The Other Options
When players look to negotiate a new contract, a large part of their bargaining power is how hard it will be for the team they are playing for to replace them, and Bradberry is unlikely to be an exception. So what does he have over the Panthers?
Well, the most obvious factor is the lack of a ready replacement on the roster. While Donte Jackson could take over the #1 CB role if Bradberry left, he doesn’t offer the same matchup ability that Bradberry does in terms of playing against the NFC South’s bigger receivers, and even if he took over the #1 role, the only other cornerback under contract for 2020 to take over the #2 role would be Corn Elder.
In short, even if the Panthers do resign Bradberry, they will still need to add another corner or two for depth – so if they were to let Bradberry walk, they would almost certainly have to sign somebody to be the starting cornerback in free agency. That isn’t going to come cheap, and it’s likely to involve taking a step backward in terms of play level at the same time.
Of course, the other option in terms of finding a new starting cornerback would be to turn to the draft, and while that is how the Panthers ended up with both Bradberry and Donte Jackson, this plan isn’t without it’s drawbacks either.
The first issue is the difficulty of hitting on a player in the draft regardless of position, something that would be made all the more difficult should the Panthers manage to get back into the playoffs in 2019. Once you get to the second half of the first round, the chances of hitting on a player are at best 50/50, and if you force yourself into taking a certain position regardless of how the board falls, that is only going to hurt your chances.
The other issue with looking to find starters in the draft is that there is generally something of a transition period – very few players come in and start at a high level from day one and given that the Panthers are in something of a win-now situation, spending a year or two developing a corner into a starting caliber player as they’ve done with Bradberry isn’t going to be a hugely appealing option.
You have to then take into account that cornerbacks are one of the harder positions for players to transition into, with the speed of the NFL game being a huge factor but also the far greater complexity of NFL defenses meaning that they are often forced to learn a whole new set of coverages and need to be able to switch between them from play to play, something that many simply aren’t asked to do in college.
Of course, this isn’t impossible, and there have been some very good rookie cornerbacks, but it is worth noting that just ten teams have made the playoffs in the past decade while starting a rookie at cornerback for ten games or more that season, accounting for just 8% of playoff teams over that period. What’s more, those teams didn’t fare well once they got to the playoffs either, going a combined 5-10 and accounting for just 4.5% of playoff wins over the same period.
In fact, the only rookie corners to start ten games and win a playoff game in the past decade are Jerraud Powers, Marcus Peters, Adoree Jackson and Marshon Lattimore – an All-Pro, a defensive rookie of the year, somebody who played with Peyton Manning and…..Adoree Jackson.
That is not to say that the Panthers couldn’t find a rookie in the draft who could come in and start at a high level from day one, but that that is not something that many rookies in recent NFL history have been able to do and relying on this at a time when you’re meant to be competing rather than rebuilding seems risky at best.
In short, if the Panthers want to have a level of cornerback play in 2020 that gives them a chance to make the playoffs, they are either going to have to pay Bradberry, pay somebody else similar money or get very, very lucky.
“He is a guy that I hope we can keep around. He is important to what we’ve done – we’ve kind of shown that you’ve got to be able to keep that type of corner around.”
-Ron Rivera
So what is James Bradberry money likely to be?
The Details
So let’s go back to looking at those three cornerback contracts detailed earlier, how could Bradberry’s future deal stack up with them?
Well, for a start, given that Bradberry will turn 27 just before the 2020 season, it’s probably unlikely that he gets a deal any longer than the five years that Kirkpatrick and Trufant received, as both were either the same age or younger when they signed their deals – even if he does sign a five-year deal, it’s likely that it’s structured that it’s front-loaded to allow the team to move on in the final year or two if they chose to, given that CBs tend to decline in something of a cliff-like fashion. Given all this, a four or front-loaded five year deal seems to be likely.
In terms of guarantees, it’s rare that a team gives a load of guarantees to a corner as it’s not a position which shows huge consistency year over year and injuries can be devastating. It would be a real surprise to see his guarantee go anywhere higher than 40% – with a figure somewhere around the 30% Trufant received being most likely.
Finally, and this is really the crux of the matter, what salary is he likely to receive on a per-year basis?
Trufant would seem to be the absolute upper limit on what he might receive, but it’s probably more likely that he receives somewhere around $11m – while the market has increased somewhat compared to 2017, it hasn’t changed that much. Based on all that, I’d guess at something like a 4 year, $45m contract with $15m of that being guaranteed. But is that good value?
It’s probably more than the Panthers would ideally like to play, but it’s a lot less than they nearly paid Josh Norman and it’s hard to say that Bradberry is a significantly worse player than Norman. You also have to factor in that while this would make Bradberry the 14th highest paid corner in the NFL at the start of his contract, as has been shown repeatedly, that is likely to change as the deal goes on.
The final thing to factor into account is the fact that the CBA is up for renegotiation and that there is a chance that the details of the new salary cap change the market significantly, and it’s unlikely that is going to lead to smaller contracts going forward. While the Panthers will obviously want to try and avoid overpaying on the assumption that the salary cap is going to balloon, getting a player at decent value now is likely to look like good value in a few years time.
With all that said, it’s always very hard to judge how players’ contracts are going to work out, as it only takes one team to be willing to pay over the odds for a player, with the apparent drop off in safety value in recent years being the flip side of that particular coin. But it would be a real surprise if the Panthers weren’t looking to sign Bradberry to a new contract, with there being a chance that they can get this done before training camp.
