San Diego Chargers rookie Joey Bosa continues his holdout, which has no end in sight, and the two parties haven’t even spoken since July 28.
This information was passed along by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk:
“The Chargers and defensive end Joey Bosa traded proposals on Thursday, July 28. Since then, the team has opened training camp and practiced for a week. Since then, the Chargers and the third overall pick in the 2016 draft have engaged in no further talks.”
As Florio notes, this is now the longest holdout by an NFL rookie since the current CBA made these contract negotiations rather easy, creating the rookie wage scale.
Both Bosa and the Chargers know how much he’s set to earn, and that cannot change.
The issue at hand that Bosa is holding out over is that he and the Chargers disagree on how much of his bonus he will receive this year and about off-set language in the contract.
Bosa wants all his bonus in 2016, while the Chargers would rather stick to what they’ve been doing and defer some of that to the 2017 season. He also wants there to be no off-set language, and the franchise won’t sign him to a deal unless that language is included.
The team’s position on this matter can be best explained by Chargers president of football operations, John Spanos.
“Without offset language, it could unfortunately create the scenario where, as a player in that fourth year, if a player knows he has a million guaranteed from us and can go double dip and earn from another team, it actually in essence creates an incentive to get cut financially,” Spanos said back in June. “You can make more money getting cut.”
Every day that goes by without Bosa in camp is another day in which he falls behind.
The rookie out of Ohio State is set to play an entirely new position as a 3-4 defensive end, which is much different than what he did for the Buckeyes, who feature a 4-3 defensive front. Many have questioned San Diego for selecting him at No. 3 and then playing him out of position, and that was before he missed all this practice time.
This is becoming quite an ugly situation, because at this rate Bosa’s rookie season might end up becoming a total bust.