Portis Agrees to $51M Deal With Redskins

[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

In order to thoroughly examine the deal, we do need to see how the bonuses are structured (i.e. are bonuses roster bonuses or incentive based bonuses?). I believe that the bonuses are both incentive and roster-based.

However, the total value of the deal is big enough to tell one of two things; either Portis will take about 6 million dollars a year out of the cap, or the deal is backloaded. If the deal is backloaded (as was Stephen Davis' $90 million deal back in 2000), we are going to have to either release Portis at the point at which his cap figure becomes untenable, or we will have to renegotiate the deal.

While parties can always renegotiate a deal, obviously both parties must be amenable to such a deal. While Arrington, Trotter, and Samuels have all restructured their deals to help our cap situation, at a certain point the player says, I can get a lot of money on the market in free agency and I'm not going to restructure anymore (i.e. Chris Samuels).

So, we'll have to see how it is structured to see how cap friendly it is.

BUT, you do not need to see the deal to know that it wasn't the best deal. I say that because again Portis was scheduled to make 350K next year and 450K the following year - 800K over 2 years!!!!! Moreover, Portis already said that he would go to camp with or without a new deal so it was not as though we HAD to sign Portis to a big deal.

No matter how the deal is structured, we will undoubtedly have given Portis one of, if not the most, lucrative deals ever given to a back. If we had all the leverage, why did we rush to complete a deal? If we had all the leverage, why the huge overall contract value? Those are two questions I doubt a close look at the contract will answer.