Freeman now top-paid running back
His rookie contract has been replaced with five-year deal that totals $41.25 million
Devonta Freeman demanded to be paid and got paid. The Atlanta Falcons agreed to terms Wednesday with their star running back on a new contract. NFL Network reported it’s a fiveyear, US$41.25-million deal with $22 million guaranteed.
This makes Freeman the highest paid running back in the NFL.
“Devonta embodies everything we are looking for in a Falcon,” Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff Jr. said in a statement, “and we are proud that he’ll be able to spend his career here in Atlanta.”
After a quiet rookie season as a fourth-round pick in 2014, Freeman broke out. He rushed for 1,056 yards in 2015 and 1,079 yards last year, scoring 11 touchdowns each season. He was named to the Pro Bowl both years. Freeman also has proved effective as a receiver out of the backfield, catching 157 passes for 1,265 yards and six scores.
The 25-year-old had 38 fewer carries in 2016 than the year before and effective second-year RB Tevin Coleman benefited by getting 31 additional carries.
That didn’t sit well with Freeman, whose agent told NFL Network five days before the Super Bowl that her client would be unhappy if the Falcons did not rip up the last year of his rookie contract and pay him far more than the $800,000 salary he was due to earn in 2017.
Freeman’s average annual salary under the new contract is $8.25 million, more than 10 times more.
Freeman tweeted Wednesday: “A young boy from the bottom. You put that work in & stay humble, you’ll be rewarded.”
He ran for a game-high 75 yards in the Super Bowl, averaging 6.8 yards per carry and scoring a touchdown in a losing effort.
n TEVAUN SMITH WAIVED: The Indianapolis Colts injury-waived Toronto’s Tevaun Smith. That means if the wide receiver clears waivers by late Thursday afternoon, he’ll revert to the Colts’ injured-reserved list. Listed officially as a “first year” NFL player, Smith is in Year 2, after spending most of his rookie season in 2016 on the Colts’ practice squad. He dressed for two games but was not targeted.
n LUCK UPDATE: Speaking of injured Colts, GM Chris Ballard told NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero “all indications” are that injured Andrew Luck will not start the regular season on the physically-unable-to-perform (PUP) list, which would prevent the QB from playing until at least Week 7. But that doesn’t mean Luck for sure will start in Week 1. Luck had off-season surgery on a partly torn labrum in his throwing shoulder. Although he is not yet practising with teammates at training camp, Luck is privately throwing on the side, rebuilding his arm strength and endurance.
n SIGH OF RELIEF: What at first was reported to be a possibly serious knee injury — and what later was feared to be a broken ankle — turned out to be only a lateral right ankle sprain for Dallas Cowboys defensive end Tyrone Crawford.
After gruesomely turning his ankle at Tuesday’s practice — when he stepped on the back of the foot of running back Ezekiel Elliott — the Windsor, Ont., native was immediately carted off. Doom sounded across social media, especially by Cowboys fans, as three other of the team’s defensive ends will sit out suspensions to start the regular season.
Numerous reports from late Tuesday to Wednesday morning said that after an MRI, the Cowboys have diagnosed Crawford’s injury as a lateral right ankle sprain — no broken bones — and that the team expects to have Crawford back in the lineup by the regular-season opener Sept. 10 vs. the New York Giants.
Crawford himself late Tuesday night tweeted a few messages in which he seemed to try to dispel the gloomy initial forecasts, including this one: “I want to thank everyone for their prayers! I’ll bounce back from this and will be out there putting in #WorkK soon!”
n LEWIS RETURNS: Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis is back to work. He returned Wednesday morning and will be with the team Friday for its first pre-season game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This after being briefly hospitalized Tuesday for a severely swollen ankle, a complication due to meds he was taking to break up a Baker’s cyst in one of his knees. The shared fear was that Lewis had a blood clot, not a cyst. “Luckily, it wasn’t as serious as things could have been,” Lewis said. “I’m glad for that.”