The deadline for franchise-tagged players to sign long-term deals is rapidly approaching, with next Thursday July 15th being the cut-off.
There are seven tagged players left without contracts, and it sounds like it’s safe to say at least one of them won’t be getting one. The Bears and star receiver Allen Robinson have had “no substantive talks” in recent months, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reports, via Kevin Patra of NFL.com. Pelissero added that it “seems unlikely a long-term deal will get done.”
Speaking a couple of weeks ago Robinson didn’t sound overly optimistic, saying “we’ll see” about the possibility of an agreement, so this isn’t too shocking. The two sides have been at a stalemate for most of the past year, outside of last September when it briefly looked like things were headed in the right direction.
Things quickly soured again, and there were reports that Chicago might look to trade him this offseason. It appears he will play for the Bears in 2021, but without any long-term guarantees. The Penn State product did show up for last month’s mandatory minicamp, so he isn’t too disgruntled.
Perhaps the $17.9MM he’s set to earn this season is keeping him from getting too negative. Robinson has been the lone bright spot on a struggling Bears offense the past couple seasons, and should put up big numbers once again whether it’s Justin Fields or Andy Dalton throwing him the ball. He had 102 catches for 1,250 yards and six touchdowns in 2020,.
‘There are seven tagged players left without contracts…’
Actually they have contracts, they just haven’t signed them.
AR didn’t like the team outlook prior to the draft, yet still signed his deal. So who’s at fault; him or the team?
They have franchise tag contracts. I think what he meant was no long term contract extension
Hopefully the bears are just waiting for a few bigger contracts to fall of next offseason and work something out, ARob deserves to be paid and the team outlook for the bears offense changed drastically in the draft, fields is the big one but people are sleeping on what dazz newsome should bring to the bears slot receiver game, Anthony Miller and javon wyms should be cut and punched in the face(metaphorically of course relax charmin)
Of course there is a good possibility that Ryan Pace won’t even survive to work things out next offseason so perhaps that is why negotiations on an extension didn’t progress very far. Robinson will get a good payday at some point though…even if it may not be from the Bears.