Latest On Talks Between Jets, Ryan Fitzpatrick

Jets wide receivers Eric Decker and Brandon Marshall reportedly skipped OTAs last week in a show of solidarity with Ryan Fitzpatrick, but as ESPN.com’s Rich Cimini writes, neither player has gone on record to confirm the reason for their absence. Whether it was Fitzpatrick-related or not, Cimini writes, their decision to stay home (or, in the case of Decker, go on vacation) changed the tenor of the quarterback’s negotiations, increasing tensions between the two sides.

Here’s the latest on the Jets:

  • Despite the chatter over the past week, the Jets and Fitzpatrick are not any closer to a deal than they were previously, Adam Schefter of ESPN.com tweets. He adds that the salary stalemate continues and could carry on for a while. Fitzpatrick is reportedly content to wait out the Jets and take this standoff into training camp.
  • If Fitzpatrick goes elsewhere, he’ll be taking true market value, a league source with experience negotiating contracts tells Mike Florio of PFT. “If a player ‘takes less’ to go somewhere else, he is really only being paid what the actual market will bear,” the source said. I would argue that this is not exactly the case as the free agency market in early March is drastically different than the market in June. At this stage of the offseason, most teams have addressed their needs and spent the majority of their available money.
  • Fitzpatrick is not ready to accept the Jets’ three-year contract offer which includes $12MM in year one but offers little in the way of guarantees after that point. Brian Costello of the New York Post opines that a compromise could be reached by just chopping off the final two years of the deal, making it a one-year, fully guaranteed $12MM pact instead.
  • On Wednesday morning, defensive end Stephen Bowen announced his retirement from the NFL. Bowen spent 2015 with the Jets.
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