Rookie contract holdouts were supposed to be a thing of the past under the current CBA. Somebody should tell that to Fernando Mendoza and Ty Simpson.
Two first round picks from the 2026 NFL Draft are still without signed contracts as training camps close in, per CBS Sports. Every other first rounder has already put pen to paper, which puts the spotlight squarely on Mendoza and Simpson.
The rookie wage scale is designed to make these deals easy. The dollar figures are set. The years are set. The only wiggle room is on payment schedules for signing bonuses and whether salary guarantees will be offset. That is where holdups usually happen now, and both of these situations appear to be locked on those exact points.
Mendoza’s situation is interesting because his agent is well known for being aggressive on these details. Getting the signing bonus paid up front instead of split across multiple installments can be worth a real amount of money in terms of investment returns and cash flow. It is worth fighting for.
Simpson’s deal has the same underlying dynamic. The player wants full guarantees with no offsets, which would mean the team has to pay him even if he gets cut and signs elsewhere. Teams usually want offsets so they can recoup some money if a player washes out. The middle ground is where these deals live.
The bad news for both players is that training camp starts within the next three weeks. Every day they miss is a day of installation, film work, and rep building they cannot replicate later. Rookie learning curves in the NFL are already brutal. Missing camp makes them worse.
These situations almost always resolve before Week 1. The last time a first rounder actually held out into the regular season was a genuine rarity. Both sides know they have to get it done. The team needs the player. The player needs the reps and the money.
Still, the fact that any first rounders are unsigned this late in the summer is notable. About 70 percent of draftees sign within two weeks of the draft, per industry reports. Most of the remainder wraps up during minicamp or shortly after. Being unsigned in early July is the exception, not the rule.
Higher round guys are hitting camps at basically 100 percent. Makai Lemon signed his four year rookie deal back in early May, with an $11.5 million signing bonus. That is the type of quick turnaround that has become standard under the current CBA.
What happens next? Expect both Mendoza and Simpson deals to close in the next 10 days. The teams involved are not going to let this drag on into camp. The agents are not going to hold their clients out for weeks. Somebody is going to blink on the offset language.
Fans should not panic. The rookies will report. Camp will start on time. The stories will be footnotes by Week 3 of preseason. But right now, in the first week of July, there are two first round picks who have not put their signatures on a piece of paper.
That is a story worth watching, and it is a small window into how much leverage rookies actually have in a system that was designed to take almost all of it away.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
