Geno Smith contract: Chafie Fields, the agent who wants fully-guaranteed deals
Why we should be focusing more on Geno's agent than Geno himself: 2/20/2023
On Monday, reports emerged that Daniel Jones is at an impasse in negotiations with the New York Giants because he wants $45 million per season, which as you can imagine is more than the Giants have offered. While rumors should always be treated as they deserve, Jones switching agents in recent days gives credibility to the premise that he wasn’t getting what he wanted from his previous representation at CAA.
A source told PFT’s Mike Florio that indeed the problem is that CAA wasn’t getting Jones the dollar amount he’s hopeful for and this could lead to an inevitable franchise tag at $32.4 million.
The Seattle Seahawks have to be monitoring the situation closely, just as the Giants should be doing with Geno Smith, and as both franchises are doing in the ongoing free agency tour for Derek Carr that has so far reached the Saints and Jets because Carr was released from his contract; that allows him to talk to teams ahead of official free agency in mid-March.
And of course, fans of all these teams are not excluded from obsessively monitoring each situation, knowing how closely aligned these three quarterbacks could be in value. Though Jones is still only 25, his 15 touchdown passes last season is half the amount that Geno had and their difference in rushing value may be somewhat nominal. In either case, the Seahawks and Giants are talking to quarterbacks because they’re interested in what they could do for the franchise in the next 2-3 years, not the next 20.
So I don’t think age really matters in this case. These teams believe in themselves as contenders to win the NFC in 2023.
If Jones is expecting a contract that goes above the $42.4 million average that he’d get if the Giants tagged him for the next three years (a total of $127.3 million) then it could mean that Geno Smith’s agent is not about to walk out of a meeting in Seattle having secured his client a deal that pays him the $30 million per season that so many Seahawks fans have been hopeful to hit as a ceiling.
And that’s really the person who we really need to be talking about a lot more: Not Geno Smith, but Geno’s Smith agent. That man is Chafie Fields, a former receiver at Penn State in the ‘90s and now a busy agent who represents some of the top players in both the NFL and NBA, as well as a guy who said this two years ago:
“If we play checkers or chess right now, I want to crush you. That’s just my personality. That’s who I am.”
Does that sound like an agent who is advising his most valuable football client to…”take a discount”?
While everyone else is focused on Geno this, Geno that, I’ve long been using the terminology of “Geno’s agent” when discussing Smith’s contract negotations with the Seahawks because I believe it’s important for fans to stop injecting their wildest and most optimistic dreams onto the intentions of their favorite players in ways that will only benefit the team. We do that with players. But after we all watched Jerry Maguire in 1996 and about seven times since then, we never do that when we think of agents.
Sure, it’s easy to do that with Bob Sugar.
But let’s not forget how Jerry Maguire ended. The fairy tale for agent and client is not, “Show me a discount! Show! Me! A dis-COUNT!!!!”
Jerry got Rod paid.
Chafie intends to do the same with Geno Smith. Because for Geno, winning is winning on the field. For the man he trusts to negotiate his next contract, winning is breaking the bank. We need to talk more about Chafie Fields, because that’s hardly the last quote you need to hear from the person who represents Geno Smith in negotiations with the Seattle Seahawks.
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