Julio Jones holds out for more money, will be fined $40K per day
Julio Jones, who is holding out for more money and skipping Falcons training camp, may want to spend some of his free time away from the field reading about Pyrrhus of Epirus, the Greek general who coined the term “Pyrrhic victory” 2,300 years ago.
Because the Falcons, like any employer whose employee decides not to show up to work, aren’t paying Jones to sit around on his duff instead of doing his job.
Atlanta is fining Jones $40,000 for every day he’s not on the field, and if this staring contest continues into the regular season, Jones will lose out on $617,647 each week, or 1/17 of his $10.5 million salary.
Pro Football Talk reports that Jones is unhappy with his contract, which has three years remaining on it. Jones signed a five-year extension in 2015, and it kicked in for the 2016 campaign.
The curious thing about the contract is that it has a strange fluctuating base salary, a result of Jones agreeing to give the Falcons cap flexibility by spreading the base out unevenly.
According to Spotrac, Jones made $9.5 million in 2016, $11.5 million last year, and will make $12.5 million in 2019 and $11.426 million in 2020.
The $10.5 million this year, apparently, isn’t good enough for him.
Also of interest, the $71 million base salary included $47 million in guaranteed money and a $12 million signing bonus.
Jones is playing an interesting game of chicken with his team. He’s 29 years old, after all, and a 29-year-old football player with a history of injuries is a potential liability, especially if he’s sitting at home and not doing the strength and conditioning drills required of a pro football player in order to be in optimal physical condition on the field during the season.
The Falcons can cut Jones, taking salary cap hits of just $4.8 million this year and $2.4 million hit in 2019.
In addition, Jones being out means first-round pick Calvin Ridley, taken 26th overall out of Alabama, gets a chance to get a lot more looks with the first team during training camp and the preseason.
Ridley’s base salary this year is just $480,000, and with his rookie contract, Ridley’s cap hit is only $1.98 million this year and $2.47 million next year, more than enough to make up the difference between Jones’ dead money and the money they’d have to pay him to renegotiate the veteran’s deal.
Plus, the Falcons also drafted wideout Russell Gage in the sixth round. If he makes the team and contributes meaningfully, Jones’ leverage goes even further down the drain because the Falcons can cut him with minimal salary cap pain.
Jones is paying a dear price for taking a lot of money up front in exchange for less money down the road.
And a cursory glance at the comments sections in articles on the subject shows that Falcons fans are not on the player’s side. The consensus opinion is that Jones is not honoring his word, and for the working-class fans of football, that is an unforgivable sin.
Furthermore, Jones’ holdout undermines the arguments of guys like Todd Gurley, who want the NFL to put more guaranteed money into contracts. The Falcons guaranteed two-thirds of Jones’ deal and what did it get them but a guy who started welshing on the deal as soon as the up-front money was all in his bank account.
Jones thinks he’s sending a message to his team that they need to pay him or else.
But the message he’s really sending is, “I don’t keep my word and you can’t trust me.”
Even if he ultimately gets released to the open market as a free agent, other teams are going to notice … and Jones will have nothing but his pride after a Pyrrhic victory.
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