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Pros and Cons of the Colts possibly giving Michael Pittman Jr. a huge contract

The Indianapolis Colts have an important contract decision to make on their leading receiver from the last few years, Michael Pittman Jr.

By Daniel Davis

Houston Texans v Indianapolis Colts
Houston Texans v Indianapolis Colts / Michael Hickey/GettyImages
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The Cons of giving Michael Pittman Jr. a long-term contract

Pittman will garner upwards of $15 million per year

Chris Ballard has taken the philosophy of building through the draft and largely leaving free agency alone. While I've expressed my gripes about this in the past, one thing he is smart about is not getting into player-friendly deals. Remember the Ndamukong Suh deal with Miami or even Deshaun Watson’s current deal? These deals are very player-friendly and the teams are taking a massive risk of providing these contracts.

Chris Ballard doesn't make deals like this and as he's said multiple times, the deal has to make sense for the team and for the player. To me, Pittman is a top 10 receiver in the NFL and the Colts would do right by him to pay him what he is worth. This doesn't mean Ballard will make that deal and being as Ballard likes to go young and make team-friendly deals, it's unlikely Pittman will settle in the prime of his career for anything less than top-10 pay.

Colts will have to pay big deals to future players

As mentioned before, the NFL is a business first and entertainment second. Chris Ballard is very good at looking in the future and preparing for it. Teams like New Orleans during the Drew Brees era were constantly in a fight with the salary cap. The Colts have largely avoided this by looking to the future and predicting the deals.

The way things are going, Josh Downs will need big money and so will Anthony Richardson. Jonathan Taylor was a big holdout and Indy has a lot of other players who will garner bigger deals to stay in Indy such as Kenny Moore II, Grover Stewart, Julian Blackmon, and Zack Moss. Expiring next year are players like Ryan Kelly, DeForest Buckner, Zaire Franklin, E.J Speed, and a host of other key players to the team. Will the Colts get into a long-term deal with a young receiver? Like everything with the NFL, we will wait and see until after the Super Bowl and into free agency it seems.

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