The reasons Joey Bosa haven’t signed boil down to the timing of his payouts, and a couple of million dollars that won’t even come into play unless they cut him in 2019 and someone else signs him. This stuff is standard practice for draft picks this high; the Chargers have a team policy against it.
The Chargers also have a history of being petty as fuck, and a knack for shooting themselves in the dick by going public when every other team can handle this stuff professionally.
Here’s Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman:
In speaking to people around the NFL, I’ve rarely seen such a unanimity on two fronts: 1) Bosa’s rookie year is over, and 2) the Chargers are screwing this up.
I cannot stress this enough. Every team I speak to thinks the Chargers are ruining Bosa. They are laughing at the Chargers. Laughing at them.
“This is very Chargers,” said one general manager.
(There is an entire blog to be written about this idea, held uniquely to the NFL, that a top prospect can lose an entire season because he missed a few weeks of training camp. Really? Playbooks are complicated, but you don’t think you could plug in a ridiculously talented young DE in late August, or even in midseason, and he could contribute? “Gosh, we can’t play him unless he gets three preseason games, it’ll ruin his development!” NFL GMs will break omerta to bash the Chargers but even they won’t cross the bridge of NFL exceptionalism.)
That was a long parenthetical, sorry. The Chargers are butt.