Melvin Gordon wants out. The running back has asked the Chargers to trade him, agent Damarius Bilbo tells Josina Anderson of ESPN.com (on Twitter). 
The request, Bilbo says, was actually made last week, after the team stuck to its guns at $10MM/year. Despite the holdup, GM Tom Telesco told Bilbo that he still considers the running back family and will not grant the agent permission to seek a deal.
At this stage, it’s hard to see a peaceful resolution to the situation. Gordon says he hopes to stay with the Bolts, but he also seems very serious about his demand for a new deal. He was also a supporter of Le’Veon Bell during his high profile holdout with the Steelers in 2018.
“Come back and get hurt?,” Gordon asked, rhetorically, when discussing the Bell situation. “Gave y’all everything he had for about five, six years. Y’all can’t pay the man?”
It may be time for the Chargers to either pay the man what he wants, or trade him to someone who will.
he’s right…the system is stacked against him… pay the man what he deserves…
If the system is so stacked against him, he is free to leave the system and try another. I am sure McDonald’s is hiring crew members. Possibly management since he has a degree.
You sir, are delusional.
Yep, degrees hardly carry any weight anymore.
Well done…
very true
A system so stacked against him that some draft picks never have to play and are automatically multimillionaires. Im sorry but 10 million a year to play football sounds fair to me.
16 weeks if he plays every game and no more contact during practice for 10 mil sounds like a good gig to me.
You’re a minimum wage guy, of course it sounds good to you.
So you will take less money to do your job? Or do you want to get the most you can? Is your career also short and can end at any time and you need to make as much as possible ?
How is he taking less? And yes I have had to taken pay reductions when Obama was president.
oh no. one of those.
One of what?
And how much is management making off him
The Chargers are trying to pay him what he is worth. He is worth 10 mil per year at most.
Hardly, on an open market he’d exceed that number easy.
MG3 has had 1 thousand yard season, missed 14% of his career, and had multiple knee injuries. 10 million seems more than fair imo..
He has almost 900 carries in 4 years, 38 total touchdowns. Both of which are actually identical to Bell who just got 4/52.5M and is far more of an injury risk (missed 30% of his games his first 4 seasons). Is 10M fair? Possibly. Could he get more like 11.5-12M from another team? Yes. How can you blame a RB in the NFL who will most likely get one “major” contract? Their self life is 8-10 years if they are lucky. With rookie deals going 4-5 years they have one shot at a big deal. They have to take advantage.
Bells contract is an outlier. That wasn’t a wise choice to guarantee Bell that kind of cash, based on past trends and how rapidly RB’s decline. RB’s are cheap and theres a ton of the out there.
How about honoring the contract he signed? Just a thought.
It was his rookie deal, he has zero say in the dollars or years.
He signed it
a rookie deal of 10 years?
meant 10 million dollars on a rookie deal. that’s more than any other 1st round player in the other sports makes.
Yeah that’s the problem. Who decides what he’s worth? What needs to happen is the franchise tag needs to go and contracts need to be guaranteed. When that happens then a player can get to free-agency earlier and teams can sue for breach of contract when a player decides to sit out. But of course this will never happen.
Agent Bilbo’s pitch to Telesco (singing): “The road goes ever on and on…”
Let someone else overpay for an injury prone running back with a short shelf life. Get a high pick and draft his replacement next year.
Agreed
if they could get a high draft pick they likely would have made this move already. People aren’t paying up for Worn down RBs.
This is true and exactly the reason they shouldn’t give him more than 10 million.
The Jets just did
what draft pick did they give up?
Because the Jets made a bad decision, like they often do, doesnt mean another team should do the same. RB’s are generally cheap. Citing a one of a kind contract as your example, actually ignores the 99.999 percent of players who do not have a contract that looks like his. 10 mill Is fair though he probably could make a bit more. If he is under contract, which he is, he should just shut up and play it out. If he gets hurt, he isnt giving the money back. 10 mill is fair based on comps. A RBs prime is 3-4 years on average, with the great ones lasting longer. IF he doesnt want the 10 mill, draft a replacement and keep it going.
He signed a contract. Honor it and then we’ll talk!
By the same token, teams sign guys to contracts all the time and don’t honor them (releasing players).
I will always side with the player. They owe us, the fans, nothing. I favor millionaires over billionaires.
So when its millionaire business owners do you still favor them over the staff making under 6 figures?
Before I can give this an upvote I’ll need to know whether you favor “less filling” or “tastes great”.
yes but in business I can be let go by my business. I just cant demand they pay me more and sit out my job.
unfortunately athletes believe they have this right because they have the money to survive unlike the avg joe who needs a paycheck.
Sure you can. And your employer can make the decision how to handle it. And these athletes can do it because they bring more value to the table than you do at your job. The good ones are different than you, and can do things you can’t, because their supply and demand value is way greater than yours.
I always love seeing internet commentators compare themselves to .01% type athletes lol
link to youtube.com
Actually, you never know who these “commenters” are, and whether they are elite athletes or not. You dont know why they compare themselves to us and they may have some decent reasons to. Dont doubt others so quickly. You never know.
Depends on the situation, I had lucky timing that i was part of a group at their critical time of the year for my company. In a month span, 1 person got fired, boss transferred out, and another person retired out of a group of 5 and the only other person wasnt even there for a month.
Went to the big boss and basically negotiated a 30% bonus and 10% increase and some extra time off if we still hit our timelines while the group got restocked or I would leave as well. We hit them and enjoyed a nice little vac after things were back up and running
It was a lining up of the stars that got me that and a lot of extra work for a month or so, but was worth it in long run. Its possible but got to be right time and place.
Of course you can demand to be paid more. Thats your option, though it may not end well. Its still your option. You negotiate your salary when getting hired. The more valuable you are to them, the more options you have. Thats with any career or job.
That has less to do with being an athlete, than it does with having a high value margin. The more you move teh needle for the companies bottom line, the more clout you have. That actually applies to more than just athletes. You can negotiate your own raise and or bonus at work if the company doesnt want to see you leave.
If the contract is guaranteed the player gets paid. So it isn’t quite the same.
This is true but almost every player nowadays gets a huge signing bonus so I don’t feel a bit sorry for them.
Once again almost every player gets a huge signing bonus these days.
agreed, but don’t allow the teams to extend the contract if they so decide. the franchise tag sucks for players that want a choice in where they go. albeit they do get paid for the tags.
RB’s aren’t worth what they once were. The Steelers and Chargers were just fine when their “number one” RB’s were out. Look at all the teams that made the playoffs last season that aren’t paying for an “elite” RB—NE, Colts, Sea, Bal, Chi, Phi, Hou, KC (now)
great observation. seriously.
What Hawk apparently didn’t observe is that 7 of the top 8 teams in time of possession reached the playoffs and in most cases your going to need a solid running game (though not necessarily a bell cow) to achieve an edge there.
Tell that to the LA Rams after they lost the SB!
How does he want to stay with the Bolts and want to be traded simultaneously? Aren’t this rather conflicting ideas
doesnt matter to him who pays him, he just prefer it to be SD. ultimately though it comes down to money.
You sign a contract….live up to your commitment or walk away from the game like Jim Brown and Barry Sanders.
Y’all are awful. The NFL is a money making machine. These players deserve guaranteed contracts.
I don’t understand what people have against owners making so much money. They are the ones that have invested all the money and taking all the risk they are the boss. If the players don’t like what they’re making let them buy their own team and make more money. People that are envious of others that make more money is just ridiculous. Be quiet and do some about it.Most of these owners are self-made millionaire’s what is wrong with that?
They don’t spread the wealth. NFL owners are the antithesis for trickle down economics.
They do spread the wealth but maybe not as much as some people think they should. The bottom line is the players are not going to go broke. And I for one don’t like telling other people how they should and how much they should spend of their money.
Cap space and player dollars don’t have anything to do with owner or front office checks. I think it’s absurd that all of the sudden RBs deserve QB money to play a 1/4 of the career
Spread rumors you’re trading him to Buffalo and he’ll sign for less money!
Boss makes a dollar. Melvin makes a dime. That’s he should doodoo on company time
Trent Williams and Guice for Gordon?
bye
He will gain absolutely nothing if he sits out this year. He’ll still be under the same contract for next year however he will have lost $5 million. He has absolutely no leverage. Any charger fan knows that the Chargers don’t deal well with players that make threats.
Fine him $40,000 per day. He will miss a paycheck real soon. His agent is incompetent….they went public with the….or trade me…..as a first step. He has no leverage. He should honor the contract he has.
Teams can’t just choose when and how they fine players, that’s stuff is covered in the CBA. Also, I do contract litigation for a living, and in our legal system contracts are generally designed to be broken if it’s beneficial for one of the parties after the cost of executing the contract in full. That’s why there are no penalties or punitive damages allowed in breach of contract cases. So if he feels it beneficial for him to breach, by all means he should. This “players should honor the contract they signed” stuff is nonsense, that’s not the way the contract system in America is designed to work.
40,000 per day is in the CBA. Dope.
U think I threw darts to get the #???
Yeah, problem is they’re not paying him. You can’t fine him beyond his salary, because that would be a punitive damage.
Well, actually they should be paying him, and if they are they they can fine him, ones games start though they won’t be paying game checks
Once
I wouldnt say that its nonsense to have ethics and morality, regardless of what the law allows. Its nonsense to be decent? Wow.
MG3 has not fulfilled the immense talent that he has in my opinion. One season of higher than 3.9 yards a carry and one 1,000 season. $10m is fair. At this point I think trade him for Zeke or PE. Y and move on.
Melvin is clearly in need of a wardrobe consultant so on that basis alone, I think they should give him more money.
Legal beagle Ben: why not don’t you take Melvin’s case on contingency?
The bottom line is that it is an ego thing with these players. They all want to be paid the most at their position or they feel “disrespected”. It’s hard to believe that somebody is turning down an offer to double their pay.
Amazing that some talk like the guy is making minimum wage. 10 million a year? Sad that society thinks that, somehow, this is not enough to live on. You should be set for the rest of your life from the first year of your contract. If he spends 10 million a year, and he needs more, then there is something wrong with him. Get more if you can, but don’t complain like you have to go on public aid. Play out your contract and test the market.
The rules are the rules. He new the rules when he signed the contract. If he doesn’t like the rules, then let him go do something else for a job. That’s his prerogative. Good luck making 10 million a year doing something else.