Gamblers only share their wins and bitch about their ‘bad beats’. Terry, if that is his gamble, is staring down the barrel of a major league bad beat. AP is sitting back quietly while holding pocket aces.
I agree that is how it looks right now in general. However, this offense with its receiving talent level - the OL has a chance to be very good, but it's also very early.
A lot of regimes in the last few years, including the 9ers, they blinked in this scenario when the season started poorly - often with a young QB or a QB on an expiring contract. I could see that logic being spoonfed by a greedy agent. I just wonder how AP and ownership would respond to a couple of early losses where it honestly does look like Terry's skillset is missed (I could see that happening, but as with all early season games, it's so unclear).
My issue, if I'm AP, is I look at the full situation beyond the above:
1) Other contracts, other holdouts
2) to me, most importantly: the potential to pay and then have him go down with injury due to poor preparation and conditioning. I am sure they have the numbers but I feel like this may be the highest likelihood with the McLaurin type of player than almost any other.
So, I get that AP and the team don't want to shut off negotiations and seem unreasonable, that's important. I just really dislike the idea of caving in the regular season. Even if you are losing games, I would tend not to pay him and would possibly start dropping the original offer. Not sure I would take an upgrade off of the table, but I would make it clear your value to the team is diminishing. I don't have time to put a lot of thought into it though, and I am sure AP has analyzed so many more sides to this.