Report: Texans could re-sign A.J. Bouye for $12 million a year
Will the Houston Texans figure out a way to re-sign A.J. Bouye?
The NFL free agency tampering period has now begun, which means teams can attempt to negoiate deals with the agents that represent the players. This means other NFL teams can start talking to A.J. Bouye’s agent, but not Bouye himself.
Teams can’t talk to players until the new NFL league year begins this Thursday at 4PM eastern time, 3PM central.
Tony Pauline of DraftAnalyst.com is hearing there’s a chance the Texans could re-sign Bouye.
"Stephon Gilmore and A.J. Bouye will set the free agent market at cornerback, and then Logan Ryan and Dre Kirkpatrick are expected to sign.There’s a feeling the Texans could re-sign Bouye at a cost near $12 million a year. Logan and Kirkpatrick will be somewhere in the $10-$11 million range."
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Texans head coach Bill O’Brien has made it clear they want Bouye back.
"“A.J. is a very important part of our team, I’ve said that all along,” Texans coach Bill O’Brien said. “He’s a guy that has really worked hard to improve his own skillset. He played very well for us this year. He played well for us last year. John Butler, our secondary coach, has done an excellent job with him.“We really want him back, and we realize that free agency and things like that. We understand the process of how it all works. Hopefully, we can get him back before free agency starts, but if it doesn’t, we’ll continue to work hard to try to get him back on our team. But we’d like to have him back.”"
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The Texans could certainly afford to pay Bouye $12 million a year, but likely no more than that due to the fact that they don’t have a lot of money to work with this offseason. And they also still need to pay some of their own free agents.
There aren’t any “great” cornerbacks in this year’s crop of free agents. There are just a lot of really good ones.
I also believe teams won’t be willing to overpay someone like Bouye who had one great year. This of course could make it easier for Houston to keep him.