It seems clear that Greg Jennings and his agent have overvalued his worth, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have suitors when he becomes a free agent. It doesn’t look like Jennings is anyone’s first option though.
There was a time when everyone thought Jennings would leave the Green Bay Packers for the Miami Dolphins. That seems pretty unlikely now. The Dolphins are hot on Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Mike Wallace, widely considered the No. 1 receiver about to hit the market.
Only a failure to land Wallace would force the Phins to turn to Jennings and there’s virtually no chance they would sign Wallace and Jennings. Wallace will cost in the $10-12 million per season range and Miami is also close to re-signing Brian Hartline, which will cost them around $7 million per season.
No team is going to invest close to one-fourth of their salary cap in receivers.
Who’s next?
The Minnesota Vikings plan on aggressively pursuing a receiver as well. Wallace is also their first target.
They’d love to pair Wallace with Percy Harvin, but that situation has its own problems. Harvin is in the final year of his rookie deal. He wants a huge contract and has also expressed a desire to be traded, so who knows if he’ll even be around.
Assuming the Vikings fail to land Wallace — and we’re just going to do that because the Vikings and failure go hand in hand — they’ll surely turn to Jennings. To be fair, another reason the Vikings probably won’t land Wallace is because the Dolphins whiffed several times last offseason (Payton Manning, Jeff Fisher) and they can’t afford to swing and miss again or their fans will revolt.
With Harvin’s future up in the air, the Vikings almost need to sign someone to play receiver. They’ll probably even be willing to overpay Jennings, although we doubt the Vikings or anyone else will come close to his $14 million asking price.
The market was clearly set when the Chiefs re-signed Dwayne Bowe a couple days ago. Bowe, who’s a year younger than Jennings and has the same number of 1,000-yard seasons (three), got five years for $56 million with $26 million guaranteed.
It would be hard to justify paying Jennings more than that, unless maybe you’re the Vikings.