Stephon Gilmore has always been a man of few words.
And even those few words are generally spoken very quietly.
Tuesday he used very few words, two in fact, to seemingly offer up a reminder of his displeasure with his current contract and where he ranks pay-wise among the top cornerbacks in the NFL.
Via his Twitter account, Gilmore responded, “Oh ok…” to a CBS Sports tweet listing the highest-paid cornerbacks in the NFL. It’s a list that didn’t include the Patriots No. 1 cornerback who is just a year removed from his Defensive Player of the Year Award.
CBS has since deleted its original tweet.
Gilmore is currently in the midst of a rather quiet contract holdout. He did not report to the Patriots three-day mandatory veteran minicamp earlier this month at Gillette Stadium.
NFL Network, among others, has reported that Gilmore simply does not plan to play for the $7 million salary he’s scheduled to earn this season, the final year of the five-year, $65 million contract that brought him to the Patriots as a free agent from the Bills back in 2017.
It’s hard to read too much into Gilmore’s two-word tweet.
But we already know he’s not happy with his contract. It’s easy to assume that seeing the list of what other so-called top cornerbacks are earning probably didn’t sit well with New England’s top defensive playmaker.
Somewhere Bill Belichick and the rest of the Patriots front office are enjoying the down time on the NFL calendar in advance of training camp in late July. Gilmore’s contract is the biggest question facing the team other than the QB competition.
If Belichick and others had forgotten about the issue while enjoying a little fun in the sun, Gilmore seemingly sent out a social media reminder on Tuesday.
Stay tuned.