Chicago Bears fans tend to be a nervous bunch. Not a shock considering how many times they’ve had bad luck come their way in recent years. Their latest object of stress is Allen Robinson. The star wide receiver has emerged as the best player on the offense by a wide margin. This coming 2020 season will be the last of his current contract. Thus expectations are GM Ryan Pace would be proactive in getting an extension of some kind done.
Yet month after month has gone by since the offseason began and nothing has surfaced. Free agency came and went. Then the draft. Then undrafted free agency. Now the midpoint of July has arrived and still not even a peep of something in the works. Fans have started to get antsy, and Robinson himself didn’t help the situation.
During a recent appearance on ESPN 1000 with Carmen & Jurko, the receiver openly stated that the Bears have yet to contact him or his agent about a new deal.
“They haven’t. We haven’t heard nothing. I think just as far as me and my agent, from a the conversations that we’ve had, we’re not necessarily anticipating hearing anything at this point. For us, we’re going into camp preparing ourselves to have a good year. If that comes up and they reach out to my agent, I’m sure they’ll have pretty good discussions and things like that, but again, that hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe it will happen. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know if that will happen at all. For myself, with this being my second time going into a contract year, I know how to mentally prepare myself and I know how to block all that out.”
Allen Robinson is staying patient because of circumstances
Why in the world would this be the case? Are the Bears just stupid? Well, no. There’s a reason Robinson said he didn’t expect to hear anything. That is because the team is caught in a bit of a fluid situation financially. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have a significant impact on the NFL’s salary cap for 2021 and beyond. This because fans aren’t likely to attend games in any kind of normal numbers. This will affect revenue.
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So the league and NFLPA have continued to have ongoing discussions about how to handle such ramifications. With no resolution yet, a lot of contracts that would normally be done have been put on the back burner. It is also why several big names remain unsigned on the free agent market. Teams aren’t willing to throw around tens of millions of dollars until they know some kind of plan is in place.
The Bears still have time. An agreement is expected around the time training camp begins at the end of the month. That will give them just over a month to engage Robinson about a new deal. Even if nothing ultimately gets done, it won’t be a reason to signal the end of the world. Chicago will still have the franchise tag as an option going into next year.
So it’s best to just sit back and let things play out.