Brandon Scherff: It’s Over
August 5, 2021
by Steve Thomas
There’s no excuse for Washington allowing the Brandon Scherff situation to turn into Kirk Cousins part 2. Yes, obviously, the team would be better off with franchise’s only First Team All Pro in a generation remaining on the roster going forward, but at this point, the gig is up. There’s no way that Scherff can stay in Washington on a long term basis for any sort of reasonable contract. It’s pretty incredible that this matter was allowed to fester and grow to this point, again. I’m at a loss for words as to how the team let this happen. This is normally the moment at which I spend a ton of effort trying to design a hypothetical contract that would allow Scherff to be signed to a long-term deal, but that would be a pointless exercise right now.
How did we manage to end up in a situation in which Washington’s best player is playing on a second exclusive franchise tag? Scherff was originally signed to his 4 year rookie deal in 2015. The Redskins exercised the team’s fifth year option for the 2019 in April, 2018. Washington then used its first exclusive franchise tag in the 2020 offseason, then used the second exclusive franchise tag earlier this offseason. The deadline for teams to negotiate a long-term deal with franchise tagged players this year was July 15, which has come and gone, thereby mandating that Scherff play 2021 on the franchise tag contract.
Critically, the Collective Bargaining Agreement allows teams to negotiate contract extensions as early as after the third year of a player’s rookie contract. In other words, for Scherff, Washington could have negotiated a six year contract extension through 2024 as early as the 2018 offseason, which was three years ago. At that point, Scherff had been selected to two Pro Bowls, had missed only 2 games, and was considered to be a rising star at his position. Had the team tried to sign him back they, Washington could have had Scherff locked up through the prime of his career to age 33 on a contract with reasonable annual cap hits. How and why Washington managed to blow that opportunity remains a mystery. Instead, Washington chose to suffer through cap hits of $12.525M in 2019, $15.030M in 2020, and $18.036M in 2021, all with fully guaranteed money. This is gross roster negligence.
In contrast, the Dallas Cowboys re-signed their 2014 first round pick, guard Zack Martin in 2018 (after his fifth year option season) to a 6 year, $84M deal with $32M guaranteed. Martin is considered by many to be the top guard in the league, in contrast to Scherff, who is generally thought of roughly as a top 5 talent. Martin’s contract has an average annual value of $14M per year, and cap hits that don’t exceed that of Scherff’s $18.036M until 2023, when Martin hits $18.350M. On a salary cap basis, that’s less than it would have taken to get Scherff under contract two years ago and roughly the same as what Scherff would have demanded one year later.
We heard rumors this offseason that Washington offered Scherff a market value contract, but don’t be fooled – the rumors didn’t include specific terms, so we have no idea what that actually meant. It could have been a contract offer with a huge overall value but with no guaranteed money, thus being unrealistic. This rumor strikes me as news leaked by Washington to leverage Scherff and to get some goodwill from the fanbase.
If Scherff has been bound and determined to hit free agency all this time, then the team can’t force him to sign a contract. We may never know, but I suspect that the prior leadership team didn’t try very hard to negotiate in good faith by making a serious effort to sign him to an extension after the 2017 season or later. I hold a much higher opinion of Ron Rivera than I did Brucifer, but still: what kind of offer did they make last offseason? The truth will probably never come out, but I suspect that, as was true with Kirk Cousins, the team totally screwed this situation up and allowed it to get to where we are now, which is a $18M lame duck guard on the roster.
Where do we go from here? Nowhere. It’s over. The CBA provides that a third consecutive exclusive franchise tag has a value of the greater of (1) the average of the five largest salaries at the position in question (this is inapplicable, as Scherff is the highest paid), (2) 120 percent of the average of the five highest salaries at the position in question (again, Scherff is the highest paid), or (3) 144 percent of the player’s prior year salary (ding ding ding – $26M). At this point, there’s simply no way to get Scherff under a long-term contract for a reasonable cap hit unless Scherff changes him mind and accepts a lower than market value contract. The odds are high that some other team will offer him a huge deal next year and he’ll be gone.
Not that this is a realistic option, but Washington should rip the band-aid off and trade Scherff for whatever they can get, immediately. Certainly, Rivera wants to be as competitive as possible by playing his best players, but they should bench Scherff as soon as Washington falls out of contention, if that happens, in order to give his possible replacements some experience. Regardless, it’s time to accept that Brandon Scherff will most likely be wearing a different uniform in 2022.