NFL News: Around the league in 32 plays
By Ben Almquist
And thus a contract standoff is born. Not a holdout, mind you, since Fitzpatrick is not currently under any kind of contract. As a free agent, he’s not only under no obligation, but it would actually be a violation of league rules for him to be practicing with that team. But it is still largely understood that the Jets want/need Fitzpatrick at the helm, and that Fitz likely isn’t going to be getting calls from anybody else about a starting gig. So the two sides are stuck with each other, while insisting that they aren’t.
Last week, this got interesting for a minute as wide receivers Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker both skipped workouts, reportedly to show their support for Fitzpatrick. However, the “holdouts” were short lived as both players are back with the team already. Kind of fitting support for Fitz: “Look man, we love ya…but you are still just Ryan Fitzpatrick.”
However the holdouts may have had some effect, as the Jets made an offer. The early reports came out saying the team offered a deal that paid Fitzpatrick $12 million in his first year. A clever bit of PR by the Jets as most fans and pundits took off with the $12 million/year narrative. Of course, there were some of us who saw through this…
Yes. Jets probably would have disclosed that the offer to Ryan Fitzpatrick is $12M per year instead of just 1st year value.
— Joel Corry (@corryjoel) May 28, 2016
The actual offer was $24M over three years with $12M up front. That’s an $8M/yr contract…just $1M more per year than Chase Daniel is getting to be a backup in Philly. So yeah, Fitz sent that offer packing. However, reports have come out that he may be open to a one year $12M contract that can be re-visited in 2017. Unfortunately, the Jets don’t have the cap space for that kind of a deal, so it’s already out of the question.
So for the foreseeable future, this is going to remain a deadlock. Who will come to a dreadful realization first? Fitz understanding that he is just Fitz…or the Jets realizing that they may have to start Geno Smith? The strength of the argument for both sides is that neither side has much strength at all!
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