The negotiations between the San Diego Chargers and their first round pick, Joey Bosa have gotten uglier by the week, culminating in today's damning statement released by the Chargers.
The former Ohio State defensive end, who was selected #3 overall by San Diego, has reportedly rejected the Chargers "best offer" and they decided to make an unprecedented public statement about it.
This is not a good look for either side.
Our contract discussions and offers to the representatives of Joey Bosa have been both fair and structurally consistent with the contracts of every other Chargers player.
Our offer included:
• An initial signing bonus payment that is larger than any player in the League has received in the last two drafts.
• More money in this calendar year than every player in this year’s draft except one (QB Carson Wentz).
• The largest payment and the highest percentage of signing bonus received in the first calendar year of any Chargers’ first-round selection since the inception of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (2011).
We gave Joey’s representatives our best offer last night, which was rejected today. The offer that we extended was for Joey to contribute during all 16 games and beyond. Joey’s ability to contribute for an entire rookie season has now been jeopardized by the valuable time he has missed with his coaches and his teammates. Since Joey will not report at this time, his ability to produce not just early in the season, but throughout the entire season, has been negatively impacted.
As a result, we will restructure our offer since Joey will be unable to contribute for the full 16 game season without the adequate time on the practice field, in the classroom, and in preseason games.
According to Yahoo Sports, the last time a player decided to re-enter the NFL draft was back in 1991 when QB Craig Erickson slipped to the fifth round and was drafted by the Eagles but decided to sit out the entire season with hopes of being drafted higher. He was ultimately taken by the Buccaneers in the fourth round the following year, but this Bosa situation is a totally different beast.
Now that the Chargers have publicly announced that they'll only be offering Bosa less than the offer he just rejected, it's imminent that he'll miss some, if not all, of the regular season.
At least when Eli Manning decided he didn't want to play for the Chargers he was quickly shipped to the New York Giants. If Bosa can't reach an agreement with the Bolts he'll be forced to sit out for the entire year.
[Via]