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No terms are known at this time, but San Diego Chargers inside linebacker Donald Butler has confirmed via Twitter that he is re-signing without testing free agency.
Feeling blessed! Y'all heard it here first! Deal is done!! SD I aint going no where!! Too excited!!
— Donald Butler (@DAButler56) February 28, 2014
This is good news for the Chargers and their fans. Just a day after Mike Silver of Pro Football Talk announced that contract talks between the two sides had stalled and that Butler felt the team was low-balling him, the Chargers have retained their "star" linebacker. The lessons here are that you should never believe anything leaked to the press during contract negotiations and that Mike Silver is usually wrong.
While Butler isn't an elite playmaker by any stretch of the imagination, he is a solid, quality player that has shown a willingness to play through injury and who has not yet reached his potential because of injuries. The Chargers are clearly banking on getting a healthy Donald Butler and presumably they have reason to be optimistic or they wouldn't have made this deal. That should leave Chargers fans feeling optimistic as well. The signing of Butler before free agency also has the benefit of solidifying what would have been a fairly large hole that might have been costly to plug.
Now, we'll just have to wait for the years and dollars to see how good of a deal this is for either side.