By Tom E. Curran
CSNNE.com Patriots InsiderFollow @tomecurran
What's the holdup with Nate Solder? His agent, David Dunn, has maintained radio silence throughout the negotiations, but we're getting a better idea. According to Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers overshot the amount of money they were on the hook to pay to 20th pick Adrian Clayborn. Florio writes, "Clayborn not only surpassed the total compensation pegged for him under the pick-by-pick wage formula, but Clayborn also overshot the amount allocated for (Giants draft pick Prince) Amukamara at No. 19."Florio adds that, "The Giants have more than enough money remaining after paying all other draft picks to give Amukamara more than Clayborn. By our calculations, the Giants can overshoot Amukamaras projected total value of 8.18 million by nearly 600,000. Whether they can and whether they will are two different issues, however."The Amukamara standoff is causing Liuget to wait, which in turn is causing Solder to wait."Florio says that the battle over how many years are guaranteed in these rookie deals is dead. The four guaranteed years Clayborn got at 20 and Phil Taylor ostensibly got at 21 from Cleveland makes it near impossible for the teams who drafted players ahead of them to have non-guaranteed years in their deals. Still, the Patriots have always marched to their own business sense on draft choices. They were the pretty much the only ones trying to tie up rookie first-rounders for six years until the NFL basically outlawed deals for that term. Something tells me, regardless of what the Bucs and Browns do, they'll give Solder four years guaranteed if they choose to.
Tom E. Curran can be reached at tcurran@comcastsportsnet.com. Follow Tom on Twitter at http:twitter.comtomecurran