Adam Schefter reports: "Saints and Jimmy Graham closing in on long-term deal to make him highest-paid TE in NFL history. Now optimism deal done by Tues deadline."

Good. Glad the Saints aren't fucking him.

I hope the deal doesn't fuck them. They already have cap problems.

Ian wrote:

Good. Glad the Saints aren't fucking him.

He tried to fuck them by wanting to be paid like a WR when in fact...he's not a WR.

No, they tried to fuck him by not paying him what he was worth through a technicality because the franchise tag process works really well for most positions but not for positions that lack depth. There aren't five players even close to Jimmy Graham's market value at TE and using them to judge his value is fucking stupid.

Martellus Bennett, Jason Witten in his 30s, Antonio Gates in his 30s, Marcedes Lewis, and Greg Olsen are the five players the NFL's process deemed relevant for coming up with Jimmy Graham's contract figure. Not one of those players is even REMOTELY relevant. Jimmy Graham is worth a hell of a lot more than $7.035M and paying him that was fucking ridiculous.

Why anyone would side with the NFL in ANY contract despute is beyond me. They're the most profitable sport in the USA and pay significantly less than baseball and basketball, despite it also being the most dangerous. From an economic standpoint, every player in the league is getting fucked already. How is Peyton Manning making less money than Chris Bosh? In a league where literally no one is making what they should be making, giving Jimmy Graham even less than what he's worth on their already fixed market is nothing short of criminal.

And if you're going to say "How is $20M underpaid" you don't get the point. The money is already in the owners pockets to give them more. Either seats in games need to come down to about $10 per, or players should be paid more. The owners shouldn't be getting so much of the pie, and the fact that most fans argue over players getting it makes me fucking sick.

Back to the point.

The five WRs that would be used to calculate his value:
Mike Wallace
Percy Harvin
Vincent Jackson
Andre Johnson
Dwayne Bowe

Please tell me which one of them is more valuable than Jimmy Graham...

Dammit Dead

Dead

Turns out they still get to fuck him because "he's a TE." 4 Year deal worth a maximum of $40M. Had he hit the market he'd have gotten ~4/$60M I think, but whatever. Him and his agent made the call not to test the market.

Not too bad.