Almost every team in the NFL has to deal with a situation like this. A situation where a veteran player who has been performing reasonably well wants a new contract before their old one is even up. Sure, it’s easy to say ‘honor the contract’ and move on from any further negotiations until the initial contract is about to retire, but the NFL is much more complicated than that.
Players know their worth. And when they outperform their contracts, they would like to be compensated based off of that. Teams can cut players whenever they want without thinking twice about honoring the commitment — so players should be able to make their case for wanting a pay raise before their contract is officially up as well.