No. 3 Overall Pick Joey Bosa Holding Out of San Diego Chargers Camp as Contract Negotiations Turn Sour
The 2011 NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement was supposed to make it easy for rookies to go to training camp. The dollar amount on each rookie contract is slated based on their draft position, so all that’s left is the legal mumbo-jumbo.
Maybe they should sort all of that out at the league level too, as the San Diego Chargers are having trouble in negotiations with No. 3 overall pick Joey Bosa. Things are so ugly that the two sides haven’t spoken since July 28, and Bosa has yet to report for training camp.
The Chargers have an ugly history with rookie contracts. LaDainian Tomlinson, Quentin Jammer, Philip Rivers, and Shawne Merriman all missed part of camp after the draft. The CBA helped a little bit, but Bosa still found a reason to hold out.
The Chargers want two things in the contract: offset language, allowing them to recoup some money if Bosa signs with another team, and a deferral on part of the signing bonus, allowing them to pay it out next season.
Bosa’s said has made it clear. They’ll agree to one or the other, not both.
Things have gotten ugly. Bosa’s mother made a comment that Joey should have “pulled an Eli Manning on draft day.” Bosa himself also mentioned that he’s not sure his relationship with the team will recover from this situation.
Chargers tight end Antonio Gates, however, is tired of hearing about it. Gates had his own holdout with the team back in 2005, but he believes there’s a point where the player needs to look out for the betterment of the team as a whole and stop hurting everyone.
“My advice to any player that’s going through any kind of contract situation is that, at one point, you’ve got to be a man, and you’ve got to understand that you’ve got to get ready to play,” said Gates. “Sometimes you’ve got to just, as a man, you’ve got to step in and say, ‘This is what it’s going to be,’ because sometimes, whether or not miscommunication with the general manager or the agent, whatever it is, at the end of the day, it’s your life, it’s your career.”
You don’t want to get on Antonio’s bad side already.