Tavon Austin gets a 4 year 42 million dollar extension...

Butka is right , the price is going up , IF the Bears get caught up in this kind of stupidity . Austin doesn't deserve this contract and the Rams just did something really stupid .

With Alshon it's not about the Price tag that he will get... it's the concern of him being able to Play 16 games a year

It may have if those were 2014 and 2015 but it was 2013 and 2014 followed by and 8 or 9 game season in 2015 and seriously reduced production.  I think chuckster's post provides a pretty good answer.

"I looked up the recent top tier contracts for WR's on OTC and come away with to observations: First the top 3 or 4 WR contracts have significant injury guarantees (approx 50% of the contract is guaranteed). Second, no NFL team has given a WR a significant contract following a season where the player lost significant time due to injury."

It's tough to argue that Pace didn't do the prudent thing by offering whatever guarantees he might have based on this while AJ's agent would liked to have had him see it as you proposed  but I think we all knew that would never happen.  I think they did too which is why I believe AJ never balked at signing his tag.  The $14.6 mil was likely to be the very most he was ever gonna get this year anyway so they took it and they negotiate again next year when they hope to be in a stronger position.

From the Bears perspective I think if they have to pay him an average of a couple mil more per year and up their ante on the guaranteed money it's no big deal if they're satisfied the risk of him having chronic injury issues is low.  They'll still have the cap room to do it just as easily in 2017 as they did this year.