Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has been urged by Rob Gronkowski to stick with his 'Tom Brady plan' and consider his team-mates when signing a contract extension.
Burrow is the latest quarterback to be in negotiations for a bumper contract extension, in an off-season where both Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson have broken records when signing new deals for the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens respectively. Burrow and Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert are the next stars in line for an extension, but the Bengals star may not demand as much as his peers.
Brady famously opted out of mammoth pay days with the New England Patriots as he ensured there was a healthy salary cap to build a solid team around him. Burrow already has a talented group at the Bengals, and Gronkowski has offered some extra advice to the 26-year-old.
After Hurts signed his new deal, many though Burrow could agree to a similar extension to become one of the highest paid players in the NFL. While his deal certainly will land him a huge pay day, his recent comments suggested that he was thinking about his team moving forward, and not just himself.
"I'm involved. That's (contract) in the works," Burrow said. "That's not really something that I like to play out in the media. Just the way I think they want to do business, I want to do business, we prefer to keep that between us.
"I'm pretty clear on what I want in the contract and what I think is best for myself and the team. So we're on the road to making that happen. Whenever you have guys on the team that need to be paid, that's always on your mind. You want that to be a focal point, so we're working to make that happen."
Brady's former team-mate Gronkowski hopes that Burrow pulls through with it, and even said to the Bengals star that it could lead to a brilliant legacy just as it did for the former Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers superstar. "Yeah 100 percent. I believe that'll set him up to be in contention to win the Super Bowl every single year," Gronkowski told Kaye Adams on the Up and Adams Show.
"He reminded me of Brady when he was coming out of college at LSU, just the way he sits back in the pocket and reads the offense. He just delivers it flawlessly to wherever he needs to deliver it.
"But with the contract he's already thinking. He wants good players around him he wants good team-mates around him and that's a great thing. I mean what's the difference?
"You're a quarterback and you're in this day and era, in this market, and you have good team-mates around you and you're building your legacy. You're going to be in Super Bowl contention and possibly win a Super Bowl.
"What's the difference between $47m and $53m when the next guy in your team is only getting paid in the $20m range? There's already that big of a difference between your pay and the next guys pay on your team so who cares?
"If you want a team around you then take a couple million dollars less which is nothing in the grand scheme for a quarterback. So I'm waiting for a quarterback to do that and kind of go down the Brady route. Not as much as the Brady route, he was taking like half! I want to see it happen but just not to that degree."
