If Robert Kraft is to be believed, the New England Patriots are fully prepared to make Christian Gonzalez the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history. So, what’s the holdup?
One belief is that the Patriots want to wait for the Seattle Seahawks to first finalize a contract extension with their own 2023 first-round cornerback, Devon Witherspoon. With Witherspoon as the benchmark, the Patriots would then know where to set Gonzalez’s own deal to indeed make him the top-earning CB in football.
If so, Monday
could be a big day.
By the end of the business day, after all, roster bonuses embedded into first-round rookie contracts are due to be paid. For the Patriots, three such players qualify, including Gonzalez: the fourth-year defender is set to see his bank account go up by $550,000.
Witherspoon is also in that group for the Seahawks, and his bonus is a lot higher on the basis of him being selected 12 draft picks before Gonzalez: it’s worth roughly $3.95 million. The Seahawks can easily fit that number under their cap — in fact, it already is part of the calculations. The question is whether or not they want it to be paid out as a lump-sum rather than spread over the duration of a potential new deal.
With such a deal rumored to be close, John Gilbert of SB Nation’s Seahawks blog, Field Gulls, argues that Seattle might be motivated to push the Witherspoon extension over the line on Monday:
[B]ecause the bonus becomes earned Monday, at that point the associated $3,949,702 2026 cap charge connected to the bonus becomes locked in and would not be impacted by a extension between the two sides. In contrast, if the two sides reach agreement on an extension prior to Monday, the roster bonus could be wrapped into a signing bonus, allowing for a small bit of cash flow to be pushed into the future, along with part of the cap hit, which would potentially reduce the 2026 cash obligations of the team. …
Now, certainly the Seahawks can afford to pay in either scenario, but almost any business owner who has the option on whether to spend $26,145,000 instead of $30,094,702 now with the difference being paid at some point in the future will opt for the lower amount.
While the motivation itself might be speculative, the numbers are not. Could they be enough to spur the Seahawks into action? It at least seems possible, because even soft deadlines can have a certain power to them.
In turn, the Patriots-Gonzalez stalemate might also finally see some movement. Although it seems unlikely that New England worries too much about the roster bonus, in part because it is only a fraction of Witherspoon’s, anything happening in Seattle appears to be of interest to the organization and Gonzalez’s representatives.
Monday could therefore be quite a big stop on the road toward the 24-year-old becoming the highest-paid cornerback in the game and officially a long-term Patriot.
