Well it becomes unofficially official (Bell can't sign his deal until 3 p.m. CT today), that Le'Veon Bell is off the free market and heading to play for the New York Jets on a 4 year deal with ONLY $35 million guaranteed.
This is crazy. Bell held out and made this huge deal about getting paid the last few years to only get this much guaranteed??? He didn't even come within $10 million of the highest guaranteed RB contract in the NFL in the one Todd Gurley got. Now, I'm not going to act like I understand the intricacies of an NFL contract. $35 million guaranteed with a max value of $61 million dollars if he reaches certain incentives. Maybe those incentives are easier to reach than a contract of Gurley's so Bell decided to take less guaranteed but he has a much higher chance to reach the max value of his contract. Which would make sense to accept that deal but still after all this holding out, even sitting out a whole year of his prime, I think this deal is pretty underwhelming.
Also, Bell tweeted this about a year ago. I would like to think in negotiations Bell and his agent remembered this tweet and asked the Jets, "Oh shit, actually can we make the max value $61 million instead of $60? Don't ask why, but yeah yeah that would be awesome."
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