DENVER -- Champ Bailey fantasized about being wined and dined as the prize of the 2011 free agent class. He dreamed about jetting across the country to be wooed and wowed.

In the end, though, the perennial Pro Bowl cornerback excused the Broncos for pulling a four-year contract offer off the table back in October and decided to stay in Denver even though he might have made more money on the open market.

"One thing I've learned, the grass ain't always greener," Bailey said Tuesday after signing a four-year deal with Denver. "I could go to an organization that looks like they're ready and then they're not ready and then I'm miserable because I'm around a lot of unfamiliar faces and in an unfamiliar place.

"I thought about that and I thought about being on the market. But all in all, it didn't really take me to forgive them. There's new people in charge up there. I know that I could have gotten something worked out. Once Josh McDaniels left, things did work out, didn't it?"

Bailey's four-year deal effectively makes him the second highest paid cornerback in football behind only Darrelle Revis of the New York Jets, a source told ESPN's senior NFL writer John Clayton.

The source indicated Bailey signed a four-year deal that could be worth between $43 million and $47 million. The contract has $22 million of guarantees. In the first year of the contract, Bailey will make $15 million, which equates to the franchise number for a cornerback in 2011.

Over the first two years of the contract, he will make $22 million, the source said.

One reason Bailey didn't test free agency, he said, was the league's labor uncertainty.