Listened to Keim. I think he had 4 salient points:
1. He said that there is the possibility of a "final offer" coming from the team, but it hasn't happened yet. That would essentially be a "take it and sign the extension of play out your contract" offer. Terry could of course choose option 3 which would be to hold out into the regular season. He said some other GM told him it was "time to throw the hammer down." He didn't indicate if that was a current or former GM. I do wonder about Keim's sources are for outside of the team GMs. I'm sure he knows some of the other GMs, but the best way to get to know them is if they were here. And we haven't had a lot of good ones. I wonder sometimes if he's a little loosey goosey with "talked to a GM" and it's somebody at ESPN who was a former GM. But that's a bit of a useless digression. His point is still valid.
2. He said Terry had said he would not get on the field unless there is progress on a new deal. He said that at the Eastern Motors press conference. There doesn't seem to be progress, so Keim doesn't know what Terry will do if he's presented with a "final offer" deal.
3. Keim said he thinks the team MIGHT be willing to come up to an AAV of $28M, but he doesn't know if that would be enough to to entice McLaurin to sign. He didn't say yes or no, he said he didn't know. To me, this was maybe the most important thing he said.
4. Keim mentioned the injury and said this is something Terry has been dealing with his entire career, and asked "Is it really something that would have kept him out if there was no contract negotiation? I think, you know, you can leave that up to yourself. " He did indicate it was time Terry got onto the field and started participating if he wanted to be ready for the season:
"And um the couple things with that again, he's been at the facility working and you know, but you need to get up to speed.
You need to they play a fast-paced offense. This is the second fastest offense last year in terms of time average time between snaps. Only Dallas was faster.
So this is a you know an offense you need to be in really good shape to play now. You need to be in good shape anyway but especially with this one.
So and they need him on the field. If he wants to have the kind of season to get an even bigger deal then he needs to be on the field."
None of this is earth shattering stuff, but it reinforces a lot of the same things we've been saying.
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