Freddie Falcon
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- Mar 16, 2019
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Falcons owner Arthur Blank must be pretty confident in his negotiators. Because he just offered two of his players something few players enjoy.
Via D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Blank said that wide receiver Julio Jones and defensive tackle Grady Jarrett weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
“They are both great players, both Grady and Julio,” Blank said. “They both will be Falcons for life. I feel pretty good, comfortable and confident in saying that.”
Jarrett’s currently sitting on the franchise tag, which would pay him $15.2 million for a year, and Blank said they’re currently working on a longer-term answer. Keeping Jones paid on par with his production is difficult anyway, and the recent Antonio Brown deal didn’t help.
“With Julio, we’ve been in touch with both Julio and his agent,” Blank said. “We are working on that. . . .
“These deals, the size of these deals today are becoming big. They’ve always been big, but are becoming bigger, now and you have to work them into a pattern that makes sense in terms of other players that you have coming up.
“So, there is a salary cap. It’s a hard salary cap. We don’t get the chance to spend whatever we want on these players. We have to balance not only what we need for today, but what are our needs for the next couple of years as well.”
Of course, the salary cap keeps going up $10 million a year or more, which means revenues are going up as well. That means Blank can well afford the monetary part (at least until he decides they’re overpaid and decides to break the contract).