Please remember that If Asante injures himself badly this season, his value and future paydays drop since he only has a 1 year contract. Asante is taking substantive personal risk here.
Excellent observation. As I hear it... and maybe I am a little behind on the posts here... Asante got a
conditional guarantee.
If it's based on playing time, he's SOL, if the Pats
did want to franchise him, his darkest fear.
So whoever says a little tweak or a twinge becomes an issue didn't get the memo, or I haven't seen the latest and greatest news. It looks like they covered that base, and assigned the risk to Samuel.
I have flip flopped from "getting medieval on his buttocks," in the case of an in-season holdout scenario, to being okay with this deal.
I also liked the observation that the Pats
do "give up something to get something," as substantiated above. We love them, but they're not magicians. They're negotiators, without any more tools in the toolkit than other FOs. They are, however, very good at using the tools.
So here are the risks:
- Asante is as good as he thinks he is. Now he has a 2-year track record. Asante is right, we are wrong, he IS a special player. Then we either act like a CB is worth the kind of money he wants, or someone else will. Most likely, off he goes -- but that's a great risk to have, because it means he's in all likelihood on the way to getting that 4th Super Bowl with the rest of the team in 07.
- Asante is not as good as he thinks he is. Disaster for Asante. Not bad for the Pats, unless he really sucks. You don't have to be elite/a worldbeater/whatever to be a very valuable contributor in the Pats' secondary. He plays well enough to help the team win, but there are no magical Champ Bailey offers. Waaah. Suddenly NE doesn't look so shabby versus the free market.
- Asante gets injured. Well, this would be bad, because we might not have our answer, and even if we do, the injury itself could skew his future play. So we could slap the franchise tag on a guy who isn't all the way back... or, we could let him go... or, we could sign him to a lesser contract, if nobody else beats our offer.
But it seems like the injury risk produces a fielder's choice for the Pats; the "middling good" scenario is great for the Pats; and only the Asante Samuel, Superstar scenario is "bad" for the Pats -- but come on! You still get a SB cornerback!
In one way, the incentive is so perverse it's almost beautiful -- play your way out of "enforced loyalty." Win for us because you hate us. (An overstatement... obviously he is happy, but he wants the option to leave.)
Of course, another part of me wants to sit his happy ***** down for a game or two, come what may. But I bought that part of me a bottle of gin, and I am good with the whole thing again.
Hey do kool-aid and gin go together?
PFnV