The Buffalo Bills suffered a big loss on Monday morning as running back Nyheim Hines suffered a torn ACL and was declared out for the season.
The on-field impact of such an injury is apparent, but off the field, the fallout is already getting messy. With Hines' injury occurring in a non-football related jet ski accident, he and the team are now in a dispute over the financial implications of said injury. Hines' agent Ed Wasielewski took to Twitter to comment on the injury in not-so-subtle fashion.
"Adversity reveals character," Wasielewski wrote. "Everyone has a choice to treat others with respect and dignity. It’s revealing when an employee is injured to see how a company takes care of its own. I will continue to believe that people will do the right thing when bad things happen to their own."
Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio revealed more specific details regarding the situation. By default, Hines' base salary of $2.56 million is now gone after the injury. Where it gets murky is whether Hines owes the team money, and how much money if so.
Earlier this offseason, Hines agreed to a revised contract worth $9 million over two years, including a $1 million signing bonus. According to Florio, Hines has already received $600,000 of that signing bonus, but the Bills are proposing to withhold the remaining $400,000, as well as a $100,00 workout bonus they gave Hines over the offseason. The Bills are willing to pay Hines $289,000, matching the highest amount they can pay a practice squad player, but the situation gets dicey if he declines this option.
"If Hines doesn’t accept the offer to give up $500,000 in earned bonus money and to receive $289,000, the Bills will: (1) keep the $500,000; and (2) potentially pursue the $1.5 million signing bonus allocation for 2023 from Hines’s prior contract with the Colts," Florio writes. "While it could be difficult for the Bills to collect signing-bonus money paid by another team on a contract that was superseded after Hines was traded from the Colts to the Bills, Hines runs the risk of facing that argument — and losing on it — if this ends up in a formal grievance."
On the other hand, there's also the possibility of Hines winning his grievance and keeping both of the aforementioned payments. Hines' could point to how his signing bonus addendum doesn't prohibit jet skiing, as well as the fact that his vehicle was not moving at the time of the accident.
Hines gave the Bills an unforgettable moment in Week 18 last season, returning two kickoffs for touchdowns in the wake of Damar Hamlin's injury. Now, though, his relationship with the team may be fractured due to this financial spat.
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