Rival Report 5/16: Butterfly effect if Tyrann Mathieu becomes NFL's highest paid safety

The Kansas City Chiefs have an all-world safety in Eric Berry who needs to get a new contract done before July 15th, otherwise he will play on the 10.8M Franchise Tag designation. The Chiefs tagged Berry to keep him exclusively theirs and to try and negotiate a long term deal, but that tag becomes permanent for the season if no long term deal is struck by July 15th.

Now there is a new report from Ian Rappaport that the Arizona Cardinals are "Deep in Negotiations" with their own all-world safety, Tyrann Mathieu.

It's hard to overstate how much the #AZCardinals think of Honey Badger. He's a face of their franchise. His reward could come before summer

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 16, 2016

The expectation is that the Cardinals are set to make Mathieu the highest paid safety in the league, higher than the Seahawks Earl Thomas who is making 10M a year on average. This despite Mathieu recovering from a torn ACL in his right leg and already having had torn his left leg's ACL as a rookie.

This is a a lot of faith being shown by the Cardinals, and it definitely could affect the Chiefs negotiations if Mathieu's deal is completed before Eric Berry's. As great as Tyrann Mathieu is when healthy, it is awfully hard to consider him head and shoulders above Berry when he has had 2 serious knee injuries in his career already. Don't get me wrong, Mathieu is great but so is Eric Berry.

If Mathieu gets his record breaking deal, then that will make Eric Berry's price go up. The Chiefs and Berry have already been in a long term negotiation over this contract, having another reason for Berry to ask for more money is not something the Chiefs are looking forward to. They already need to get a deal done to be able to alleviate some of their cap troubles, but now there is some extra fuel to the fire with Mathieu apparently on the verge of a new high point deal himself.

Raider Nation should be watching this intently as well, because if they are lucky they will be dealing with cap ramifications from these deals too. Their first round draft pick Karl Joseph plays safety, and if he becomes a top notch player then these contracts will serve as the starting point for his salary requests.

That is a good problem to have because that means that Joseph will have become a star. Though it is entirely too early to say that will happen it, it definitely isn't too early to say that it COULD happen. If Karl Joseph were to become a star then the ripple of these contracts will affect any extensions that Joseph was to sign with the Raiders. Let's all hope we have to deal with that problem one day.

Will Tyrann Mathieu's contract talks affect Eric Berry and the Kansas City Chiefs? - Arrowhead Pride
The honey badger is looking for a new deal. Should Berry get his done first?

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Arizona, apparently not governed by injury concern, reportedly plans to prove its trust in Mathieu's knees with a massive contract extension

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