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Premium – Chris Johnson was scheduled to make $10 million this year. That was part of a deal he signed in 2011 with Tennessee – a four-year contract for $53.5 million with $30 million in guaranteed money.
Boy have times changed.
Not just for Johnson, but for a lot of players.
NFL teams have been tightening their belts the last couple of years.
The days of contract largesse are for the most part in the review mirror.
Of course you will see some big contracts for star players and high draft picks, but there isn’t much of an NFL middle class. You have a select few big contracts, and then a ton of deals for around the league minimum, or a little more.
Johnson is suffering from sticker shock right now – a reality check, if you will.
The money he’s being offered right now is nowhere near that huge contract he signed in 2011.
And he has to come to grips with that.
Either he signs a one-year deal for, let’s say,$3-5 million.
Or, he can wait until the summer, and if a team suffers a serious injury to a starting tailback, he might be able to get a better deal due, playing the “team desperation” card. He can also avoid having to travel to a team’s off-season program by doing this. He can stay home.
Johnson is an undersized back, who is going to be 29 in September, and has carried the ball 1,724 times in the NFL. This isn’t a formula to get a big-money contract in the NFL.
And not helping his case is the stigma that his motor idled a little bit, at times, after getting that big money deal. People saw him shying from contact too often.
Last week, Pro Football Talk reported, “Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Johnson currently is expected to pick his next team by the middle of next week.”
That didn’t happen.
And his camp has been very quiet this week.
Clearly some of the interested teams, perhaps including the Jets, told his agent to stop negotiating in the media. You know darn well the super-secretive John Idzik hates when agents use the press as a pawn in player negotiations.
Bill Parcells used to tell agents – if you leak stuff to the press, we aren’t going to sign your clients.
If Johnson signs, it’s going to be on the Jets’ terms, for the most part, and not a blockbuster deal.
And like I mentioned last week, some elitists in the media have virtually ignored the “Bilal Powell Factor” when discussing Johnson and the Jets. The Jets’ brass really likes Powell, as a player and personally. To act like they are going to toss him aside, and make it the “Chris and Chris Show,” is a theory that isn’t steeped in reality.
Also, Mike Goodson is a similar back to Johnson – quick feet and a good receiver out of the backfield. If he can come back from a knee injury, and avoid jail time on a gun charge, he’s very much in the Jets’ plans.
The bottom line is this – while the Jets might have some interest in Johnson, they aren’t going to move heaven and earth to sign him.