The NFL’s “legal tampering” window opens this afternoon, allowing agents, players and teams the chance to court each other prior to Wednesday’s opening of free agency.
This window is a frantic time, as no deals can be signed but they can certainly be finalized. Expect plenty of those handshake agreements to cover over the next 48 hours.
One of the biggest dominoes in this year’s group is former New England Patriots defensive end Trey Flowers. And, surprise, after months of presumed tanking talk, the buzz around the Dolphins is that they’re very much going to be actively pursuing Flowers.
There’s just one problem with that. While Flowers is young (25-years old) and productive (21.0 sacks in the last three years), he’s going to be expensive.
Very expensive.
Spotrac recently released their calculated market value for Flowers, and the numbers are not pretty. They project the next contract for Trey Flowers will average $15.7M per season, which would make him the 6th highest paid defensive end in all of football.
Four contracts that helped set the figure:
- Olivier Vernon, New York Giants (2016)
- Everson Griffin, Minnesota Vikings (2017)
- Jason Pierre-Paul, New York Giants (2017)
- Chandler Jones, Arizona Cardinals (2017)
These four names were comparable in per game production and age to what Flowers boasts now, plus inflation.
If Miami really wants that keystone face up front, they’re going to have to pay through the nose for it. Is familiarity worth that much to Brian Flores’ defense? We may have our answer before long.
