Freeman deal sets market for Bell...
- Devonta Freeman is now the NFL's highest-paid running back after agreeing to a five-year, $41.25 million contract extension with $22 million in guarantees, per NFL Network's Ian Rapoport. His newfound status is fleeting, though. The Pittsburgh Steelers' Le'Veon Bell has yet to sign his franchise tag.
As soon as Bell signs, his $12.12 million price tag will make him the league's top-paid back.
A disconnect exists between these two points.
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
The only disconnect is the franchise tag was agreed to by the player's union. It is what it is.
I'm not clear about something with Bell's franchise tag salary. The article says Freeman will be the highest-paid RB (about $8M per season), but that Bell will get over $12M with the tag. But the franchise tag rate is supposed to be the average of the top 5 salaries at each position. So...how can there be 5 other RBs getting an AVERAGE of $12 million if the highest is only $8? (Spotrac shows LeSean McCoy at $8.8 this year, but even so...)
Is it based on 2016 salaries, and the oversized salary we paid Peterson is giving Bell a big lift? Even so, it doesn't seem like there were 5 RBs averaging $12M any time recently.
Freeman isn't setting the number for Bell. Bell needs to stand his ground play under the tag and hope he and David Johnson hit big next year. I know Johnson is under contract thru 2018 but if AZ doesn't reward him, I hope he makes them pay.
12 million seemed high to me based on the RB salaries I'm aware of as well. Did a little research, finally found an article that explains how the number is calculated.
They take the total cap hit of the contracts over the previous 5 seasons and calculate them as a percentage of the overall salary cap for each season. Then that percentage average is multiplied by the current overall cap which this season is 168 million.
So Petersons large numbers the past few seasons certainly drove that number up, as well as a few other big RB paydays over the last 5. Then those overall numbers get increased by the fact that the overall cap has been going up pretty steadily season by season.
Didn't do any math, but a 10 million a year deal 5 years ago would calculate much higher than 10 mill against the current cap.
It would be nice if there was any article anywhere that actually showed whose contracts were used and how much they were worth in the actual calculation but I couldn't find anything wih that much detail.
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