I tend to agree (with BB among others) that if Peppers really wanted to be traded he'd have signed or would sign the tender (it would have made the most sense before the draft)
Seeing as I don't think there's team that could take his entire $17 million cap hit as is without some MAJOR restructuring of a great many others on the roster, Peppers would still control his destiny by agreeing or refusing to a long term, lower cap deal with another team.
Seems to me that Peppers is more than happy to take the $17 million this year and go into free agency next year. Sure there's a risk of injury. There's also insurance he can take out to cover his future earnings.
And he'll get more guaranteed in 2 years with the franchise amount and a long term contract next year than he would with just a long term contract this year.
When it was a given that we'd franchise Cassel I feared seeing this same thing happening here that we see with Carolina now - luckilly a few things broke differently here.
Bottom line, by Peppers actions I don't think he wants to be traded this year.
Not true on many levels. I explained why in my last post why signing the tender was a stupid idea no matter if the Pats were interested or not. Again, the agent for the player can negotiate a trade between teams or the player can give his team and the team trading for him permission to talk directly.
As for restructing, there were 8 teams as of April 22nd who had over $20 million in cap space.
Atlanta Falcons: $23.67 million.
Chicago Bears: $20.96 million.
Cleveland Browns: $20.27 million.
Green Bay Packers: $27.89 million.
Kansas City Chiefs: $32.3 million.
Philadelphia Eagles: $37.44 million.
San Francisco 49ers: $26.11 million.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: $35.54 million.
The following teams could have fit the tender number under the cap with only some minor adjustments or at least without MAJOR resturcturing:
Buffalo Bills: $11.82 million.
Cincinnati Bengals: $16.26 million.
Denver Broncos: $16.3 million.
Jacksonville Jaguars: $16.94 million.
Miami Dolphins: $13.19 million.
Minnesota Vikings: $17.32 million.
New York Jets: $12.62 million.
Tennessee Titans: $13.05 million.
I will give you that without knowing the terms of the contracts of a lot of these teams, I don't know if their flexibility was hindered, but none of these teams would have to free up more than $5 million to fit Peppers' tender offer under their cap. Granted they would have had to free up more room for rookies and bonuses acrued over the season as well as insurance money.
I do think Peppers absolutely wants to be traded this year. He wouldn't say publically otherwise if he didn't. Now I think he may be the victim of an inexperienced agent, a false sense of the market for him, and limiting his options right off the bat. I bet there has been far more action behind the scenes than we know, but Peppers has said that he wants to play OLB and only for one of five teams that he has chosen (granted he has backed off the five teams thing in recent weeks). That seriously limits his possibilities. I think that was more of the case than him not signing his tender or him not wanting to get traded.