Hometown discounts are one thing. Unfair advantages are something else. Houston general manager Charley Casserly believes he knows the difference. Casserly was among several teams pursuing Patriots guard Stephen Neal and he thought the Texans had a good chance of landing him. Then the negotiations ended before they ever started, and Casserly smelled a rat. Neal is represented by Jonathan Hurst, an associate whose office address and phone number are the same as his employer, longtime agent Neil Cornrich. Cornrich is under a one-year suspension by the Players Association for using NFLPA information against the estate of the late Derrick Thomas in a wrongful death suit following the auto accident that took Thomas's life. He has long been closely associated with Patriots coach Bill Belichick, once boasting on his website that he was Belichick's agent and acknowledging that he did work as his attorney. Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri fired Cornrich after Cornrich's suspension and said he was ''going with someone in Neil's office." That was Hurst, but Vinatieri turned to Gary Uberstine (Willie McGinest's agent) after having doubts that Hurst was considering all the options available to him. It seemed to Vinatieri that Hurst was pushing him back to New England. Whether Hurst was or not, Vinatieri told people in Green Bay he feared that was the case. After two weeks of getting nowhere, Uberstine was hired, and less than a week later, he had Vinatieri signed to the fattest contract for a kicker in NFL history. With that as background, Casserly grew suspicious of the legitimacy of Neal's free agency after Hurst canceled a meeting with the Texans. According to Casserly, Hurst told him, ''It's just not going to work out." Casserly asked how it could since the team had yet to meet with Neal or make a formal offer. When Hurst refused to bring Neal to Houston, Casserly said he was going to call the player directly. ''I left a message on his cellphone," Casserly said. ''I don't know if he got it or not. I never got to talk to Steve. But our offer was a signing bonus between $5 million and $6 million. It probably would have ended up at $5.5 million. The average of the [four-year] deal would have been $3 million a season, including the signing bonus. Go look what they signed him for." The Patriots signed Neal to a four-year contract worth $10.5 million that included a signing bonus of $3.2 million and base salaries of $600,000 in 2006, $1.7 million in '07, $2.1 million in '08, and $2.5 million in '09. The contract includes four yearly workout bonuses of $106,160. The bigger point, in Casserly's mind, was that such deals usually end up being only two-year contracts before they're renegotiated or the player is terminated. If that happens, Neal's deal will bring him a total in bonuses and salary of $5.7 million from the Patriots, only $200,000 more than his signing bonus alone would have been in Houston. ''You figure out what happened," Casserly said. ''He was never really a free agent. It was all just for show." Whatever it was, it was a good deal for the Patriots, who signed Neal to a deal roughly $1.5 million less than he would have received in Houston.
