If you read the title, then you guessed it. It is now a public relations war between 2016 first-round pick Joey Bosa and his team that drafted him, the San Diego Chargers.
After Bosa recently rejected the best offer the Chargers have given him to sign, the Chargers released the following statement:
The San Diego Chargers issued the following statement regarding the contract negotiations with 2016 first-round selection Joey Bosa:
Our contract discussions and offers to the representatives of Joey Bosa have been both fair and structurally consistent with the contracts of every other Chargers player.
Our offer included:
• An initial signing bonus payment that is larger than any player in the League has received in the last two drafts.
• More money in this calendar year than every player in this year’s draft except one (QB Carson Wentz).
• The largest payment and the highest percentage of signing bonus received in the first calendar year of any Chargers’ first-round selection since the inception of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (2011).
We gave Joey’s representatives our best offer last night, which was rejected today. The offer that we extended was for Joey to contribute during all 16 games and beyond. Joey’s ability to contribute for an entire rookie season has now been jeopardized by the valuable time he has missed with his coaches and his teammates. Since Joey will not report at this time, his ability to produce not just early in the season, but throughout the entire season, has been negatively impacted.
As a result, we will restructure our offer since Joey will be unable to contribute for the full 16 game season without the adequate time on the practice field, in the classroom, and in preseason games.
Some of Bosa's representatives released the following statement in response.
It is unfortunate the San Diego Chargers have decided to manipulate facts and negotiate in the media. The team surely is not strengthening its relationship with Joey Bosa by taking this stance and making their position public.
We have decided that we will not engage in public negotiations or discuss numbers and/or terms in this negotiation.
We will say, that it is ironic that the team now takes issue with the timing of Joey’s arrival, since the Chargers unilaterally decided to remain silent for the first 14 days of training camp instead of replying in a timely fashion to the proposal we made on the eve of training camp on July 28th.
At this point, all we can do is continue to fight for a fair contract on behalf of our client, as we do for all of our clients. The Chargers can focus on trying to sway public opinion, but our focus will remain on our client and securing a contract for him that is fair and consistent with his draft position.
It seems right now that Bosa may not play a full 2016 schedule, and may not get to play in 2016 at all.
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