Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs Holdouts Would Cost Them $561K Per Game

Right now, they can sit out without penalty because they didn’t sign their franchise tag tender. Plus answering your questions on the Vikings, Titans, Packers, 49ers and more in this week’s mailbag.

Vacation’s over. Camps are starting. Let’s roll …

From Kevin Donahue (@BiggsDonahue): How long (if at all) will Jacobs, Saquon, and Pollard hold out?

Kevin, let’s start with Tony Pollard—he signed his franchise tender for 2023, and that means he’s subject to heavy fines for missing any portion of camp. So I’d expect he’ll be present and accounted for when the Cowboys get to California next week.

With Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs, this is simple math. Those guys are each due $10.091 million this fall. That means each of those guys will lose $561,000 for every game week they stay away. So while being unsigned now allows each of those guys to sit out without penalty through July and August, there’s good reason to believe that, come Labor Day, they’ll be there.

What they can hold out for now is a sweetner or two on the one-year tender assigned to them, or a no-tag provision for 2024. And maybe they can twist their teams’ arms to do something in the way of a good-faith gesture after talks of long-term deals fell through. So it’s not completely useless for either guy to withhold services. But in the end, given where those guys are in their careers, their individual injury histories, and what the free-agent market usually holds for backs, carrying a strike into the season, and paying more than a half-million per week for it, doesn’t make a ton of sense.

I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s just reality—the rules don’t give these guys much recourse.

From Nick Miller (@NicholasMMiller): Between Jefferson, Hockenson, Hunter and Kirk, the Vikings might be one of the most interesting teams in the league right now from a contract standpoint. How do you see those situations playing out?

Nick, I wrote on this subject back in May, and I’d encourage you to check that column out—it explains, philosophically, what Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell are doing in turning the roster over. It’s not haphazard, and it’s not a true rebuild. It’s more of a shifting of resources, and a decision, as I see it anyway, to get how the team values players.

Reading between the lines, I think the Vikings had a lot of good players who were great guys being paid as if they were great players. Which was ideal in Year 1, as the coach and GM set out to establish a program, a process through which you’d always want to have the right types of people around. Along with that came an acknowledgment that a restructuring was coming, and that restructuring came this offseason.

Going forward, the past of O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah can help inform you on how they saw it done in their respective runs with the Rams and Niners. Simply put, those teams paid great players great money at impact positions. So, I have little doubt that Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw get paid. Good bet, too, that T.J. Hockenson gets paid, especially given how his position is relatively affordable, even at the top of the market, and that the Vikings just traded for him in 2022.

As for Danielle Hunter and Kirk Cousins? The former is around, for now, and maybe he will be as long as the Vikings are contending this fall. But if they fall out of contention, my guess would be they’d try and get value for him in a trade. The latter, conversely, probably is on the Vikings for the rest of the year, and then whether or not he’s back for another season would depend on how he plays, and where the team is in its building process, and then where his market is next March. Either way, the Vikings think he’s positioned for a career year.

And after that, remember, it’s hard to find a top-flight quarterback in the draft, and this year, you’ll have to be really bad to get one of the top guys. So the idea of extending Cousins for another couple years to buy time to find the next guy (like the Chiefs did with Alex Smith through Andy Reid’s early years in Kansas City) really isn’t that wild.

From David Kromelow (@dkrom59): Many analysts think the Titans are going to take a sizable step backwards this season. How much do you think DeAndre Hopkins will help them defy those predictions?

David, I think as long as Mike Vrabel’s the head coach, the Titans are going to field competitive teams. So while I’m probably not picking them to make the playoffs in the war zone that AFC is going to be this year, my feeling is they’ll put a good product on the field.

That said, there’s no questioning that this has been an offseason of retooling for Vrabel and new GM Ran Carthon. They cut Taylor Lewan, Ben Jones, Robert Woods and Zach Cunningham. At one point, it looked possible there’d be even more changes—with Kevin Byard and Derrick Henry among the names that were floated in trade talks. A lot of this was necessary, too, with their core aging the past few years.

So Tennessee is not exactly all in for 2023. But there are still good players on that roster, and it's a proud group, too, with guys such as Byard, Henry, Ryan Tannehill, Harold Landry and, of course, Jeffrey Simmons around to steady the ship amid the storm of changes. What Hopkins will do is bolster an area of weakness, and help a particularly talented young guy (Treylon Burks) come along.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think it’s going to be enough to make this edition of the Titans a true contender. There are too many holes on the roster (offensive line, in particular) for that. But there’s enough on the roster, and in Vrabel’s program, to compete, and keep the team near .500 in the conference’s only shaky division.

From Josh Silverman (@JoshMSilverman): A prop is out for the 2023 NFL sack leader. Anyone you like at their current odds/dark horses you think could win that crown?

So I just went to Odds Shark to check it out. And if you want me to eliminate the obvious picks (Myles Garrett, T.J. Watt, Aaron Donald, Nick and Joey Bosa), I think I have one for you—Montez Sweat in Washington. Sweat is 27th on the list here, with odds set at +5570. He also plays on a defensive line with Daron Payne, Jonathan Allen and a potentially revitalized Chase Young, which should allow for Ron Rivera and Jack Del Rio to generate mismatches for him.

Sweat’s also in a contract year, which is never a bad thing for a guy’s numbers, and has pretty consistently gotten to the quarterback over the years. Maybe this is the year we see him finish a little better on the passer.

From AJ Williams (@PyratHouseAJ): What is the Green Bay Packers ceiling if Love plays just a little better than Rodgers last year?

Not enough people have actually looked at their roster. Jaire Alexander, Rashan Gary, David Bahktiari, Elgton Jenkins, Aaron Jones and Kenny Clark have all shown capability of playing at an All-Pro level. There’s a nice layer of young players that could break through, and in particular guys who are among those Jordan Love will be throwing the ball to (Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs). And I don’t know that there’s a real glaring hole to plug here.

It's a really good team, and a good situation for a young quarterback, especially with Matt LaFleur steering the ship.

If Love can be, say, the 15th best quarterback in football, the Packers should contend for a playoff spot. And depending on how the rest of a wide-open NFC North shakes out—with the retooled Vikings, the upstart Lions and rebuilt Bears all dealing with a lot of variables going into the year—a division title isn’t out of the question.

From Mark A. Rufo (POP) (@ManMassMaine): IF Brown works out, IF Sanu also works out, then Gronk re-signs, Brady & co hang #7 here, the GOAT goes nowhere he stays? Instead of all the negative hate everyone enjoys, something different, for a change. Have at it my man.

Thanks, Mark! So I think, to some degree, the well had been poisoned prior to the 2019 season kicking off. Negotiations went sideways on a new contract. Tom Brady wanted an extension that would’ve cemented his place as the team’s quarterback through an extra couple years—one that would look similar to the fully guaranteed two-year, $50 million deal he landed in Tampa the following March. The Patriots declined, and so he negotiated another deal that would grease the skids (through a no-tag clause) for his exit instead.

In retrospect, it sure looks like Brady had his mind made up that August that he’d be playing his last year in New England. Obviously, we now know that came to pass.

With that established, I don’t think the door was completely closed on a return for Brady until he walked through the one the Bucs opened for him. And that was after he played through a season during which his second-leading receiver, journeyman Phillip Dorsett, had 29 catches for 397 yards and five touchdowns.

So, to say that if the Patriots had been able to entice Rob Gronkowski not to retire, and if Antonio Brown and Mohamed Sanu had been firing on all cylinders (and Brown had stayed in line) … they wouldn’t have had a shot to win it all? I can’t say that, when they’d won it the year before. And if the Patriots had won a seventh championship in New England, my guess is everyone finds a way to make it work again in 2020.

Not sure if that qualifies as positivity, Mark, but that’s my take on it.

From rc_from_btown (@realistic_cynic): How many games before Brady becomes a liability in the booth?

RC, I think there’s a better chance of Brady choosing not to go to the booth at all than there is of him just completely falling on his face when he gets there.

There are a couple reasons for that. First, if you go back and watch the ManningCast when he went on there in 2021, you’ll see he’s plenty capable when he’s willing to let it fly (and I was actually a little surprised he was willing to that night). Second, I don’t think he’ll do something he doesn’t think he can be really good at—he’s flat-out too competitive a person for that.

I’ve heard Brady’s already studied broadcasters in other sports (golf commentator Johnny Miller is one) to try and learn the craft, and plans to spend a good chunk of time in the fall, and so I think he’s going to be pretty good at it. As good as Tony Romo or Greg Olsen were coming out of the gate? Maybe. Maybe not. That is, again, if he decides to actually go through with it, and is there when the red light turns on in 2024.

From Brad Askeland (@bjdpaskeland): Who do you see as cap casualties for the Niners come 2024 when extensions are due for key players like Aiyuk and Bosa, etc.

Brad, it's a good question. As of right now, nine players—Deebo Samuel, Trent Williams, Arik Armstead, Fred Warner, George Kittle, Charvarius Ward, Javon Hargrave, Christian McCaffrey and Brandon Aiyuk—are accounting for nearly $190 million on the 2024 salary cap. Trey Lance is on there for another $10.851 million (and that money is fully guaranteed), and Dre Greenlaw’s number is north of $9 million. And that’s without Nick Bosa under contract for next season yet.

So even if the cap jumps from $224.8 million to, say, $250 million, some things are going to have to be moved around here.

Aiyuk’s extension would likely lower his cap number for next year, so that’s one place where they’ll find room. Others could be restructured. But accounting for Bosa’s next contract, there’ll almost certainly need to be some more cap stretching needed, and much of where those gymnastics are performed will ride on how the season goes for the above list of players.

A Lance trade, if he has a strong preseason, could create some breathing room. Having both Warner and Greenlaw as off-ball linebackers could be seen as a luxury, so maybe Greenlaw is another guy that could be offloaded. And if McCaffrey shows his age, or gets hurt again, it’s possible he’d be on the chopping block.

Of course, this would qualify as a good problem to have. But, yes, it’s a problem nonetheless.