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With less than a week to go until the NFL’s deadline to extend franchise-tagged players, we’re beginning to hear about where things stand between the Kansas City Chiefs and LT Orlando Brown Jr. regarding an extension.
NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo provided a blanket report on the top franchise-tagged players on Friday night. He classified a long-term contract extension for Brown Jr. under the “optimistic” category.
“Orlando Brown Jr. just hired a new agent and it’s an agent with no experience in negotiating NFL contracts,” Garafolo said. “That’s what Brown wanted. We talked to him for Total Access when we were doing the show here on the east coast earlier last month. He said that one of his goals was that he wants to be the highest-paid offensive tackle. Well, that is going to put him into the 20s, close to the mid-20s if you want to start there and get above Trent Williams.”
This tracks with everything that we’ve heard about a Brown Jr. extension to this point. We projected a five-year deal, worth $105 million with up to $72 million guaranteed in order for Brown Jr. to hit all the contract benchmarks that would make him one of the top-paid left tackles in the league.
While there haven’t been recent negotiations that suggest a deal is imminent (as in over the weekend), we do know that the two sides have already spoken. They’ve likely exchanged preliminary numbers and thoughts on contract structure. That means that salary-cap guru Brandt Tilis will have been working to put together a deal that makes sense for Brown Jr. and the team. If everything is in the right ballpark, this is a deal that should get done ahead of the deadline, potentially freeing cap space for the Chiefs to make other moves ahead of the season.
“There is going to be some work to do,” Garafolo said. “I don’t get the sense that there has been any back-and-forth lately, but we’re looking at early next week to see if these sides can lock in and get a long-term deal done. We’ll keep you posted on that one.”
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