7 hours ago
(7 hours ago)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I included Burton in there as a guy who was on video hitting a woman before the Bengals chose to draft him. (He was later accused again, but no charges pressed.) So to frame it as being really concerned about having to pay a person who does violence against women comes off hollow.
The signing bonus is given out on the understanding that you'll play the amount of years in the contract, so if you get the final 3 years voided, you can get a large chunk of the signing bonus forced to be returned. Not sure if it's exactly a 25%/year return, but it's some. It's the same as a player who retires while there's still prorated signing bonus left. Sometimes the team lets the player keep it (the Colts and Luck) and sometimes the team claws it back the unearned portion (the Lions and Calvin Johnson).
I find it odd that people have decided that this is all about Stewart wanting to do crime and still get paid. Instead of wanting a contract just as good as the last guy here got, or at least getting something back in compromise for accepting a worse contract. Nobody was ever saying Mims or Dax just wanted to do crime and get paid, but if you asked them now to put all their guarantees into the Brown/Blackburn's hands/whims in exchange for nothing in return I am sure they'll decline.
So you're saying that the Bengals are NOT offering compensation that is bang smack in the middle of what the 16th and 18th picks signed for due to signing bonus structure. If that's the case, they are being unreasonable. They should keep the clause if the picks immediately prior and after Stewart signed with it, but I wouldn't blame Stewart's camp for asking for fair market value with fair market payout structure. To me that's the average of what the 16th and 18th picks this year received. Average out the signing bonus percentages of those two contracts. Even Steven.
