As tight end Julius Thomas was catching more touchdown passes than any other NFL player and wide receiver Demaryius Thomas was putting together the best four-game receiver stretch in team history, Broncos fans were left with one thought.
Pay the men!
The value of Peyton Manning’s two most potent receiving targets seems to go up each week. Spare us the details, John Elway. Broncos fans don’t want these guys to get away.
“It has to be done at some point,” Julius Thomas said. “The contract ends after this season, so something has to get done, right? I’m just playing football, enjoying it. We have a good team. You can’t worry about it.”
Truth is, the Broncos did try to work out contract extensions with both players before the season began.
Demaryius Thomas is playing this season on a $3.275 million salary, the final year of his contract. The Broncos would not discuss specifics for this story — Elway, the team’s general manager, refused comment — but an NFL source said the Broncos offered Demaryius Thomas a contract beyond Percy Harvin’s $12.85 million annual average but less than the $16 million-a-year deals of the two highest-paid receivers: Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald.
That’s a lot of dough to spurn.
When Demaryius Thomas started slowly, dropping five passes through his first three games, it was logical to wonder if his contract situation was a distraction.
“It had nothing to do with it,” he said then, and again last week.
He proved it during the next four games, when he had 34 catches for 626 yards — 8.5 catches and 156.5 yards per — with five touchdowns.
“I didn’t play bad because of the contract, and I didn’t start playing good because of the contract. I just play,” he said. “I don’t think about the contract. It has to get done pretty soon.”
Elite production aside, the Thomases’ contract situations are not the same. Demaryius Thomas is launching from a lucrative original contract as a first-round draft pick in 2010. He’s already collected millions.
Julius Thomas is demonstrating the guts of a mailman attempting to deliver past a chained pit bull by leaving millions of dollars on the table. A fourth-round pick in 2011, Thomas is playing on a $645,000 salary, the most he has made in his four years.
With Jimmy Graham the NFL’s highest-paid tight end at $10 million a year, Rob Gronkowski next at $9 million and Jason Witten third at $7.4 million, Thomas’ offer is between $7.5 million and $8.5 million a year, according to another NFL source.
The structure of a contract, though, is where agents and teams usually disagree.
To his credit, Julius Thomas seems unaffected by the situation. He set an NFL record with nine touchdown receptions through five games, and even though he didn’t score in the past two games, he is still tied for the league lead with fellow tight end Antonio Gates for the most receiving scores.
“I’m in the same position as Virg (Green), Nate Irving, Rahim Moore — I’m no different than anybody else in my draft class who are playing out their last years,” Julius Thomas said. “It’s not like everybody else is taken care of (with long-term financial security) and I’m the only one who isn’t. It will get taken care of at some point. Might wait longer, but it will get done.”
The Broncos’ contract proposals remain on the table, but there has been no bargaining since August.
There hasn’t been any negative repercussions from the unresolved contract situations. If anything, the players’ value keeps increasing. The Broncos can put the franchise tag on only one player a year, and Demaryius Thomas would be the more logical of the two. Julius Thomas is really good, a Pro Bowler. But Demaryius Thomas is a freakish talent.
The franchise tag salary for receivers next year figures to come in at about $12.5 million.
With Julius Thomas, a new deal would have to be worked out between the end of the Broncos’ season and mid-March, when 2015 free agency begins.
The Thomases aren’t the only key Broncos players whose contracts expire after this season. Chris Harris, Terrance Knighton, Wes Welker, Orlando Franklin, Moore and Irving are among the potential unrestricted free agents.
The Broncos won’t have the money to keep all of those players.
“You never know what is going to happen, but you hope it works out,” Julius Thomas said. “I can’t even speculate on what’s going to happen. I’m just happy I don’t have to worry about it today.”
