Steelers Give Jaylen Warren 2-YEAR Contract Extension!

Steelers Give Jaylen Warren 2-YEAR Contract Extension!

Jaylen Warren just got a contract extension. Bigde news. Uh, no one was expecting this. This came out of nowhere. Jaylen Warren gets paid before Cam Hayward. And Cam Hayward was the one that was holding in and talking to the media about how he’s upset with his deal and that he wants to be paid his proper value. But Cam Hayward actually has been reportedly practicing. So, it looks like he’s caved. And I mean, is there any further talks? Is there any further buzz that Cam Hayward and the Steelers are anywhere close to something happening? So, it looks like Cam Hayward is just going to play on his current deal, whereas you have Jaylen Warren, who we’ve heard nothing about in terms of wanting a new contract or an extension. He got his restricted free agent tender where the Steelers put that second round tender on him. If a team offered him a contract, the Steelers weren’t willing to match, the Steelers would have got a second rounder. So, that never happened. And Jaylen Warren, the Steelers, they agreed to that one-year deal. It was like 5.3, 5.4 million. And we knew Jaylen Warren was going to be here for 2025 at least. So, this is smart. This is definitely smart because we know Jaylen Warren’s a good running back. The timing is a little weird just because Jaylen Warren’s coming off of that. Not only is it weird because it’s like a week before the season and as I just said, this has not been a point of conversation at all. We thought Jaylen Morren Steelers were happy where everything was contractually, but also the fact Jaylen Warren’s coming off of that fumble in the preeason. And that’s one of the knocks on Jaylen Warren throughout the course of his career thus far is he’s a dynamic player, one of the more efficient running backs in the league. Whenever he gets the ball, something good happens almost every time. But the ball security has been up in the air. Last year though, he definitely picked it up in that department. I think he only had one fumble the whole season. In fact, I thought the ball security rules switched for the running backs. Jaylen Warren had a fumble early on in the season. We were disappointed about that. But then he ran a tight ship and no more fumbles for the rest of the season. I think he only had one. Whereas Naji Harris, I thought he put the ball on the ground three or four times. There’s this whole conspiracy about that because the stat line isn’t going to say it. I think the stat line says NI only fumbled last one one time last year, but I swear to God, I seen him put the ball on the ground three or four different times and they didn’t even attribute the one that Russ tossed to Ny in that Eagles game and it clanged off his chest and you know we ended up losing that game. They didn’t even attribute that to NI. So it felt like as last year went on Jaylen Warren was actually taking care of the ball at a higher clip than NI and that’s what NI was known for throughout his first few years in the league. So Jaylen Warren got things on the right track there and obviously he’s a dynamic player. I thought he was the running back to keep if you’re gonna talk about between him and Ni Harris who was the guy to keep around long term for the Steelers. I said Jaylen Warren. It’s not even a debate because at some point it was going to get to that because you can’t be paying two running backs. You know what we just gave Jaylen Warren and then what Naji Harris was looking to get based on reports. But honestly, you saw what he got with the Chargers. It wasn’t that much. So, we could have afforded it. I thought it was right for us to part ways with Naji anyway, just because his ceiling was limited. You knew what you were getting from NI. We needed more playmaking. We need more explosiveness. And I just I didn’t think it was worth it anymore. I’d rather see those carries go to someone someone else, someone new, someone like a Caleb Johnson, and have him split the back field with Jaylen Warren, but make Jaylen Warren the staple for the next however many seasons. So, he was under contract for this year on that one-year deal. Now, Jaylen Warren is going to be around for 2026 and 2027 as well. It was a two-year deal that pays him over 7 million this year and includes 12 million guaranteed. This is already sounding like a steal for the Steelers. We don’t know the full details just yet. What’s exactly the total contract average per year? We know it’s 12 million guaranteed. So, if you average that out over the 2-year extension, that’s six per. Maybe the full language of the contract is, you know, it’s a two-year deal. 18 million or 20 million, who knows? Uh, but he gets a bump in pay this year. So, 7 million this year. That puts him in the range of running backs like Tony Per, he’s getting 7.2 million per year. Uh, DeAndre Swift’s at 8 million. Chuba Hubard, 8.3 million. Sounds about right. It sounds about right. And like I said, maybe with that extension, the two-year extension, maybe the average per year is higher than that 7 million. We don’t know exactly, but at least we know the guarantees is 12 million. So, my guess is there’s an out after that second year that the Steelers wouldn’t be have having to deal with too much dead cap if they wanted to move on after 2026. It’s Yeah. So, it’s really just Jaylen Warren gets a bump in pay this year. he gets an an extension, some guaranteed money for 2026 as well. But then after that, 2027, Steelers have his rights. They can move on if they want. I don’t think we will. I think Jaylen Warren’s a really good player. But again, this is just another good business move by the Steelers because Jaylen Warren’s a really good running back and we don’t know exactly if he’s going to be getting an uptick in carries, but he is the most tenured running back on the roster from a Steeler standpoint. Kenneth Gainwell has been in the league longer, but this is his first year with the Steelers. And we have higher hopes for Jaylen Warren than a Kenneth Gainwell. We know Kenneth Gainwell, he’s capped by just being a third down running back. Whereas Jaylen Warren, he’s got that Bellcow upside to him, even though I don’t think we should be doing that with Jaylen Warren because of his size and all that. And we have Caleb Johnson. There’s a reason we drafted Caleb Johnson. But Jaylen Warren, I I think we can give him the rock 25 30 times a game and you know, he’s putting up some big time numbers if we ever had to get to that point. Now, the question is, does he hold up with his size and everything? We you do have those debates, but Jaylen Warren’s the more down in down out type of back. I think that’s fair to say. Even if we you do have questions about him holding up and maybe certain limitations that Jaylen Warren has, he’s more of a feature back style than Kenneth Gainwell. So, if Warren does get that uptick in carries and touches, he makes things happen when he gets the ball. Let’s be straight up. He he does good things, bro. Like, he’s one of the more efficient running backs in the league. So, if he gets like a 100 more carries this year, he’s going to be putting up numbers where, you know, he belongs in the top 10 running back type of conversations. And if he’s going to be going into next off season without an extension, without anything done that keeps him here for 2026 and going forward, Jaylen’s going to want some money. And the Steelers would have a decision then between franchise tagging him um giving him like a big contract that would have him paid in the top 10 uh amongst all the other running backs as well. So I think you know we got this done ahead of time. Warren gets his security. We know his story coming from small schools in college then making his way to Oklahoma State being the feature running back there. Undrafted free agent running back. we pick him up and he has been the epitome of what it means to be a Steeler honestly. Just hard worker. Uh grinds it out, makes plays, does everything for the team. Good blocker, does all the dirty work, but is explosive. Is explosive and just makes things happen when he gets the ball in his hand. Like, love this move for the Steelers. Love it for Jaylen Warren, too. And win-win. That’s that’s what these type of deals are supposed to be. So, I’m happy it got done, even though no one was talking about it getting done or expecting it to get done. It looks like Jaylen Warren’s going to be around. Think you have Kenneth Gainwell only on a one-year contract this year, but Caleb Johnson, you got him for the next four seasons because he’s a rookie and you’re only paying him like 1.5 million, two million depending on the year you’re looking at with him. Combine that with Jaylen Warren’s deal. I’ll take that all day. Even though we haven’t seen Caleb Johnson just yet, we don’t have that much invested in him. We took him for a third round pick. He’s got, you know, certain money coming his way for the next four seasons, but it’s not that much. You combine that with Jaylen Warren. We got Caleb Johnson and Jaylen Warren on the books as our running back tanm for the next at least three seasons. And on a per year basis, it’s looking like it’s going to be less than 10 million bucks. Maybe 11 10 11 million bucks. Less than that. I’ll take it. I’ll take it because even though we don’t know exactly what Caleb Johnson is going to do 100% just yet, again, we we haven’t invested that much into him where you could replace him, right? But Jaylen Warren being that staple running back, being that main guy that’s a part of these running back rooms, I like because we know what Jaylen Warren is capable of. We know who Jaylen Warren is. We Jaylen Warren’s a Pittsburgh Steeler, bro. He’s a Pittsburgh Steeler. He just got to work on that ball security a little bit more. It’s not a good look that he’s, you know, this happened right after that fumble in his first carry of the preseason game. But what did we say about preseason? It’s preseason, bro. If I’m going to be saying uh that Mason Rudolph didn’t lose his job because of preseason and Skyler Thompson isn’t now QB, too, and that we should be thinking that highly about Skyler Thompson because of his preseason performance. We shouldn’t be knocking Jaylen Warren too much with that fumble in preseason. Still not a good look though because we have seen him do that in the regular season in the past. Thought he took care of it a little bit last year and and I thought it was going to be more of an afterthought, but no. No, apparently not. It’s preseason, too. Like, you’re fumbling in preeason. Come on, man. That’s the one thing you’re not supposed to do. Just stay healthy and don’t fumble it. Don’t Don’t have a bad turnover or something. Geez. Oh, man. But, uh, yeah, I really like this deal. really really like this deal. Now, you think Cam Haywards gets done? Another guy that gets his money gets taken care of. So, Jaylen Warren, Deshawn Elliott, TJ Watt, a bunch of the outside guys, Jaylen Ramsay, Jon Smith, uh DK Metaf. Does Cam get it done before week one? Does Cam get it done? It looks like O’s I mean, it looks like Cam caved a little bit here, right? He’s practicing. He’s there’s no way he’s sitting out once week one comes around. But did the Steelers do right by Cam? Do the Steelers cave a little bit and say, “You know what? You’re Cam Hayward. You know what? We’ll bump you up a little bit this year. We’ll bump you up. You’ve been a good soldier over the last couple weeks. Even though you complained to the media, it became a story. Everything’s been chill since. Here’s here’s a here’s an extra three or four million. Now you’re not as underpaid. You think that gets done? We’re a week away from the season starting, less than a week. And you know how we operate once the regular season hits and contracts, we don’t do them. So that’s the timeline for that. Uh that’s it though for this Jaylen Warren deal reaction. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. Stay chilling and peace.

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