The Chicago Bears need to explain the whys to Roquan Smith
Although we don’t know the details of the offers or what has been said by each party within negotiations, what we do know is that Smith is not happy about de-escalators within the offer and also wants the amount to be higher. I can see Smith’s points regarding any de-escalators as they will lead to him potentially losing money.
I can somewhat understand why a team would want a player to stay in line and not do anything to jeopardize their playing time or performance. We’ve seen Roquan Smith make some questionable decisions already in the past. However, as someone who is married to an ex-elementary school teacher, I am here to tell you that awarding someone is always a better tactic than using a punitive approach.
Here is what was reported by Ian Rapoport regarding Roquan Smith’s frustrations.
More frustrations:
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) August 9, 2022
— The backloaded offer, which wouldn’t make him the highest paid in actual salary, included proposed de-escalators that not a single player out of the 94 non-QB, $15M+ contracts has. He was offended.
— The deal would hurt the LB market as a whole. https://t.co/E3tqyU6eAe
These frustrations led to Roquan Smith using social media and Rapoport to formally request a trade out of Chicago. The Chicago Bears kindly put Smith on the PUP list at the start of training camp to alleviate any concerns of being fined while not practicing. There seem to be some conflicting reports on exactly what the new CBA rules mean.
The wording appears to allow a player the ability to attend practice but not physically practice while escaping fines. However, some reports have come out that these fines are not league-enforced and are at the discretion of the team. For every practice missed, Smith could be fined $40,000. If he were to miss any preseason games the fine could be $540,000. I know, yikes! That is 5.5% of his $9,735,000 salary this year. Should he miss two games it jumps to 11.1% and if he were to miss all three it could be 16.6% of his salary. The Bears have all the leverage in my opinion.
That leverage is enough for the Chicago Bears and Ryan Poles to explain why they don’t believe Smith should become the highest-paid linebacker in the NFL right now. Comparing his stats to Darius Leonard would make that very simple for Smith to understand.