Category: NFL (Page 1282 of 1282)

Terrell Owens has arrived in camp! Terrell Owens has arrived in camp! Let us all rejoice! What’s that? You don’t care? I don’t blame you. Even if you aren’t an Eagles fan, or a T.O. fan, you should care, at least a little. In case you are not familiar with the client-stealing, wheeling-dealing, no-feeling Drew Rosenhaus, he is the agent that is trying to rewrite the rules when it comes to salary negotiations. He handles high-level talent such as Owens, Javon Walker, and Zach Thomas and has significantly increased the amount of players he represents over the past few years. His argument is simple: teams can cut a player who is under-performing his contract, why can’t a player ask to re-work his contract for more money if he is over-performing? On the surface, it seems like a fair argument. It is no wonder why players such as Walker, who had an outstanding year last year, would want to work with Rosenhaus. Why be paid the amount to which you agreed? It’s un-American.

The reason you should be paid the amount you agreed to is because it is in the collective bargaining agreement the players union and the owners signed. The CBA allows a team to cut a player at any time, but it does not allow players to re-negotiate their contracts if they feel they are underpaid. Those are the rules.

For once, I actually like to see the ownership taking a hard line stance. If the player doesn’t want to play for that amount of money, don’t let him play. T.O. can sit out the remaining six years of the seven-year, $48.97 million deal. Don’t cut him. He is scheduled to make $3.25 million this year base, plus incentives. Sitting in his living room every Sunday is not going to help him make those incentives. It might be worth paying him that much so he doesn’t sign with another team you would face twice during the season or play in the Super Bowl. He would be losing more than the incentives, he would lose endorsement deals too. As much as it would pain me to not see him in that terrible Right Guard commercial, I think I could get over it knowing that being a crybaby didn’t pay off for him. The public relations alone from this drama is going to hurt his market value. Not only did the martyr act not work, calling out quarterback Donovan McNabb probably didn’t endear him to many fans and consumers either. It would appear that Rosenhaus and Owens finally saw the light as T.O. showed up for camp Monday. They insist that they are still in talks with ownership, but they have pretty much lost all of their bargaining power. Expect to see this fizzle out like the Eagles in the playoffs every year, and be re-kindled next off-season.

One thing’s for sure about Maurice Clarett: He has balls. Not a lot of brains, presumably, but he’s got stones. He said all along that he was a first-round talent so when it came time to negotiate his contract with the Denver Broncos, who chose Clarett with the final pick in the third round of last April’s draft, Clarett elected to forgo $410,000 in guaranteed money to sign an incentive-laden deal that could net him as much as $7 million. ESPN reports that, while the details of the contract are sketchy, Clarett could hit an escalator worth more than $1 million if he rushes for 1,000 yards, and the money continues to increase along with the yardage totals. While you’ve got to admire Clarett’s desire to prove his doubters wrong and his willingness to put his money where his mouth is, this seems like an awful big risk for the former Ohio State back to take. The Broncos, as always, are loaded at running back, with Ron Dayne, Quentin Griffin and, the two backs with the best shot at starting this year, Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell. There’s no guarantee that Clarett is going to see much playing time at all this season and, while Dayne has proven he’s anything but an every-down NFL back and Anderson may not be a long-term solution, the Broncos love Bell, a 5-11 second-year back out of Oklahoma State who ran for nearly 400 yards on just 75 carries last year. Clarett obviously is confident that his skills will translate into first-round money sometime down the road, but this may very well prove to be a decision he regrets before it’s all said and done.