Anything less than that is akin to caving and giving in to Walker, not to mention Thompson will have failed badly to get a positive return for one of the few legitimate talents on the team................................................. I think Thompson has handled the Walker situation perfectly so far but if he does decide to trade him he must make sure he gets proper value in return.
The two
blue entries of the quote don't make sense to me.If Ted Thompsons' handling of one of the few legitimate talents on his team, results in that talent threatening to retire before playing another down for said team, is an example of the situation being handled perfectly....I'm glad the FO of other teams aren't so perfect.
Just a couple of examples where I think other Front Offices have handled the talent on their team better.
The way the Steelers handled Ward.
More recently, the Bengals & Chad Johnson.
Okay, let's talk about the Walker situation for a moment, and consequently we'll talk a bit about Freeman & Grady Jackson at the same time, and McKenzie & Sharper in a round-about way.First of all, GB has a policy of not renegotiating player contracts until they have 1 year or less left on the contract. This serves a two-fold purpose. First, it allows them to manage their cap space from year to year, paying players who have earned salary increases in a regular, managed fashion.
DEN applies this philosophy also, which allows them to be one of the most adroit teams in the league at manging the cap & keeping competitive teams on the field year after year. I know some other teams do also, but I can't say with certainty so I won't try to guess. This is why precisely DEN traded Portis to WAS - he tried to hold up DEN & Shanahan with 2 years left on his rookie contract. Shanahan would have let Portis sit, but WAS made such an outrageous offer DEN couldn't say no.
Secondly, it allows them to not get held up by players after having one or two great years at the beginning or middle of an extended contract. GB renegotiated Freeman's contract right after he had consecutive 1200/12 & 1400/14 seasons, seeking to reward him handsomely for his work. How did Freeman repay GB? He came to camp out of shape & with a crappy attitude, and consequently his performance dropped by 25% in yards and 57% in TDs the next year, and continually fell each year until GB had to cut him to reduce the impact of a completely mediocre player with his huge cap number. Freeman was out of the league 2 years later, fizzling to a miserable finish.
GB also realizes that Favre's capability has inflated many WR's numbers. Look at WRs like Robert Brooks, who had a 1400/14 season and could never come anywhere close to repeating those numbers, and was out of the league 1 year after leaving GB, or Bill Schroeder who put up consecutive 1000 yd seasons (okay, one was a 999 yder) but couldn't come close to that after leaving as a FA and was out of the league 2 years later.
So, that puts GB in a position where they are trying to manage the cap effectively. Let's not lose sight that GB was a team that had won 3 consecutive NFC North championships as was 12-4 the year before when the Bears won it before 2005. They haven't had a below .500 record since 1991 before last year - when they were decimated by injuries & were relegated to starting their #4 WR and their #5 RB, yet still managed to stay in most games, losing by 7 or less 8 times. They had been to 2 SBs, winning one, and should have gone to a third if the players had been capable of preventing a completion of a 4th & 26 play vs PHI (or if the coaches had been smart enough to go for a 4th & 1 earlier when PHI was struggling stopping the running game).
I'd say GB does a pretty effective job in managing the cap (and hence cap philosophy) with that kind of continuous success. They also made some mistakes (ie Freeman) but were going to learn from them.
Now comes last year where GB is hard up against the cap but has managed their numbers very well so that they will have incredible cap space after the season. They managed their finnces so that they could pay a guy like Walker big dollars if he could repeat his
one great year of 2004 the next year. It would have been Walker's time to cash in. Walker knows GB's policy of renegotiating, just like every agent knows DEN's policy. The players will be rewarded the year before the rookie contract is up if they honor their rookie contracts up to that time & they perform very well.
So, even knowing the GB cap policy, and knowing GB was hard up against the cap last year, both Walker & Grady Jackson decided to play hard ball instead at the same time. Even though they knew GB had no cap room, they both held out to get a significant pay increase. Nevermind that it was against GB policy to renegotiate those contracts - with the lack of cap space, GB would have had to cut a few players to comply with either of those requests. Interestingly enough, both Walker & Jackson had the same agent - so their agent was really playing the two players against each other while trying to get money that just wasn't there. And the really sad thing is if they had waited just 1 year, they both probably would have been in for long term, large number salaries compensatory ith their worth at their elative positions.
Instead, they both played chicken in a game they couldn't possibly win - and sure enough, they lost.
That's why I believe that the post above from Big Score has little merit. The cap situations apparently don't play into his thinking, much less expecting players to honor the contracts they willingly signed years before, taking guaranteed money up front in the manner of a signing bonus to sign for the years they did. Walker even insisted on an extended contract, rather than the 3 years contract GB initially offered.
That's also why I don't give the jetsman's post any credibility at all. He doesn't know what he' talking about in any way, shape, or form, and GB has one hell of a lot better track record over the past 15+ years than his beloved Jets do.
Have fun.