Labor Day always felt like the proverbial deadline for Christian Gonzalez and the New England Patriots to agree to terms on a long-awaited contract extension.
NFL insider Adam Schefter didn’t exactly deliver the holiday morning news that Patriots fans were hoping for.
Schefter went on the Pat McAfee Show on Monday and revealed the real reason why the two sides have — and continue to be — ”nowhere” close to reaching an agreement.
He couldn’t elaborate on the details, but he did repeat the word “money,” and all Patriots fans know what that means. It’s probably not the average annual value or term that’s the real issue here. It’s almost certainly the real money that’s fully guaranteed and when that new cash is paid out.
“I don’t know specifically but I’ve never gotten the sense that they’ve gotten close here all along,” Schefter said. “And I’m gonna guess usually when that’s the case it starts with money. And I think Gonzalez wanted to be at or above where Witherspoon was. The Patriots have never been there, have not gotten close to there. So I guess when you can’t agree on the money the years become secondary because money usually is the sticking point on all these things. And it certainly seems like for whatever reason these two sides have not gotten close.”
New England's contract standoff with Christian Gonzalez appears to come down to guaranteed money
This is a brutal update for Robert and Jonathan Kraft. It came hours before the team was scheduled to take off for Seattle to go play in the NFL’s season kickoff game. We all know what the main topic of conversation is going to be in the lead-up.
The Patriots would love it to be all about their new lovable duo of Drake Maye and A.J. Brown, but good luck with that.
Schefter has been adamant that the Patriots “have not gotten close” to the Devon Witherspoon deal, which included $59 million fully guaranteed at signing. Witherspoon will receive all of that cash over the first two years of the deal.
That’s the number the Patriots have to beat. It’s not the four years or even necessarily the $132 million in total max value. It’s the $60 million in guaranteed cash that would have to be paid out in 2026 and 2027. That continues to be the most likely holdup.
The “why” comes down to cash flow. Gonzalez is set to make a little over $20 million in cash over that same two-year period, with the bulk of it coming via an $18.1 million fifth-year option in 2027. Matching the Witherspoon payout structure roughly equates to a $40 million added expense.
None of that should be an excuse, though. The Patriots have done themselves no favors publicly. Robert Kraft nonchalantly told reporters back in July that the team had extended an offer to make Gonzalez the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history. General manager Eliot Wolf recently told reporters that nothing has changed on that front, even after the Witherspoon deal became public.
But per Schefter’s reporting, they haven't even been close to a real market-setting offer. Whether that means max annual value or “Patriots guarantees” tied to attainable incentives remains unclear.
Patriots fans already know the brutal truth, though. It comes down to the fully guaranteed cash. If the Krafts aren’t willing to do business as business is being done in the modern rookie-scale era, then they should have traded Gonzalez prior to April’s draft.
Playing out the string like this only fuels that national perception that they don’t pay their players, and it's a brutal look just days before the season opener.
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