What Barkevious Mingo’s Browns contract might look like

Barkevious Mingo hasn’t signed a deal with the Browns just yet, even as he was on hand for the new sign to be placed on what will now be known as FirstEnergy stadium. With the new collective bargaining agreement and rookie wage slotting, it’s only a matter of time before Mingo’s deal gets done. Still, as some people in front of Mingo and also behind him in the first round have signed, I was curious what his deal might look like.

First up, let’s look at the deal that Ezekiel Ansah signed as the fifth pick in the draft for the Detroit Lions. Ansah got four years and a nice signing bonus of nearly $12 million.

Johnathan Cooper, the seventh pick to the Cardinals, has not signed a deal yet, but Tavon Austin has. Austin was the 8th pick to the St. Louis Rams. His deal included $7.653 million in signing bonuses. I guessed on what the salaries looked like per year because that information wasn’t available yet, but this should give you an idea.

Lastly, the guy who was drafted 6th overall a year prior was the Dallas Cowboys’ Morris Claiborne. He received a $10.629 million signing bonus and I believe his contract looked something like this, although I couldn’t verify his first year salary.

So knowing all that, let’s go ahead and put a guesstimate together of what Barkevious Mingo’s contract might look like, assuming Joe Banner and company conform to some of the convention that we’ve shown above. First things first, Justin Blackmon got $18.5 million in the 5th spot last year and Ansah got $18.59 million a year later. Using that logic, if Claiborne received $16.23 million, then Mingo could get somewhere in the ballpark of $16.4 if we’re estimating on the high side? Let’s apply the same logic to the signing bonus and assume that Mingo will get a slight bump to $10.7 million in signing bonus. If Banner complies with common convention, you’re left with something approximating this.

So, we’ll have to see if Banner tries to get cute and front load the contract even more while the Browns have cap space, or if he’s content to just let the pretty reasonable rookie wage scale do its stuff as-is. As it stands today, Daryl Ruiter reported a few days ago that Mingo wasn’t “sweating” the deal and is assuming it will get done in time for training camp.

Regardless of where, exactly, the numbers fall out, that’s at least comforting. In more ways than one, nobody ever wants to have another Brady Quinn situation again.