Operating under a 4:00 p.m. deadline, the Ravens Thursday worked out a Haynesworth-ian deal with linebacker Terrell Suggs.
Over the next six seasons, Suggs will get $63 million, $40 million of which will come in the first two years, $38 million of which will be guaranteed.
Suggs is a top tier linebacker, a gamer, a difference maker, etc, etc.
He also, probably, is not as good as Dallas’ Demarcus Ware, who is currently due for a new, probably leviathan contract. Ware is signed through 2009 currently, and he will make a relatively paltry $1.005 million for his fifth season in the league.
Ware, like Suggs, is 26 years old.
Suggs has 53 sacks over six seasons. Ware has 53.5 in just four and is widely considered one of the two best defenders in the game, the other being James Harrison. But that’s another argument for another day.
So what will this deal mean to Ware?
Blue Star
The center of the Dallas Cowboys universe.
Jerry Jones has been known on occasion to flex his check-signing hand, and, as far as that’s concerned, this upcoming deal might be the owner’s magnum opus.
It doesn’t hurt that two massive deals with top-tier defenders have been done in the last three months; nor does it hurt that one of those deals involved those despicable Redskins.
All that’s left now is the waiting. Jones has said repeatedly that he’s “optimistic” about getting a deal done and, if history is any indicator, there’s no reason to believe that he won’t.