T.J. Hockenson's New Deal: Nothing Is Ever What It Seems

It's not the most earth-shattering news, but the reporting around T.J. Hockenson's new deal gives us reason to re-evaluate how we consume reporting around NFL contracts and negotiations.

Photo by Jorge Lemus/NurPhoto via Getty Images

T.J. Hockenson signed a new deal with the Minnesota Vikings, which was something that was probably an inevitability but framed as a precarious what-if.

As we got closer to the deal, much of the reporting suggested that we were actually getting further away from seeing the two sides come to an agreement.

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I argued that this was actually a sign that the two sides might be close to an agreement in my appearance on the Viking Age Podcast, recorded yesterday and released moments before the Hockenson deal was announced.

That’s counterintuitive, but it’s worth figuring out why we would hear about a report that the two sides are “far apart” and the additional detail about Hockenson’s goals.

Essentially only two parties can credibly leak contract negotiation details to a reporter: the team and the player (or, more precisely, his agent).

We don’t know which party communicated with reporters about the state of the deal, but figuring out who benefits from the characterization “Hockenson wants to reset the market” gives us a bit of a clue — the team wanted to tamp down Hockenson’s leverage.

Having that knowledge (or suggestion of knowledge) also lets us speculate on a little bit more. Why would a team go public about the state of negotiations?

Teams rarely begin the negotiating process with public pressure. Players sometimes do, but teams often begin their public negotiation process when they want to put pressure on players to get over the end stage of the process or when they want to prepare fans for disappointment and win the narrative before it begins.

Here, I made the guess that it was the first situation rather than the second — in part because the team had already signed Josh Oliver to a $13 million deal and couldn't credibly negotiate with Hockenson for a deal worth the same or even less. He was always going to get at least $15 million per year.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the Kyle Rudolph deal in 2019. In May, Pro Football Talk reported that the Vikings and Rudolph were far apart on a deal — that talks “weren’t going anywhere.”

They also reported that the Vikings offered what looked like an extremely generous deal. One that Rudolph turned down.

The Vikings, according to the source, have offered Rudolph a five-year extension, which would give Rudolph a new-money average among the highest paid tight ends in the league. That extension also would, presumably, reduce Rudolph’s current cap number of $7.625 million.

The source adds that the Vikings have not asked Rudolph to take a pay cut in 2018, the final year of his current deal.

Three weeks later, they signed a deal. That deal, worth just north of $9 million a year, was top-five among tight ends when it was signed. It was also only 4.8% of the cap — less than the deal he signed in 2014 and among active tight ends closer to top ten rather than top five.

Teams leak this information to make the player look bad for turning a deal down. But teams aren’t the only ones who try to control the narrative.

After the paywall, we can talk about how initial reporting on a player deal will always mislead you.