Former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland sat down with CBS’ Face The Nation on Sunday to discuss his surprising retirement from the NFL and the implications surrounding his decision. A smaller consequence and topic of discussion related to his departure is what he should do with his signing bonus from the team.
Borland received $617,436 as a signing bonus from the Niners along with his four-year-contract, earning one year with his fantastic rookie season. If he just kept the bonus, the total would count against the team’s salary cap and they’d basically have to eat it for the next three years. Lucky for the team, that won’t be the case:
Chris Borland said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” he would willingly hand back part of the signing bonus he received last season…
Borland has told those close to him that he was not interested in the money. If he were, he never would have retired from the NFL.
“The 49ers drafted me assuming I wanted to play more than one year,” Borland said on “CBS This Morning” last week. “At the time, I did, too. Things changed. They didn’t deserve to be undercut. And I didn’t want that to happen.”(via)
Former #49ers LB Chris Borland, now retired, told CBS’ “Face The Nation” that he’s returning 3/4 of his $617,436 signing bonus to the team.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 22, 2015
The 49ers have no addressed the comments at this time, but the implication here is that Borland is returning $436,077 of his bonus to the team voluntarily. It seems fair, adding another punctuation mark on a decision that seems to have people either putting up their defenses or rallying the populace.
Personally, I think it’s just cool that he made a positive decision that felt right to him and seems dead set on sticking with it. We’ll just have to wait and see if the team feels the same.
(Via Ian Rapoport / Niners Nation / CBS / Sac Bee)
