Broncos safety Justin Simmons has still not signed his franchise tender, and like most players seeking new contracts, Simmons’ negotiations have been impacted in a big way by the pandemic. As a result, Ryan O’Halloran of the Denver Post believes Simmons is more likely to play out the 2020 campaign on his $12.7MM tender than land a multi-year pact. The one caveat to that would be if Simmons is willing to give Denver a hometown discount, but there have been no real indications that he is willing to do so.
However, O’Halloran does not expect the process to be an ugly one, and he fully believes Simmons will sign his tender and report to camp if there is no new deal in place by the July 15 deadline.
Let’s take a quick trip around the AFC:
- Much has been made of the minimal guarantee and base salary that 2015 MVP Cam Newton stands to earn under his new one-year pact with the Patriots. 49ers CB Richard Sherman took to Twitter to express his outrage over the deal, calling it “disgusting” that a player like Newton would have to settle for such chump change (and ignoring the myriad injury concerns that led to the contract). But Newton himself, in his first public comments about the financial details (via Instagram), said simply “[t]his is not about money for me. It’s about respect.” A productive season in Foxborough would lead to Newton’s market rebounding in a big way in 2021, though the Pats may be inclined to use the franchise tag on him if that happens.
- The Ravens lost future Hall-of-Fame RG Marshal Yanda to retirement this offseason, and though the club has a number of young players who could replace him, the pandemic will likely give veterans a leg up over less experienced talents. As such, Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic expects D.J. Fluker to win the starting right guard gig, while 2019 left guard Bradley Bozeman is the clear favorite to reprise his role in 2020.
- In the same piece linked above, Zrebiec notes that the Ravens, who recently cut veteran LB Jake Ryan, did so because both sides realized that Ryan — who has only played in two games since 2017 — still wasn’t healthy and wouldn’t have enough time to get healthy and learn the team’s defense.
- In case you missed it, Jaguars defensive end Yannick Ngakoue may be prepared to sit out the entire 2020 season if he does not get traded.
It’s great to see some players play for the love of the game not just just money
Sherman sounds dumb and awful lot like a guy in the NBA who turned down millions because it wasn’t enough to feed his family look what happened to him
Ugh. The Ravens had better hope Fluker doesn’t win the job. He has experience, but he’s also atrocious as a pass protector. Why not go with Mekari or Powers? They’re not rookies and each looked promising in limited action last season
Because, despite his faults in pass protection, Fluker is a good run blocker and the Ravens need that much more than pass protection. I don’t think they’re handing him a job, he’s just expected to win it. As far as Mekari goes, I think they like his work at center. It wouldn’t be surprising if they did not want to juggle his positions.
Fluker is not good. That people keep calling for him to win the job is astounding. You need him to be good enough in pass protection and he isn’t. Unless he was taking on two DL in the run game, there is no way he should be in line to start. Keep hi for depth if you want to make yourselves feel better but he’s not good enough to start on a team with SB aspirations.