Patriots rumors: Mike Garafolo ‘reads between lines’ of Christian Gonzalez’s contract frustrations

The New England Patriots are still struggling to extend their best defender. Christian Gonzalez sounded off on his contract dispute with the Patriots on Wednesday after weeks of negotiations. A deal does not look any closer to being done with the regular season just a few weeks away.

NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo gave another update on the contract talks between Gonzalez and the Patriots. He expected that Devon Witherspoon’s recent contract extension would make negotiations easier.

“I thought well, that should make it easy for the Patriots and Christian Gonzalez, for both sides. There’s the number at the top of the market, we should get something done in short order,” Garafolo said on Thursday via Good Morning Football. “… Now, Christian Gonzalez talking to the media, and remember this is a soft-spoken guy… sensing the frustration when he was talking to reporters and saying that he knows his worth. Eliot Wolf, the general manager of the Patriots, said they are still willing to make him the highest-paid cornerback in the league. That’s one metric. That’s the only thing we know from both sides.”

Witherspoon reset the market with a four-year, $132 million deal. Gonzalez clearly wants a deal that is in the same ballpark, if not higher. So what’s the hold up?

Garafolo speculated that other details in New England’s proposed contract, beyond the simple value per year, must not be up to Gonzalez’s standards.

“But we don’t know the guarantees, we don’t know the cash flow, we don’t know any of this,” Garafolo added. “I can only read between the lines from what Gonzalez is saying, saying all those metrics are not there yet. And that would be a reason why, at this point, we still don’t have a deal done here. There is no deadline, but as we get closer to Week 1, you would think that both sides would want to get something done.”

Patriots fans must be hopeful that the upcoming regular season will create some urgency around the situation.

In the meantime, the Patriots have their preseason finale against the Browns on August 27th.

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