Why the **** is Jessie Bates not signed yet?

[George Cantstandya]

(04-21-2022, 10:52 AM)Whatever Wrote: I stand corrected on his guaranteed money being more than Pittsburgh's total offer.  

I think the thing you're missing is that it's highly unlikely Bell gets a big FA contract if he played another year on the FT.  He only had one year of high volume usage after leaving the Steelers and his YPC was only 3.2 YPC.  The year he played under the FT his YPC dropped from 4.9 the previous 2 seasons to only 4.0.  He was already declining at that point.  A big reason why he said he wouldn't sign the 2nd FT is the Steelers gave him over 400 touches his first year on the tag and were using him up so there would be nothing left when he hit FA.  

Again I don't want to go too far off topic.  My point was if he had signed the Steelers offer he may have made more money.  He would not have had a year with no pay. He would not have been playing another year under the franchise tag since he would have taken the Steelers offer.  Had he signed the offer and managed to stay on the team for at least 2 years, which I think he would have, then he would have made at least 33 million as far as I understand the offer he was given.  

From the article SI article I linked earlier:

Quote:Pittsburgh’s final offer, Bell says, fell short: five years, $70 million—$14 million per, with the only fully guaranteed money being a $10 million signing bonus. (The Steelers have a policy of not offering future guarantees in veteran deals.) But it also included $33 million paid out over the first two seasons, and Pittsburgh has never cut a player one year into a contract that lucrative.

Instead he sat out a year, earned no money and when you are talking about close to 10 million+ dollars it's a big loss in investment opportunities.  Then he went to a team with much higher state income tax.  A quick search shows that NJ state income tax for income over $5 million dollars is 10.75 percent.  Where as it appears Pennsylvania has a flat state tax rate of 3.07 percent.  So that's probably another million or so.

There are certainly a lot of what-ifs.  But factoring in a year of not getting paid millions of dollars there is a lot lost investment value.  Then going to a much worse team probably didn't help him as well.  Yeah he got his $28 million and then fell off a cliff for the rest of his career.  But I think over the long run it cost him as opposed to accepting the Steelers offer with more earning potential had he stayed on the team for at least 2 years.   Maybe he didn't really want to play football for long, perhaps his heart wasn't in it, and just took the guaranteed money as an exit strategy.   In that case he made the right choice I guess. 

My not doing math rough estimate is that he cost himself around 5 million dollars at the very least.  But again a lot of who knows.  

Back on topic, I don't think Bates will go that route.  I think after the draft he'll sign his franchise tag or work out a 2-3 year deal.