By now, just about every NFL fan in America has heard the news on Julio Jones and his now infamous phone call with Shannon Sharpe on Undisputed. Later on in the day reports emerged that Julio had indeed requested a trade back in March. At that point, many claimed that the Atlanta Falcons are scrambling because they must have lost leverage in their trade discussions for the All-Pro receiver. Steve Wyche of NFL Network joined Dukes & Bell on Wednesday to say that is not the case.
"This is not going to impact (the Falcons') leverage whatsoever," Wyche told Dukes & Bell, "Because there will be competing offers when push comes to shove."
One big reason for this is that there is no real rush for the Falcons to make a deal and there will be plenty of suitors for Julio. According to Wyche, Atlanta is prepared to "take it up to training camp if they have to, or longer, to find a deal that they feel is best... It's a matter of when and how much compensation that the Falcons are going to get back."
If you are the Falcons, there's absolutely no reason to rush this process. You should be patient and let teams enter a bidding war. This is a player that has been a perennial Pro-Bowler, he has the NFL record for total yards per game over the course of his career (95.5), he is consummate professional and a great teammate. Atlanta knows what they have here and other teams do too.
The fact remains that Julio still has a pretty intimidating contract and that must be enough to dissuade teams, right?
Not true, says Wyche, "There's not just going to be one team coming after Julio. Right now we're hearing that only five or six teams have the cap space to pull this off. Cap space can be made. I live here in Los Angeles, I'm with the Rams an awful lot and I saw them with no cap space and in one fell swoop trade away Marcus Peters and Aquib Talib and then make a trade for Jalen Ramsey... don't discount anybody, especially when it's only going to cost them future picks, not players, because the Falcons don't want to take on salary."
There's no telling where Julio Jones is going to end up, and it seems like the Falcons could be content to wait for the best offer to show itself. As fans, however, we might be in for a long summer.