Reports continue to come in that the Kansas City Chiefs and LT Orlando Brown Jr. will not agree on a new contract extension ahead of Friday’s deadline.
The latest comes from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who reports that the Chiefs made an aggressive push to get Brown Jr. signed to a long-term deal. Schefter says the final offer from K.C. was a six-year deal worth $139 million with an average salary of $23.16 million per year and a $30.25 million signing bonus. The contract would pay $95 million in the first five years.
At face value, this sounds like a pretty good deal for both sides. The reason that Brown Jr.’s agent didn’t take it was that it did not offer the long-term security that he was looking for. Only the first two years of the deal were fully guaranteed according to reports from NFL media.
No deal between Chiefs and Orlando Brown will get done today, but KC was aggressive.
Its final offer was a six-year, $139 million deal ($23.16M avg) that included a $30.25 million signing bonus and $95 million in first five years.
Both sides hope for new deal after this season.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 15, 2022
There’s also something to be said about the final year of the contract and how it affected negotiations. This might look like a top-market deal for a left tackle, but the numbers were inflated with a large number in a final year that the Chiefs could get out of because of a lack of guaranteed money. With the contract paying $95 million over five years, it actually amounts to around $19 million in annual salary, which would place him below top deals like Trent Williams, David Bakhtiari, Laremy Tunsil and Ronnie Stanley.
The last year of the deal was essentially fake to pump up the numbers, which isn’t uncommon for most players in the NFL. Not taking that deal is a risk from Brown Jr., though. He’s essentially betting on himself that he can get a better offer after playing the 2022 NFL season on the franchise tag. If he doesn’t perform as well or better than he did in 2021, he might have some regrets about leaving this deal on the table.
