RayClay

I missed that wording. The Patriots wanted to give Branch an extension. He didn't want one. He wanted to get out of the last year of his contract, plain and simple.

You more than anyone should know the difference. In this case, over $5 million.

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the taildragger

I'm so sick of this, but how is that any different from saying that spending a disproportionate amount of the cap on Tom and Richard will make everyone else demand bigger deals too?

Where was the mutiny when Tom got all his money?

Players implicitly understand the value totem pole on each team. If they'd shown some of their trademark creativity in the negotiations with Deion BEHIND CLOSED DOORS nobody would've known anything about caving -- instead they thought they could strongarm him because they were blind to the HIDDEN leverage (i.e. the game is played on passion and heart and nobody can be forced into playing out a contract)...it was only AFTER they made the whole thing public that they'd limited their flexibility to raise the stakes...translation: the spin campaign backfired...they tied their own hands.

branch wanted to return to this team (unlike Adam)...the team DEFINITELY wanted him to return. it went wrong folks...nothing about this turned out like either side initially wanted. this is supposed to be the best FO in the league. let's hope they learn from this pissing contest. people ignore the fact that the precedent of Deion leaving is far worse than adding another $1M to the pot would've been..we'll need a Plan B for future players who take a hardline tact, but who are still worth trying to squeeze into our value paradigm.

PatsFanInVa

Meanwhile, Brady's copy of Who Moved My Cheese is pretty much worn through from overuse.

He'll get back and get in synch w/Gabriel, Jackson, et. al. About all the "head hanging," I watched it, and I watched him, and it sounded to me like "The story tonight is that Brady is dejected and sick of his FO... mention it about 50 times and see who reads the body language the same way." I mean, it's there, but it's like if you turn off the sound and watch a tape of the game, how there is it? How about comparing it to another game, sound off?

Oh right, we haven't done that (to establish a baseline.) We're going by impressions and rehashes of those impressions and rehashes of the rehashes. I know Brady felt bad when Deion left, and either he or Sey said to the media it felt "different" from the other guys.

Well, I am no expert on negotiations, but it seemed to me someone would give him more money to play elsewhere, and his agent royally pissed off the Pats. No more Branch.

This team needs to move on, and Brady is the guy to lead them past this. He knows this. I don't know that I agree with all the hand-wringing from the Lay-Z-boy we're seeing lately. I think he needs to be in synch with his receivers, not on the couch in a shrink's office, or somewhere getting rotator cuff surgery.

Unless, of course, there's something we don't know (that's always the catch.) But it's loony to speculate on those things, without some kind of information to that effect (i.e., a rotator cuff injury, the team -- or Brady -- "hating the coach" -- etc.)

Okay, back to the blather mill,

PFnV

Miguel

The Patriots' offer would have put $4 million more in Branch's pockets this year. If that is not a redo of his contract for this year, I do not know what is.

Matt Light in the last year of his rookie contract got an extension that had the following structure - a $2.5 million signing bonus in 2004 and a $6.5 million option bonus in 2005. His 2004 salary remained the same. IMO, Matt Light's extension was a redo of his contract.



No. If you want to make up stuff, then just say it and stand by it.

I'm sure that they are not.

FWIW - I think that you are confusing cash outlay with cap hit.

FWIW, I have an degree in economics.

The first offer to Branch would have given Branch an extra $4 million this year. It seems likely that since that the Patriots have a history of bettering their first offer during negotiations if Branch had wanted to be here that he would have gotten the extra $5 million.

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Clonamery

Yes! What's done is done. Unless someone's got a time machine (I mean literally, not the drug induced mind travel many of you take regularly) and can go back several years to re-do some (it appears) personal and financial chit between the Pats and DB then can we get past the dead horse in the middle of the road whose name seems to be Conjecture.

Miguel

Hence, the question.

I have earlier postulated that Branch did not want to be here.

Thanks for the incorrect information.

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PatsFanSince74

No matter how we slice the numbers, I think it's fair to say that Branch's "Value to Tom Brady" was greater than what the Patriots perceived as Branch's "Fair Market Value." In the end, Management decided that the gap between the two Values was too great and that the precedent of meeting Deion's demands was too risky in terms of setting a precedent for the future.

The compelling, if debateable and maybe even unsettling, logic of this is that Management decided that "Value to Tom Brady" did not equate to "Value to the Team in the Long Run." By this I do NOT mean that Management is dissing Brady or throwing him under the bus, but that, in this case, they went in a very different direction than TB would have had them go and we all have the choice of either obsessing over this or moving on.

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