Browns safety Tashaun Gipson has returned to the team after signing a second-round restricted free agency tender. And while the one-year, $2.356 million deal is more than he ever made in three years as an undrafted free agent, he admits that he wished the Browns had applied the first-round tender, which would have paid him nearly a million more.
“I would say the most frustrating part about it was it was a possibility that I could have went somewhere else, and I felt like as a player, everyone knows the first-round tender is kind of like the ‘don’t touch’ zone,” Gipson told reporters, via a transcript distributed by the team. “For the most part, the second round is. I wouldn’t quite call it a diss. It was more so frustration that, ‘Hey, they hit me with a second-round tender,’ and it was that part about it that kind of pushed me back and said, ‘Hey, this is a business.’”
For Gipson, the gesture opened his eyes about the practical side of pro football.
“When I talked to them and they explained what the second-round tender was about, I opened my eyes and said, ‘Hey, I understand that this is a business and I’ve just got to conduct myself like a business,’” Gipson said. “I can’t be that wide-eyed undrafted rookie no more. I’ve got to conduct and understand that’s how it works.
“Was it a dis? No, because everything in this league is about business. The sooner you understand that, the easier you’ll be able to get out of your feelings. Would I have liked to be a first-round tender? Absolutely, make no mistake about it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that I wasn’t pleased, but at the end of the day, I’m here and I’m ready to play football.”
Well, he’s not exactly ready to play football. He has a hamstring injury, which has left his head coach disappointed. And it sounds like Gipson won’t be practicing at all until training camp.
“The hamstring, it’s just something that’s a little tight, something that you don’t want to further [strain], be problematic and then you’re having to rehab it and it’s something that’s lingering on after training camp,” Gipson said. “We’d rather fix the problem now, get rid of it and then get ready to train and get ready for training camp, be full go.”
Maybe Gipson understands the business of football extremely well. Maybe instead of continuing to hold out, he found a way to hold in, at least for the three-day mandatory minicamp.