Chicago Bears: Projecting Allen Robinson new contract

The Chicago Bears are not going to be doing, but someone is going to be giving Allen Robinson an extension this offseason. It does matter to the Bears, mainly because his deal will help them in the compensatory formula. Also, it will be interesting to follow and see just how much money Allen Robinson may have gained or lost by playing so poorly on the franchise tag.

This is an article we have unfortunately written too much for Robinson over the year. We projected an extension before the 2020 season worth a four-year, $77 million deal with $46 million guaranteed.

Before the Bears placed the franchise tag on him, we speculated that he may be able to fetch about four years and $80 million with $46 guaranteed on an open market. From those similar numbers, what does he expect to see after his poor 2021?

First, a few players did sign new deals after Allen Robison was franchise tagged. Unfortunately, most of them do not help his cause. Kenny Golladay, Courtland Sutton, and Tyler Lockett all signed big deals, and Robert Woods signed one in 2020 when we last wrote this post.

Either way, those are the four most recent deals that should help set a market for Allen Robinson. Below, we can see how all five have compared since 2018. This is a nice starting point because it was the rookie season for Sutton, and the first year Robinson played for the Chicago Bears.

Overall, Robinson is about right In the center of this group. This is where we start to see the hurt on his pockets because with a good season he would have soared above all four. However, now these four are all right in the range of what he should get based on his production.

Below you can see how each deal shaped out for the four wideouts.

Kenny Golladay 4 years, $72M $28M guaranteed

Tyler Lockett 4 years, $69M, $24M guaranteed

Robert Woods 4 years $65M, $18.2 guaranteed

Courtland Sutton 4 years $60M, $18.85 guaranteed

The Golladay, Lockett, and Sutton extensions all hurt Robinson. Last year, he was looking at names such as Keenan Allen and Amari Cooper. Perhaps with a strong 2021 season, he would have still been in their tier. However, now that he is with these names, he will not demand quite as much as we projected in 2021.

It is worth mentioning that Lockett signed a team-friendly extension with a group that drafted him. Sutton did the same and did so after they stuck by him during an ACL recovery. Golladay was the lone wideout without a home during a COVID dampened salary cap. All have reasons to sign for less than the market expected, but all of them signing for that, combined with Robinson not outperforming them in 2021 has Robinson expecting to see a deal in their range.

You can argue that he will demand the upside of Golladay considering the cap went up and the rest of the teams signed extensions, but at the same time Sutton is much younger than Robinson and the very last wideout to sign of this group.

So, when you average out the four deals, you get something close to the following:

4 years, $66.5M, with $22.25 guaranteed. At $16.63M per year, he is under the $19-$20M that he was expecting just 12 months ago. He also may have lost out on some big guarantees with names such as Allen and Cooper getting closer to $40M guaranteed, and this group much closer to $23M.

Last season Robinson played on the tag for $17.9M. Considering he was worried about long-term guarantees it will be interesting to see if he does sign for about $23M guaranteed because that is not leaps and bounds more than his one year on the tag. When you add in that he went from $17.9M on the tag to a number that likely is closer to $16.7M, you see that there is no doubt the last year impacted his wallets.