Today at 4pm marks the end of the negotiation period for players that have been tagged "franchise players" to sign long term contracts. If no deal is done before 4pm today, negotiations will have to resume after the 2009 season, which of course means another "standoff" with Julius Peppers next year seems almost a certainty.
There are pretty much two options following the 2009 season when it comes to dealing with Peppers and $.
1) Try again to sign Peppers to a long-term contract
2) Put their franchise tag on him again at a one-year price of more than $20 million (there's a mandatory 20 percent increase over his '09 tender amount)
The other option is to let him walk unrestricted, but that's not really an option.
It really is a catch22 situation now. Of course we want our DE to be a beast on the field, but it is going to cost the Panthers an incredible amount of money if Peppers duplicate last season's contract year performance. The best possible thing the Panthers could do is to sign him to a long term, high incentive based contract after the 2009 season so that we can avoid the cost of franchising him every year.
I am going to assume that we can put this topic to bed until next February after we hoist the Lombardi Trophy.
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