Bates admits to being in a bad head space

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(11-15-2021, 06:06 PM)ochocincos Wrote: There's no guarantee the Bengals franchise tag Bates.
They've never paid a safety $8+ mill a year.

Also, Bates has "only" accumulated $6.8 mill in his career. While that sounds like a lot, we don't know how much he's already spent and we don't know his investments, so we don't know if he'd have enough to comfortably live on for the rest of his life.

Ok, then he goes into FA and gets paid massive money if they don't franchise tag Bates (if he hadn't sucked so far this year). Again, he is getting paid either way so long as he just performs.

They haven't had a good safety who needed a contract since 2012. That's how long ago Reggie Nelson's deal was, and even then Nelson was coming off 1 good year after like 3 rough ones prior and was heading into his age 29 season. The Bengals also haven't paid a QB more than $16m/yr, too. I don't think Burrow is worried that he won't get paid if he performs. Seems strange to point out they haven't paid a position when they haven't had anyone they needed to pay at that position for quite some time, and the cap has increased by 50% (it'll be much more than 50% next year) since then. If they had multiple good safeties in their prime they let walk rather than pay, this $8m+ statement might actually mean something.

If Bates has blown $6.8m to the point that he's so tight on money that it's affecting his play this much, that's also not a good excuse. That'd be a huge red flag. 

Career ending injuries are very very rare. Alex Smith was in his mid-30s, had 17 surgeries, nearly died, and still came back. It's pretty damn rare to have a sudden career ending injury. He has a higher likelihood as an NFL player to kill someone and go to jail than to suffer a sudden career ending injury. So even if he somehow blew out his knee this season, he'd still be able to come back and earn a couple million in 2022 with the chance of a 10s of millions contract in 2023.


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No matter how you try to slice it, it's a bad look for a Team Captain to be performing poorly for 9 games because his head isn't in the game during a season where the team is trying to break a 5 season losing streak. Doubly so when the guy wants to be paid as one of the best.