St. Louis Rams cornerback Janoris Jenkins, taken in the second round of April's draft, is one of the 32 unsigned rookies.
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Last week, Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports reported that Jenkins was in a dispute with the Rams over a pre-draft verbal agreement that Jenkins, who has had off-field issues during his college career, would hire a business manager, specifically Lou Taylor of Tri Star Sports & Entertainment, to advise him on his finances.
Such an arrangement would impermissible under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. As such, Jenkins' representatives say the pre-draft verbal agreement with the Ramsis fictional.
"At no point before, during or after the 2012 NFL draft was there ever any promise from us to the Rams that Janoris would hire a specific financial adviser," Jenkins' agent, Malik Shareef of Dimensional Sports, said in a statement to Scout.com on Saturday.
Both Yahoo! Sports and Scout.com report that Jenkins had already hired a financial adviser, Rich DeLuca of Merrill Lynch, to oversee his new-found wealth. As the No. 39 pick in this year's draft, Jenkins' four-year contract has an expected value in the $5 million range with a signing bonus of $2,082,924.
In addition to his financial adviser, the Rams reportedly might also seek to defer a good portion of Jenkins' signing bonus, which would not violate the CBA and would be consistent with how they've handled rookie contracts in this and previous seasons.
The Rams had three picks in the top 40. According to a source with knowledge of the signed contracts for first-round defensive tackle Michael Brockers and second-round wide receiver Brian Quick, a portion of their signing bonuses, just over 25 percent for Quick and over 50 percent for Brockers, have been deferred to 2013. Given Jenkins' past, the Rams are likely looking to defer as much of his bonus as possible.