Bills, James Cook need to get deal done, ASAFP

We don’t care about who’s right and who’s wrong. We don’t care about who’s being reasonable and who’s being unreasonable.

We care about the Bills having one of their best players available, and about the player getting the contract he has earned.

That’s it. Get it done. That’s where the Bills and Cook should be. He should be signing not autographs but the last line of a new contract.

Instead, they’re engaged in a bizarre chess match. 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.

And then, after he hadn’t practiced all week, they actually wanted him to play in the preseason opener on Saturday? It feels more like the all-too-common power plays that teams are inclined to make, and not like a legitimate effort to find a middle ground with Cook and move forward in a cooperative way.

Like most teams, the Bills fear they won’t maximize dollar-for-dollar value by giving a market-level deal to a running back. They’d rather pay him $5.2 million this year, apply the franchise tag next year, and then make a decision in 2027 — after he has absorbed five seasons of NFL wear and tear.

Teams get the most valuable years of a running back’s career at a time when their compensation level is restricted by the rookie wage scale. Last year’s performances from Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, and Josh Jacobs seemed to alter the narrative regarding the interchangeable nature of the position.

And maybe it has for those rare running backs who still have high-octane gas in the tank when they finally get to the open market. It hasn’t done jack shit for the running backs who produce 1,000-yard seasons for relative peanuts in the early years of their career, thanks to the most important league-friendly aspect of the 2011 CBA.

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.

There’s another benefit to getting a deal done quickly. If they can do it by Tuesday, they’ll be able to legitimately ignore any reference to Cook’s contractual discontent in the second episode of Hard Knocks.

Like they did in the first episode.