Miami keeps offering players contracts, but they’ve had very little success thus far in getting players to agree to sign on the dotted line. Much of that comes from the fact that there’s writing on the wall: Miami isn’t going to be competing to win the Super Bowl next year.
Rebuilding takes time, patience and a certain mentality that not everyone has. Consider free agent quarterback Teddy Bridgewater among them. Bridgewater visited Miami on Wednesday night and it was announced on Thursday that he would be returning to New Orleans to continue backing up Drew Brees.
The deal he agreed to in New Orleans? One year, $7.25M fully guaranteed with performance incentives (mind you, he’s a back-up) that could boost his salary north of $12M.
Could Miami have offered that? They probably did. But Bridgewater didn’t want an equal deal to come to Miami, he wanted a bigger one.
Life changing money is something that can be further identified courtesy of the Herald’s Armando Salguero.
Salguero reports Bridgewater wanted a deal that started him around $16M, with incentives on top of that to further boost his pay from there. In that case, hit the road, Teddy.
Miami isn’t going to be that team to wheel and deal, risk money and waste salary cap space on high risk investments. And Bridgewater, for all of his natural ability, is a high risk investment at that price.
So Miami, as they’ve done all off-season, held firm on their offer. And the player, as they’ve mostly done this off-season, went elsewhere to sign a contract.
