If Joey Bosa didn’t want to be a Charger, he should have had his mom say so before the draft.

He could have won that battle. Heck, even seven out of 10 people not named Eli Manning would have at least understood.

But this?

There is principle, and then there is entitlement. There is stubbornness, and then there is futility.


Bosa and his agent crossed the line from the former sensibilities to the latter, and in the process pushed the Chargers over the edge.

The Chargers this week offered to pay Bosa 85 percent of his $17 million signing bonus in this calendar year. Bosa balked, or at least did not respond.

The Chargers pulled the offer.

“I’m highly, highly disappointed in the path we’ve had to take,” said John Spanos, Chargers president of football operations. “It’s so overly clear we had no choice. It would have been more difficult if I felt they were being reasonable. But when you’re dealing with someone who isn’t reasonable, it makes it easy.”


× Joey Bosa first practice

I’ve been talking semi-regularly to John Spanos since he was a scout and I was a beat writer a dozen years ago. He’s as even-keel as a man comes.

His voice could have shattered glass on Wednesday morning.

“I’m blown away,” Spanos said. “At all costs I wanted to avoid going down this road. They made it overly clear we had no other option.”


That Spanos is angrily speaking out doesn’t make him right. It simply shows his conviction. He’s not A.J. Smith, who did this sort of thing multiple times and relished it. This was an extraordinary step for young Spanos.

That the evidence says the Chargers have engaged in negotiations while Bosa and his agent, Brian Ayrault, have not — that is what makes Spanos right. Yes, Ayrault/Bosa has come off the offset language, but that was never going to be in play. Ayrault knew that. And, by the way, just two of this year’s other six top-seven picks do not have offset language.

The Chargers appeared for some time to have chosen a dumb hill on which to die.

Their initial offer was to pay Bosa, the third overall pick in the draft, about 60 percent of his signing bonus by Dec. 31 and the rest by mid-March. That was commensurate with what fourth pick Ezekiel Elliott got from the Dallas Cowboys but less upfront cash than what every other top-seven pick received.


You could argue it doesn’t matter how far the Chargers came up. They were low to start. Then they were slow to budge. They are sticking to a long-standing policy to insist on offset language in a contract that protects them against something that almost never happens. They’ve been taken to task in this space for some of their obstinance.

But beginning with the resumption of talks two weeks ago, the team did alter its offer. That’s called negotiating.

“What you do is you compromise,” Spanos said. “We moved and we moved and we moved. They weren’t moving.”

The team came to have the belief Bosa was in no hurry to get here. That was unacceptable.


“A player, especially a rookie, who misses all of the preseason games, he’s not going to be able to contribute the way as a player who was present the entire time and participating,” Spanos said. “So why give the same offer to someone who missed all of the preseason.”

There is no guarantee Bosa wouldn’t have two sacks and eight tackles in the season opener. But there is anecdotal evidence that rookies who miss significant time in the preseason are prone to injury and are not ready to contribute to the entirety of the playbook.

Spanos said the Bosa camp knew for 24 hours the team had moved forward for the last time and the clock was ticking.

Wednesday morning, Spanos pulled the plug on that clock.


The 85 percent is off the table. Spanos wouldn’t say what is available to Bosa.

“They know what it is,” Spanos said. “… The deal is not going to improve as time goes on.”

So now what?

“It’s up to them,” Spanos said. “We gave them the option. The ball is in their court. It is so clear. We’ve explained it so many times … We want him here, and it remains a priority to get him here.”


It might seem like pulling an offer is a strange way to show that. But dropping the hammer is sometimes the only option. Especially if someone is not moving, maybe they have to feel that hammer on their toe before they get to hopping.

Ayrault is part of the powerful CAA agency, but by all accounts he is handling Bosa’s negotiations. This should not be confused with the Chargers battling Tom Condon or Jimmy Sexton.

If we’re going to tear into the Chargers for being the only team to have not signed their first-round pick, what about wondering why Ayrault is the only agent to have turned down almost $14.5 million payable to his client in the next four months.

“It’s absolutely asinine,” Spanos said. “He would have gotten more cash in this calendar year than anyone except Carson Wentz.”


Wentz was the No.2 pick, and he is getting all but about $1 million (less than six percent) of his bonus in 2016.

The bottom line here that you can’t get around is that Bosa was going to get the bulk of his money, certainly closer to his initial ask than the Chargers’ and commensurate with the other picks his agent has cited as benchmarks.

It really doesn’t matter where the Chargers started or that they went higher than Spanos was comfortable with. But it at least indicates the Chargers were being reasonable.

Sources told the Union-Tribune’s Michael Gehlken that Ayrault recently came off his demand of 100 percent to be paid in ’16. But he hasn’t come down to a level that shows a real desire to get this done.


Good God. Does Bosa want to play in the NFL? Does he want to play for the Chargers?

One or both don’t seem to be the case.

His choice is to come in for whatever it is the Chargers are offering or sit out a season. He would lose millions when he almost certainly falls in the draft next year and also give up a year of free agency.

He really should have spoken up earlier. This dangerous game passed ill-advised a while ago. It has become petulant folly.


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