How Would a Julio Jones Holdout Affect How the NFL Does Business?

The Atlanta receiver has made waves this offseason by skipping camp and unfollowing teammates on social media. If the Falcons star decides he wants more money while he still has three years left on his contract, what kind of precedent would this set?

Like many modern relationships, the cracks between Julio Jones and the Atlanta Falcons first became public on Instagram. Jones, who has three years left on a five-year contract, skipped Atlanta’s voluntary workouts in April, and he made another bold statement that month when he deleted all of the Falcons-related posts on his Instagram account, unfollowed teammates on Twitter, and made his Twitter account private (his account has since become public again, but he still doesn’t follow any current teammates).

After that news surfaced, team officials told ESPN’s Vaughn McClure that Jones just wanted a “fresh start” on social media, and one anonymous source told McClure that Jones was trying to set an example for football players at Alabama — Jones’s alma mater — because, as he explained in a discussion with Alabama coach Nick Saban, he fears many young people don’t know who they are without social media. Still, if one of your friends erased all of the pictures of you together, would you assume things were fine?

Then, after skipping April’s voluntary workouts, Jones missed organized team activities (which are also voluntary) in May. That week, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Jones was hoping to get a “correction” to his contract and that the Falcons were open to the idea. But when asked about his absence, Jones denied that it was related to contract negotiations, telling TMZ, “It’s not even about that. Everybody wants a story right now. There’s no story to be told. I’m just working, I’m getting myself better. I’m working on myself right now, that’s all it is. There’s no bad blood between me and the team or anything like that. Just everybody on the outside looking in and try to destroy what we built there.”

At that time, head coach Dan Quinn said that Jones was in “great shape,” and that he expected Jones to be at mandatory minicamp in June. But when Jones skipped mandatory minicamp, the tune changed slightly. Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff released a vanilla statement saying that Jones had informed the team he would not be at minicamp, while Quinn was even more succinct: “Sometimes football and business intersect.”

Based on the preponderance of evidence, it seems likely that Jones’s absence from team workouts and his actions on social media are, at least in part, because he’s seeking a raise. Stars on expiring contracts skipping minicamp is a negotiating tactic as old as minicamp itself, but players finagling for new contracts with three years left on their deal is almost unheard of; the last player to do this was Kam Chancellor, who announced his retirement on Sunday. Chancellor held out for 53 days, including the first two games of the season, but returned without a new contract when the Seahawks started 0–2.

This holdout is even stranger coming from Jones, one of the quietest, least diva-like superstar receivers of the 21st century. But despite Jones’s statements to the contrary, it’s easy to see why he might be unhappy with his deal. Julio is a top-two receiver in the league in terms of talent and production, but he’s eighth in average annual salary among receivers, behind Antonio Brown, Mike Evans, DeAndre Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Jarvis Landry, A.J. Green, and Davante Adams, according to Spotrac.

Content Referenced from Danny Heifetz