The Buffalo Bills and James Cook don't have a contract yet.
The weirdest development came Saturday, when the Bills apparently wanted Cook to play in their preseason opener after he had sat out practice all week as a hold-in.
It's been odd from the start. Cook practiced at the opening of training camp but then decided partway through to change his tune.
"They’re engaged in a bizarre chess match," writes Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio. "Cook showed up and participated in the early stages of training camp. It didn’t get a deal done. He stopped practicing eight days ago, without claiming to be injured but by admitting it was a business decision. It hasn’t gotten a deal done."
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Florio writes that in the perfect world for the Bills, they'd pay Cook his $5.2 million salary this year, then the franchise tag next year, then worry about his contract after that.
Clearly, that wouldn't be Cook's favorite outcome.
And Florio, in quite the irate writing style, sides wholeheartedly with Cook:
The Bills have a choice. They can milk the rookie wage scale and do what they had hoped to do with Cook, or they can recognize that, if they want to win a Super Bowl, it makes sense to take care of one of their best players, even if they currently don’t “have” to.
The tension is obvious. The team has to choose between pursuing its goal of winning a championship and placating the land of collusion in which they reside.
Other teams won’t want them to pay Cook. The Management Council won’t want them to pay Cook. The Bills should want to pay Cook.
In the end, it’s not about what Cook wants. It’s about what he won’t refuse. The Bills should make him an offer we won’t refuse. And then they should be careful to properly re-acclimate him to the game before he risks injury.
Florio is right.
The Bills' path to a Super Bowl includes Cook in the backfield. He's coming off the most efficient season of his NFL career.
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Buffalo showed last season it can mix up the RB rotation with Ray Davis and Ty Johnson, too, a pair of players who are also still in town. But Cook is the top dog.
There's still almost a month before the regular season starts, but this has been an odd saga from the moment Cook made it publicly known he wants $15 million per year.
This could end a number of ways, but there's only one way for it to end that gives the Bills their best chance to win a Super Bowl, and that's to get a contract done.
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