Pittsburgh Steelers face risk of losing WR Mike Wallace unless match outside tender offer-NFL News
The Pittsburgh Steelers face a possibility of losing their wide receiver, Mike Wallace, to any other team around the league after the player has been linked to drawing interests from a number of potential suitors.
Wallace is said to be unhappy over the arrangement of the first-round tender that Steelers have assigned him, and taking note of the opportunity, a number of teams have been tipped to be pursuing his signing.
The player has also been reported to skip the team’s offseason activities in protest to assigning of the tender and it remains a greater likelihood of him moving out conveniently on an offer from another side.
Steelers will have the option of matching the offer from an outside party on the tender and if they are unable to compete for financial terms of the offer, they are set to lose the player.
Given the reason that Steelers had been through the salary cap problem, which required them to release some of their veteran players including wide receiver, Hines Ward, their ability to match the offer from another party remains in question.
This was the main reason at first place that the managers had been in a fix about making a right move for the player. They did not have enough space on the pay roster to land him a new and hefty deal, which is one of the main demands from the player.
Assigning of the first-round tender was the option they had opted for despite knowing the difficulties and risks attached to it.
Wallace, a three-year veteran with the Steelers, has remained crucial member of the squad, and in view of his stature and game skills, attracting any other buyer off the market will not be very difficult for him.
Some sections of media have quoted anonymous sources disclosing the player being approached by a number of parties interested in his signing.
None of those reports have been more specific about details i.e.name and the level of interest from the prospective buyers.
However, the talk has already sent a strong message to Steelers’ management, and the team is learnt to be actively thinking of available options.
There are but a couple of options in front of Steelers.
Either, they should be willing and able to match the tender offer from an outside party and retain Wallace or they should hope that the player himself somehow decides to stay at Pittsburgh with a hope of negotiating a better deal with the managers as and
when they are able to work out an acceptable contract for him.
In case of the second option, the managers should come up with some sort of promise of offering a better and long-term deal to the player in the future, whenever they are in position to do so.
Otherwise, it looks almost impossible to retain Wallace, given that he has tremendous demand in the market and him being not in good terms with Steelers at the moment.
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