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If you thought Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson was upset before, what about now? Now that Arizona’s Larry Fitzgerald has signed a four-year, $40 million contract. While Fitzgerald breaks the bank with $10 million per year for four years, Johnson is boxed in by a contract that went from good to bad in a hurry. “Chad’s got to be crying,” one NFL insider told me. Why? Because he’s between a rock and a hard place … for the next four years. The $35.5 million extension Johnson signed in April 2006, which included a fat $10.75 million signing bonus, looked great at the time. But it doesn’t look so good anymore compared to Fitzgerald’s monster deal. Johnson is due to earn $3 million in 2008, $4.5 million in 2009, $5 million in 2010 and $6 million in 2011. That’s $18.5 million. In that same span, Fitzgerald will make $40 million — $22.5 million more than Chad. Chad cannot be happy. But he has only two people to blame: himself and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. Instead of waiting for Chad to reach free agency in 2009, they leaped on the Bengals’ six-year extension in 2006.
The following are Rosenhaus’ quotes I wrote in the Dayton Daily News back on April 20, 2006. I laugh every time I read them: “It’s a great day for Chad and the Bengals for him to be able to finish his career as a Bengal. It was a very smooth process. We’ve been working on it for a year. It’s a great victory for everybody involved. “I can’t really think of any deal like this. I give a lot of credit to the Bengals for reworking a contract that had four years left, and you’ve got to take your hat off to Chad. He’s a great player, on and off the field, to merit this type of unique situation. It shows you what a phenomenal player he is.” The Bengals are shrewd negotiators. They dangled the carrot on the string, and Rosenhaus-Johnson swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Dayton Daily News http://www.daytondailynews.com/o/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/chickludwig/ |
