Nick Bosa Not Reporting to Camp

49ers star EDGE Nick Bosa is not reporting to training camp as the two sides are working on trying to complete a “complex” contract extension. By not attending camp Bosa does risk significant fines. The fines for missing camp for a player on the 5th year option are $40,000 per day plus one weeks salary for each preseason game missed, which for Bosa would be $949,389. The 49ers have the right to waive the fines which would be likely if an extension is reached.

Bosa’s contract is likely more complex because of the Rams modified contract for Aaron Donald. Donald’s annual value is $31.67 million per year which is a massive leap from TJ Watt’s $28 million per year contract extension that he signed in 2021 with the Steelers. The 13% market jump is out of the norm for recent contracts on the defensive side of the ball and pushes the baseline much higher. Here are the most recent market movers (multi year contracts only) I can recall on the defensive side of the football:

This works out to an average of about 9% but there are a few exceptions in there that I am sure the 49ers would bring up. The Khalil Mack extension was by far the biggest jump but it did involve a traded players contract and also represented a two year delay between the market increase. If that contract was replaced by Aaron Donald’s $22.5 million extension, more or less agreed to on the same day, the max we would see is an 18% jump by a player. The Suh contract was a team bidding (probably against themselves) in free agency. Take those out and it brings it much more in line with Joey Bosa’s 8% raise.

The other issue that could exist is the real value of these contracts. While the Donald contract is worth $31.7 million the primary jump in salary comes in the final year of that contract when Donald will be 33 and nothing in that year is guaranteed. Donald had reportedly been contemplating retirement. The two year APY on that contract is exactly $30 million per year. TJ Watt’s contract APY through three years is at $30.3M and that is on a four year deal which is probably much more relevant to the negotiation. The point being that Watt’s contract is much more the comp contract for most of the metrics even if there is some bump needed to hit the $32 million a year number to technically put Bosa over Donald. A typical market move over Watt would put the contract in the ballpark of $30M per year in new money.

Watt’s contract is also a four year deal whereas J. Bosa is on a five year contract, which is likely the preferred length by the 49ers. That should, in theory, be one of the reasons Bosa got a larger percentage increase in contract than Watt did. If we took a similar 8% increase on N. Bosa’s contract and applied it to Watt’s cash flows we would come up with the following new money running numbers:

In this case the contract would easily surpass Donald’s three year value of $95 million but I threw in a fifth year to get the APY over Donald’s three year number. I have no idea if San Francisco would be agreeable to that as it would be a massive year five salary to accomplish that. They might be willing to do that with a sixth year but not a fifth year.

I think the more difficult scenarios would include applying a $32 million base and using Watt’s cash flows which would look as follows:

That type of deal in no way resembles Donald’s even though the APY is just slightly higher though I guess it might be workable especially if they could add another year at a flat cost.

A much more difficult scenario would be a 13% raise to Donald’s APY rather than an 8% raise to Watt’s numbers and using Watt’s contract as the baseline for cash structure. In that scenario you are looking at a contract that averages between $35 and $36 million a year. Those numbers might look something like this.

. I think those kind of numbers would be a non-starter for the 49ers because they just don’t resemble any contract structure that currently exists in the NFL for a non-QB.