[brettbrettr]

Today the Chargers announced that Antonio Gates would not be play in week 1. He still hasn't reported/signed his tender/agreed to a deal. (His tender, by the way, is $380k for this year.) The Chargers clearly play hardball, as they did last year when they wouldn't cave to Rivers demands and he wound up not even competing for the starting job. That worked out for them...Gates, to me, seems a different situation. I'm not sure of the demands and what-not, but the guy is clearly worthy of top 3 TE $. On the one hand, the team needs to establish that one good season doesn't entitle someone a new contract. On the other, it seems Gates is far from a one-year wonder. He has all the tools and basically dominates anyone who tries ot defend him. He is clearly not a product of the system.

There are a couple of other teams doing similiar things. The Eagles, obviously, and the Bears. While I think the Eagles have all the leverage in the world and they did the right thing with TO the Bears seem to be screwing the pooch on a yearly basis. First of all, not having a viable b/u QB is most likely going to cost them another season. Worse is their failure ot get Cedric Benson into camp. They prob odn't want to pay a young RB mega-bucks considering the high risk of injury/bust, etc. But why on god's green earth did they drfat him? Did they think he'd hire Master P to negotiate his deal? I know Jerry Angelo was the "architect" of the Bucs SB team, but I think this is a case where the FO guys head's are way too big and they just don't think. In Benson's case I read the sitcking point is the legnth of the deal: He wants 5 max, they want 6. In 6 years conventional wisdom says a RB's best years are behind him. Benson and his agents aren't dumb for in insisting on 5 b/c that could very well be the only contract this guys signs in the league. The relative non-interest in S Alexander this offseason probably scares the [censored] out of these other young backs, and rightly so. (In know it was a RB rich draft, but still...) Anyway, I hear Benson is threatening to sit out this year, and reenter the draft. With Grossman going down I imagine the leverage now shifted to Benson and they'll agree to his very-[censored]-reasonable demands. But maybe, jusy maybe, if he does sit out and reenter next year everyone will wake up and realize that they should fix this system b/c, quite frankly, it sucks.

This is a league-wide problem. I don't blame any player for asking for more money when they can b/c the team can basuically cut them at any time. Sure pro-rated guarantees prevent capricious owners from cutting players they made the mistake of signing in the first place--see, Brunell, Mark and Snyder, Dan--but the fact that the only guaranteed $ is the bonus leaves open the possibility that guys, deserving or not, will ask for more $. I also think its 100% hypocritical for the league and the media to make these guys out as being greedy when really, each side is approching it from the same angle. Both teams and players worry about money. And both worry about injuries.

I'm not sure if there's a viable solution. Maybe a % of an injured players salary wouldn't count against the cap but go into some pension sort of thing for that player? Really, I'm not a lawyer, I haven't a clue. And while the business of football is somewhat interesting and creates free agent opportunities for SB contenders (see Law, Ty [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]), the contract holdouts/tags/blah blah [censored] blah is getting annoying. If the league and the players union wanted to do something to give everyone involved a better image they'd sit down and fix it.

Anyhoo, football starts in two weeks and I'm happy. This is my two weeks til football rant. In two weeks all the talk of holdouts (see Abraham, John) will be muffled by the sound of mostrous hits (see Vilma, Jonathan) and wondering whether your or not your QB will ever make it through a season (see Pennington, Chad). Thank [censored] God.

(If anyone wants in yet another 2+2 fantasy league, PM me.)