Stefon Diggs deal prompts very different initial…

Getty Images

The Bills did what they needed to do, finally giving receiver Stefon Diggs a new contract, more than two years after trading for him. As always, the value of that new contract won’t be known until the actual contract emerges.

We know this routine by now; we’ve been banging that drum for well over a decade. The agent texts basic details to the cabal of reporters who are perpetually plugged into Twitter, and they then engage in a thumb sprint to see who can get it posted FIRST!

The truth is usually the victim. The agent has every reason to push a trumped-up value of the deal, since it helps the agent’s efforts to attract new clients. The player benefits from having the phony numbers out there, because it bumps him up higher on the various lists of highest-paid players at the position. The reporters, who regard this dynamic as an occupational hazard, don’t ask questions about whether the numbers are real, because he who hesitates has lost.

The truth in these matters takes its time. The contracts have to be posted to the databases that allow the real numbers to be gathered by those who then publish them. Far more often than not, the deal isn’t worth as much as was reported, either literally or as a practical matter.

With Diggs, there’s a different twist. Two of the first reports, from competing infobots, are at odds. Adam Schefter of ESPN calls it a four-year, $104 million extension. Ian Rapoport dubs it a four-year, $96 million extension, with more available in incentives. The difference, on a per-year basis, is significant. Diggs will get either $26 million per year in new money (Schefter’s version) or $24 million per year in new money (Rapoport’s version).

Schefter also calls it, from signing, a six-year, $124.1 million deal. So how real is that contract? As always, the full details will reveal the truth. (Case in point — the Bills recently gave Von Miller a six-year, $120 million contract. It is in reality a three-year, $52.5 million deal.)

Here’s the best example, in the context of highest-paid receivers, of why it’s important to wait for the details before assessing the true value of a contract. Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill‘s contract continues to be touted as a deal with a new-money average of $30 million per year. To get to that number, however, the Dolphins added a phony final season with a total compensation package of $45 million. That makes the extension worth not $30 million per year but $25 million.

Or, in other words, halfway between the two competing versions of the value of the new money in the Diggs deal. Until, of course, the full contract can be properly evaluated. It will be as soon as the numbers are available. By then, it will be too last to get many to care about the truth.