The Ravens supposedly want someone to make an offer for him. And the Bills supposedly want him.
But the decision of tackle Jared Gaither to sign his restricted free agency isn’t the first step toward a trade.
Per a league source, Gaither signed now in order to avoid the June 15 rule that would have allowed the Ravens to reduce his tender from the first-round level for a player with three years of service ($2.396 million) to 110 percent of his 2009 base salary of $460,000.
So if he had failed to sign his tender offer by June 15, the Ravens could have dropped the offer on the table by nearly $2 million, from $2.392 million to $506,000.
Absent a trade, Gaither gives the Ravens a solid bookend to Michael Oher, helping to make Baltimore one of the strongest teams in the AFC.