Browns Alex Mack reportedly will sign 5-year offer sheet with Jaguars

Dec 16, 2012; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Browns center Alex Mack (55) during a game against the Washington Redskins at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Washington won 38-21. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

According to reports, Cleveland Browns center Alex Mack will sign a 5-year offer sheet with the Jacksonville Jaguars.  When that happens, the Browns will have 5 days to decide if they match it.  The numbers have not been released yet, but the Browns have been pretty adamant that there is almost no deal they would not match to keep Mack in Cleveland.

Short of an offer so massive that it would do more harm than good to keep Mack, it seems as one of a few things happened.  Mack is basically hoping the Browns just decide out of the goodness of their hearts that they will just decide not to match and let Mack go to Jacksonville.  More likely, he expects the Jaguars to trade for his rights or the structure of the deal is such that the Browns will not match.

It is also possible that Mack really has made peace with the fact he will be in Cleveland and wanted to maximize his value in free agent money.  Reports have suggested Mack wants to out, but it is not entirely clear how much that is really the case and how much that is speculative.  It may have been a way for him to play up his value and hope for a bite from another team; one he got from the Jaguars.  In that event, he gets the best 5-year deal he could find and is not overly concerned with where he plays it out.

The bottom line with Mack is that he wants to win.  And if the Browns win, he will be happy to play here.  Joe Banner is gone, so unless he has issues with Ray Farmer, the slate is more or less clean.  The problem is that for Mack and many other players, they see this as ‘here we go again’ and they are never going to win on a consistent basis.  There was some thought that Mack would sign the transition tag for the $10 million and change, play out the deal and see if the Browns proved things were going to change or that he would simply leave.

In any case, any anger at Mack is silly.  He has been a fantastic representative of the team, never missed a snap, and played at a high level.  Mack would be a good fit in a zone blocking scheme and while some may have issues with parts of his game, he is a good player.  He also has never been arrested.  This idea that Mack does not want to be here, so screw him is so bizarre when fans will embrace felons, repeated legal and drug offenders without issue as long as they produce.  The business side of football is not always pretty, but Alex Mack is the type of player you want to keep in Cleveland and you want him to want to play here.