SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady

[PatsFanSince74]

Don't shoot the messenger!

SI just posted this about 30 minutes ago.

"I find it interesting that New England has chosen to go down a road that runs the risk of irritating the most important player in franchise history. By not yet entering into serious contract negotiations with Tom Brady -- "


Patriots need to step messing around with Tom Brady - Ross Tucker - SI.com

 

[BradyManny]

Re: SI on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

As stated in other threads - the Colts and Manning have not yet begun discussions (per Polian interview just last week) and there is no sign of a Brees-Saints extension in the making.

It's all about the CBA. It's kind of ridiculous that the media has focused in on Brady and the Pats, but to be expected. We've become that franchise that ignites an irrational and inexplicable hatred in the rest of the nation. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that the Patriots are America, and the rest of football nation is Jihadist fundamentalists. Whatever sells papers and gets webpage hits...

 

[Fixit]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

He sure doesn't seem like he's annoyed.

 

[Leave No Doubt]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Don't shoot the messenger!

SI just posted this about 30 minutes ago.

"I find it interesting that New England has chosen to go down a road that runs the risk of irritating the most important player in franchise history. By not yet entering into serious contract negotiations with Tom Brady -- "


Patriots need to step messing around with Tom Brady - Ross Tucker - SI.com

Too funny. I like how he suggests that BB may have too much on his plate to deal with Brady's contract right now. According to SI it seems BB doesn't realize how important Brady is:cool3:

 

[Section103]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Quote: Brady's recent non-denial comments only seemed to confirm that all is not well as he enters the last year of his current contract. "I don't really want to talk about it a whole lot, because there's nothing anyone can solve, other than the team and myself ...,'' Brady said. "Things happen, some are out of your control. You just gotta go with the flow.''
Read More: Patriots need to step messing around with Tom Brady - Ross Tucker - SI.com

This is quite a reach to indicate that this means there is a disconnect. The Pats don't talk publicly about contracts and it's obvious that Brady doesn't comment either. I don't recall that he ever did in the past either. This sounds like a very responsible and understanding response. He essentially said "it's between me and the team. There's stuff to figure out. 'you gotta go with the flow.'"

That sounds pretty relaxed to me. What's funny is that this is all speculation created by media members. Brady nor his agent have released a statement. One guy started this by saying that things must be going horriblely and that there is some sort of turmoil. None of the parties involved have indicated that to be the case. Some have just assumed.

I can't fathom Brady reacting negatively in any way over a contract. I can't imagine the Pats not looking to get something done. Kraft has even said that it will happen. I am not the least bit worried about this. This is a complete joke. I am surprised it came from Ross Tucker. It's as if he was assigned a specific view point and told to write a story from it.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

The strange thing is that, for a while, Tucker was a Patriot. . . .

 

[Rob0729]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Why doesn't Tucker find it interesting that just yesterday Bill Polian said he hasn't started to negotiate with Peyton Manning because of the uncertainty of the labor situation? Why are the Pats getting all the negative attention when it is Polian doing all the talking about not negotiating with his All World Franchise QB?

 

[BSR]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Wow. How can the football season be so dead that they literally have to create story lines from thin air? This must be the dullest offseason I can remember for sometime. This puts the whole Favre-watch from the past few years into perspective. I am now wondering how much of it was Favre and how much of it was the media creating a story.

I have zero concern about the Patriots signing Brady. Zero.

 

[Deus Irae]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Why doesn't Tucker find it interesting that just yesterday Bill Polian said he hasn't started to negotiate with Peyton Manning because of the uncertainty of the labor situation? Why are the Pats getting all the negative attention when it is Polian doing all the talking about not negotiating with his All World Franchise QB?

Probably because the Colts are on record as saying that Manning will become the NFL's highest paid player and the Patriots (Kraft) gave an answer that was far more equivocal.

 

[PatsWSB47]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Probably because the Colts are on record as saying that Manning will become the NFL's highest paid player and the Patriots (Kraft) gave an answer that was far more equivocal.

I dunno, tell your creditors the check is in the mail and see how meaningful that is to them

 

[Rob0729]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Probably because the Colts are on record as saying that Manning will become the NFL's highest paid player and the Patriots (Kraft) gave an answer that was far more equivocal.

That was right after the Super Bowl and everything Polian has been saying since has been counter to that. Ask all the Jets who were promised new deals that have been frustrated and many eventually cut, traded, or walked.

Everything Kraft has said is how important Brady is to the team and how he expects him to spend his entire career here. It is obvious that Kraft values Brady enough to pay him even if he hasn't said he would pay him the most money for a QB. The thing is the media chooses to ignore these statements and only focus on his statements that there are a lot of uncertainty with the cap and labor eventhough the quotes were not related to Brady in particular.

 

[eagle eye]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

This is all coming from the Boston mediots.

Only a couple of weeks ago Kraft said:

"We're very lucky to have him as our quarterback and we want him to be our quarterback for a long time into the future. Everything he represents is pretty special. He's a winner. We're privileged to have him a part of the New England Patriots organization."

Patriots owner Robert Kraft: Team working to keep QB Tom Brady with long-term deal - The Huddle: Football News from the NFL - USATODAY.com

 

[Rob0729]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Here's what Polian said on Sirius NFL Radio yesterday:

"It's always difficult to do in that you are talking about astronomical numbers," Polian said. "That said, the more difficult part of it is not knowing what the labor situation will be going forward. That's the hard part. Because you don't know that a contract that you would do today would fit under the system tomorrow. So that's where you've got to be not only creative but clairvoyant. And I'm not clairvoyant."

So should teams like the Colts play the waiting game?

"I don't think you play the waiting game," Polian said. "I think what you do is cover as much ground as you can, both conceptually, in form, in the the way you're gonna deal with the various parts of the contract and then hope to get as much information as time goes on as possible so that when you get to the last throes of it you're able to be able to just plug the numbers in, in the sense that you've covered lots of ground beforehand. That's our objective, both Tom Condon and myself going forward. So we'll have those conversations, and we'll cover a lot of ground. . . .

"The further we get toward next March, probably the more we'll know about how the labor situation shapes up."

When it comes to paying Peyton, Colts hide behind labor uncertainty | ProFootballTalk.com

If this is the strategy of the Colts, why is it so hard to believe that almost all teams with elite players in their final year of their contracts are in the same boat.

The Patriots have never said they won't pay Brady his market value. They have never made any indication that they will give him a lowball offer or tell him to take it or leave it. The Pats are approaching Brady the same way the Colts are approaching Manning.

 

[Mangold74]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

That was right after the Super Bowl and everything Polian has been saying since has been counter to that. Ask all the Jets who were promised new deals that have been frustrated and many eventually cut, traded, or walked.

Everything Kraft has said is how important Brady is to the team and how he expects him to spend his entire career here. It is obvious that Kraft values Brady enough to pay him even if he hasn't said he would pay him the most money for a QB. The thing is the media chooses to ignore these statements and only focus on his statements that there are a lot of uncertainty with the cap and labor eventhough the quotes were not related to Brady in particular.

The media needs to sell magazines and get hits on their websites. They don't care if what they write is inaccurate since it's just speculation. I'm sure that the Saints, Colts and Pats would love to make sure that Brees, Peyton and Brady finish their careers with their current teams. The CBA issues make giving out a new long term contract extremely difficult.

The media does the same thing with the Jets, I'm sure Tannenbaum would love to get Revis, Mangold, Harris and Brick locked up with new long term deals but the CBA makes it extremely tough. The media wants to blame the teams for being cheap, the players for being greedy but the real blame goes to the uncapped year and all the nonsense that was attached to it.

 

[Rob0729]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

This is all coming from the Boston mediots.

Only a couple of weeks ago Kraft said:

Patriots owner Robert Kraft: Team working to keep QB Tom Brady with long-term deal - The Huddle: Football News from the NFL - USATODAY.com

Can't you see this as clear translation:

"Brady take the crappy, below market offer we give you or we will franchise you."

 

[MassPats38]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Tucker speculates based on Silver's speculation derived from the comments of one "close" to Brady. Brady's non-response implies nothing, unless he has previously been open about contract negotiations. That has not been the case in the past, so Tucker appears as clueless as the other writers, even more so as he takes a shot at the organization as "messing" with him. His piece would be more informative if he offered it as what it is - a theory on why the extension with Brady has not been done to date.

 

[Rob0729]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

The media needs to sell magazines and get hits on their websites. They don't care if what they write is inaccurate since it's just speculation. I'm sure that the Saints, Colts and Pats would love to make sure that Brees, Peyton and Brady finish their careers with their current teams. The CBA issues make giving out a new long term contract extremely difficult.

The media does the same thing with the Jets, I'm sure Tannenbaum would love to get Revis, Mangold, Harris and Brick locked up with new long term deals but the CBA makes it extremely tough. The media wants to blame the teams for being cheap, the players for being greedy but the real blame goes to the uncapped year and all the nonsense that was attached to it.

The one difference with at least Revis is that the Jets did state publically that giving him a new deal was a top priority and he is frustrated with their offers so far which based on rumored contracts are well below his value. But overall I agree with you.

 

[TBradyOwnsYou]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

THIS JUST IN:
Tom Brady was heard on the phone talking to his wife back in California and he said:

I miss you

PROOF that he is planning to leave the Patriots and move to California because he hates Belichick and Kraft and every player on the team and he hates football!!!!

 

[Deus Irae]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

That was right after the Super Bowl and everything Polian has been saying since has been counter to that. Ask all the Jets who were promised new deals that have been frustrated and many eventually cut, traded, or walked.

1.) Nothing Polian has said has been counter to that (at least, nothing that I've read on the subject)

2.) The Jets and their players are not the Colts and Peyton Manning.

Everything Kraft has said is how important Brady is to the team and how he expects him to spend his entire career here. It is obvious that Kraft values Brady enough to pay him even if he hasn't said he would pay him the most money for a QB. The thing is the media chooses to ignore these statements and only focus on his statements that there are a lot of uncertainty with the cap and labor eventhough the quotes were not related to Brady in particular.

Seymour
Law
Samuel
etc...

All "important to the team", etc...

The fact is that the Patriots have a history of screwing around with their top players, and/or ending up underpaying/being difficult when money becomes involved. It wasn't that long ago (2008) that Moss was reportedly getting annoyed with the free agent negotiations, for that matter, and the same happened with Wilfork, until the Patriots finally got that deal done. The Colts don't really have that sort of history with Manning. Now, you can bag on the media all you want, but that's not going to change the reality, and it's not just the media that views the Patriots in this light. It's not something that happens with every deal, but it happens often enough that it gets noticed. Hell, we've had at least one thread on an agent's angle regarding this sort of thing in the recent past:

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-patriots/messageboard/10/336962-kinda-cool-agent-alvin-keels-says-ne-toughest-negotiate.html

The griping about the "disconnect" storyline is just another example of Patriots fans getting their manties in a bunch over something that they are generally proud of, just because the media has portrayed it from a different angle than the one that Patriots fans brag about. Patriots fans love to crow about how the Patriots will only pay so much, will not let players throw off the salary system, expect top players to take a little less, etc.... But, when the media notes that and spins it as "cheap" or "difficult" or some other less than 100% flattering phraseology, the Patriots fans lose their freakin' minds.

 

[eagle eye]

Re: SI Today on "disconnect" between Pats and Brady.

Can't you see this as clear translation:

"Brady take the crappy, below market offer we give you or we will franchise you."

No I can't but I'm sure some mediot with his editor sticking his pen up his ass could make that out alright.