When training camp opened in Foxboro this summer, Patriots owner Robert Kraft happily told the media that the team had offered Christian Gonzalez a contract that would make him the highest-paid cornerback and highest-paid Patriot in history. The cornerback showed up to work every day, even when the sessions went to full pads, and all appeared to be positive as the team and the player sorted out the details of the megadeal.
A month later, Gonzalez remains without that contract. He admitted this week that it’s been “frustrating.”
Yet on Thursday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter dropped the most ominous note regarding the status of Gonzalez and the Patriots. Speaking on The Pat McAfee Show, Schefter noted that the Devon Witherspoon contract extension with Seattle has not really impacted the Patriots’ stance in negotiations — unlike what most NFL insiders believed heading into the summer.
“The Patriots have not been in that category,” Schefter said of Witherspoon’s $33 million annual salary. “Witherspoon has established the benchmark, and the Patriots haven’t gone there. And they weren’t there before, and they don’t appear to be going there right now.”
Schefter added: “The Patriots and Gonzalez haven’t been close.”
Once more, for good measure, Schefter said, “I think they want to pay Christian Gonzalez, but they’re obviously not in the same neighborhood right now and haven’t been.”
That reporting is surprising, considering that Patriots executive VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf answered “yes” this week when asked if the team is still willing to make Gonzalez the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL.
Schefter also suggested that head coach Mike Vrabel would be disinclined to give out a monster contract to any cornerback.
“I kind of think Mike Vrabel views defensive linemen and getting pressure as the most important thing on a defense. He prioritizes that,” Schefter said. “Loves corners, of course, and he knows that Christian Gonzalez is a great player. But if we’re gonna pay players premiums, like up front, [getting pressure is] something that’s been important to him in the past.”
Schefter then speculated that this contract standoff could lead to the Patriots exploring a trade of Gonzalez next offseason.
“I think that there’s probably another push before the season begins or at the start of the season from both sides to try to get [it] done. That’s my guess, because he’s too good a player not to get something done, and they’re too smart not to try to get something done, and the numbers are there,” Schefter said. “But if they can’t get something done, that just makes me wonder, like, where is it going in the future? What happens then? Do they wait till after the season? Can they do anything then? Would they even be willing to listen to potential trades for him after the year? Like, is that a possibility down the line? I think it opens up a whole range of options if they don’t have this deal done at the start of the season or a couple of weeks into the season.”
Obviously, when Kraft spoke on a sunny day in late July, nobody envisioned that the top NFL insider would be speculating on an eventual Gonzalez trade a month later. Yet Schefter’s latest update made it quite clear that any of that midsummer optimism was misplaced, and that the two sides have never been close in these negotiations.
