
The fact that their local stadium issue hovers over them like a pother
of California smog doesn’t help public-relations matters either.
Perhaps
the Chargers, coming off a 4-12 nightmare of a season, could have found
better ways to get this thing done — especially in an era where the
draft-pick holdout has gone the way of the Edsel. Bosa also reportedly
looked good in OTAs, and the team openly spoke of its big, immediate
plans for the rookie. Had Bosa’s reps pushed this thing sooner, maybe
then they could have spurred the team to come up faster. But with the
moratorium for a trade now in place, Bosa can’t be dealt, per the
league’s CBA.
With
the season on the brink, Bosa’s leverage has passed. He has no options
now, really; he must sign with the Chargers to maximize his future
options.
Unless
he’s prepared to sit out the season and lose money — or sign later this
year and make less now — he has to take the Chargers’ best offer, one
that they say has now passed by the wayside (although that’s
unbelievable). If Bosa sat out 2016, he’d have to reenter the draft and
go through that whole spin cycle again, and there’s little chance he’d
come close to making the money he would if he took the Chargers’ latest
offer.
He’d
lose a year’s worth of earning power, which for a young man who
recently turned 21 could be an extremely powerful thing. There’s also a
very good chance he would not be the third pick in the draft again. If
the 2017 NFL draft was held today, I bet Texas A&M’s Myles Garrett
would go ahead of Bosa. Bosa was a surprise at the No. 3 slot and might
have fallen past the Dallas Cowboys at No. 4, and who knows beyond that?
Bosa
could fall to the fifth pick next spring and get similar money to what
he’d get this year. Dante Fowler Jr., who was picked third in 2015,
signed a four-year, $23.49 million deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars,
which included a $15.34 million signing bonus. Compare that to the
Jaguars’ Jalen Ramsey, the fifth overall pick this year, who signed a
four-year, $23.35 million contract, including a $15.18 million bonus.
A
negligible difference, you say. But consider the time value of money.
Bosa could earn a paycheck in 2016 and hit free agency a year early —
even if the Chargers picked up his fifth-year option, he’d be a
26-year-old pass rusher on the open market. Even younger than Von Miller
when he held the Denver Broncos’ feet to the fire this offseason and
ended up with a $114.5 million deal that will pay out $70 million
guaranteed over the next 18 months.
Ask
Bosa if he’d take that arrangement. The big picture matters as much as
the short term in this case. The fact that the Chargers are asking Bosa
to do something no other top-five pick this year was asked to do is
immaterial. They know, as a non-quarterback, he has no real options.
Really, he has no choice but to hope the Chargers’ last offer stands.
The interesting thing is that even
fellow players on other teams know it.
If you want to argue that the Chargers’ initial offers were lowball,
that’s fine. You’d likely be correct. There’s little doubt their
hard-line stance in the early going set this relationship down the wrong
path to start.
But
they’ve come up — quite a bit, in fact — and now are offering only 15
percent of the deferred signing bonus if Bosa and his agent agree to the
Chargers’ demands of accepting “offset” language. It’s a reasonable
offer, and they should be close, but it
doesn’t feel that way.
Despite the Chargers’ supposedly firm stance, the assumption is that if
Bosa bit hard and said, “OK, have it your way,” he could still get the
last-and-best offer from the team.
What
the offset means is that Bosa can’t double dip if the Chargers decide
that they have no use for him in Year 5, failing to pick up his 2020
option at an average of the 10 highest salaries at Bosa’s position, and
they’d have to make that decision prior to his 24th birthday. How likely
is that? If they don’t want him and foolishly give up on him that early
on, someone else will.
Not
being able to double dip and earn salary from both the Chargers and
another team would be a tough pill to swallow, sure. But losing out on a
year of earning power is far and away the worse option.
That’s why Bosa’s leverage, which once was in his court, is now gone.
c/o
