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Can you blame them though?
They play in the most lucrative and most violent sport on earth where the owners can cut them at the drop of a dime. I have no problems with any player trying to maximize has $$.
Antonio Brown is in the 3rd year of his deal.
He's scheduled to make $6 million this year. That's it. He's arguably in the top-5 receivers in the game right now and can be an upgrade to most in the punt return game. Do you know how much guaranteed Brown would get if he was a free agent? $25 to $30 million. Easy.
Should he start bitching and moaning? He could complain about roster turnover, our continued failures in the playoffs. Hell, he could just not like the way Pittsburgh smells. I'm sure he could make up something about Haley and/or Tomlin he doesn't like.
The reason he won't is because he's professional about his contract. He knows he got his money up front. He knows he dipped his foot into the money well early and that cost him now. That was his choice. Not the Steelers. The professional time you start complaining about an agreed contract is with 2-years left (and even then it's hard to get your way) and certainly acceptable to complain/hold out with one year left.
Everyone wants to say "Well, the team can cut you after one year....". In almost all those cases the player makes out like a bandit. Michael Johnson got $18 million for play JUST ONE YEAR for Tampa Bay. Anthony Collins got $9 million for his one year with them last year. How is this possibly BAD for the player?
There's some misguided idea that salaries aren't guaranteed in the NFL. Of course they are. HUGE amounts of contracts are guaranteed. Would Michael Johnson get a contract that pays him $18 million in any one season if contracts were just base salaries? Not a chance. But yet he GOT that money. It's in his bank account whether he's playing or not. In fact, he will actually make MORE because he'll get paid from another team.
The truth is most of the these mega-contracts are beneficial for both parties in the first 3 years and then they (in reality) kind of become "option years" for each party every year after that. If the team cuts a player before year 3, when you really look at the money spent in almost EVERY instance the player made out like a bandit and the team suffers. Year 3 is when there is normally a balance between when the team starts to get their value AND the player gets good payment. In year 4, the "options" kick in. Does the team still want him at X dollars? And likewise, if a player is underpaid, I kind of consider year 4 an opportunity to broach talks of renegotiation (really depend on how underpaid a player is).
That's professional. And neither party is being taken advantage of despite what some of the agenda base media sometimes says.