As colleague Greg Bedard and I have previously reported, when Waters initially signed with New England last September, he and Bill Belichick had an agreement that Waters wouldn't have to take part in training camp or offseason work so that he could spend as much time as possible at home in Texas (he's a married father of five). That's not something that's going to be publicized because it is giving a veteran player special treatment.
OK, so that agreement pre-existed any discussion of restructure - ergo nothing to trade.
But New England fully expected that Waters would show up late in training camp.
Earlier in the year, Waters and the Patriots agreed to a modified contract structure but never officially signed off on it or it would appear to lower his base salary on the NFLPA site and have been reported by one of the many folks who keep tabs on that site for just that reason for this year that was to drop his base salary but offer per-game bonuses that would have put him at least to - and likely above - the $1.4 million base he originally signed for. [/b] Only he originally signed for more, $2.25M including $750K in for 2012 LTBE incentives.[/b] The expectation was he would show up late in training camp. Waters has been durable in his career, so he likely would have earned all of the money, if he were allowed to start, ask WW about how that works begging the question, why even go there with a player who missed 3 games in the last decade but New England was protected in case the 35-year old offensive lineman was injured. And a renegotiation such as that can't happen without the player agreeing to it. And had he agreed to it in writing, officially, it would have been reflected on the NFLPA site and we all would have heard about it - so that never happened. They may have talked and he may have initially seemed OK with the prospect and later realized that was a really stupid move for him to even consider even before they signed Gallery and Koppen for more base money than he was going to be getting.
