How much is the tag? It may be better for the Bears to tag him for two years and re-evaluate where they are as a franchise at that point. They certainly have the money to do that and it’s less risky. Right now they have three years of control if they want. (Counting this year).
It’s virtually identical to the $20M/yr figure (franchise tag for LB is $18 million). Extending him might actually cost less if they backload his contract, which teams almost always do with big contracts.
Two things are complicating the matter, which no one’s really talking about:
1) Roquan apparently DOES NOT want the contract to be backloaded, which makes sense because the player would want as much guaranteed money as possible, and $$ on the back end might as well be Monopoly money. But that’s just not how it’s done. Does Roquan, acting as his own agent, either not realize this and/or feel personally slighted by this particular point?
For the record, they might be in the unique position to *front*-load the contract and actually get a good deal, shedding the majority of the money early when they can absorb it rather than late. Only problem is, they’ve got a lot of holes to fill next offseason.
2) When a player seeking a new contract requests a trade, their agent works in coordination with the team to reach out to other teams and work out what is essentially a reverse sign-and-trade (like Mack to the Bears). The agent works with teams on a contract amount for the player while the team is working with those same teams on what the trade is going to be.
^^The above might not even be possible as long as Roquan is representing himself. It’s not even clear whether such a thing would be permissible under the current CBA (a player working out a contract directly with an opposing team while under contract with their current team). I’m not sure such a thing has ever happened before. (Hoge very briefly touched on this point during the most recent CHGO Bears podcast).
