Providing receiver Davante Adams has a similar season in 2017 to the one he had in 2016, he’ll likely be the Green Bay Packers top priority for a new contract.
Adams is entering the final year of his rookie deal and is coming off his best season — 75 catches, 997 yards, 12 touchdowns.
A lot of guys have entered this realm before and some of them worried too much about their contract and it caused their play to suffer. Another Packers receiver — Randall Cobb — comes to mind.
Although he ended up having a career year in his contract season, Cobb started very slowly and later admitted the contract situation bothered him.
Adams insists that won’t happen to him.
“I’ve seen so many guys come into that way and lose focus and lose sight of what they’re actually playing for,” Adams said. “You play to get a ring, so I’m not out here thinking about the money. I’m just trying to play ball and do what I can to help this team out. All that stuff will take care of itself at the end of the year or whenever it does. We’ll let it happen then.”
How this unfolds will be interesting.
The Packers are currently paying two receivers — Cobb and Jordy Nelson — around $10 million per season. It seems unlikely that the Packers could afford to invest around $30 million a year in the receiver position, assuming Adams will get a deal in the $8-10 million per season range.
However, you could argue that with Aaron Rodgers on the team, receiver is the Packers’ most important position. Of course you would invest heavily there.
On the other hand, the Packers do have an out of sorts. If they released Cobb after this season, they’d take on a little more than $3 million in dead money, but they’d gain more than $6 million in salary cap space.
It will be interesting to see how the business end of this plays out.
Yep, we can’t pay three receivers at FA rates. This is a good and a bad problem to have. Good because it means you have more acceptable options for the position than you can possibly hold on to. The bad side is that it also means that we haven’t drafted enough talented guys so that we don’t have to worry about one WR leaving. But that assessment will change if any rookie performs, or Trevor Davis or Jeff “the glorious” Janis start to contribute significantly to the offense.
Drop Cobb and his overpaid contract, and start playing Montgomery.
^^
When someone goes out of their way to say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.