Devin McCourty’s New Deal is Sneaky Good
Patriots Nation all poured themselves an extra Old Fashioned late Sunday night, as stud free safety Devin McCourty agreed to a last-minute offer from New England to re-sign after receiving offers from the Philadelphia Eagles, Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants, and presumably just about every other team not located in Seattle. NESN reported at 11:31pm that McCourty confirmed his re-signing on CSNNE’s “Sports Sunday”, and if you were like most Pats fans that gritted their teeth through losing or trading players like Ty Law, Willie McGinest, and even Wes Welker because the team wouldn’t commit the extra dough, Devin McCourty’s glowing description of his new deal will be sweet, sweet music to your ears:
“We had certain benchmarks and number that I felt got that done,” McCourty said. “It was never going to be about ‘just do whatever the highest price.’ You want to be happy, and you want to win. We felt we had an opportunity at all of those places for ways to win, but obviously being in New England for five years, there’s no kind of mystery or question. I know we can win here, we’ve already done it, so that’s where they came in first in that category.
“Financially, they stepped up and hit all the numbers that I wanted. I think that’s what mattered, what was going to make me happy.”
The deal is reportedly for a whopping $47.5 million over 5 years, with $28.5 million guaranteed. And the most impressive part of it, as football sage and former Patriot linebacker Matt Chatham pointed out on his excellent blog Football by Football (which you should read if you would like to become smarter), is that second number – McCourty’s guaranteed salary.
Chatham astutely notes that Devin McCourty isn’t setting the bar in overall potential contract value for safeties. Jairus Byrd of the New Orleans Saints and Eric Berry of the Kansas City Chiefs both have him beat in that department, as their contracts have values of $54,000,000 and $50,044,300,respectively. Fun fact – Earl Thomas is actually at #6 on that list, below the likes of beard enthusiast Eric Weddle and penalty enthusiast Dashon Goldson.
In terms of the money that’s guaranteed to be flowing into Devin McCourty’s bank account, though, he’s head and shoulders above his fellow safeties. Devin’s deal is guaranteed for $28.5 million, which beats Jairus Byrd’s guarantee by over $2,000,000, and Earl Thomas’s guarantee by almost $3,000,000.
Looks a lot different with all those zeroes on paper, am I right?
If that’s what a hometown discount looks like, sign us up. Devin McCourty now has a town that loves him, a coach that knows how to use him, a team that has punched their ticket to the playoffs literally every year he’s been here, and, most importantly, he’s finally raking in the dough like you’d expect one of Pro Football Focus’s best defensive backs would.