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Bedard has confirmed with multiple league sources the initial report by Ross Tucker that the Patriots designated his release as due to failure to disclose. It's a new designation agreed to as part of the CBA which now allows teams to persue recovery of all or portions of signing bonus money under certain conditions. Under the old CBA an arbitration case involving Bronco's receiver Ashlie Lelie precluded that. And it was tough for Atlanta to even recover part of Vick's bonus money (after they had converted chunks of salary into signing bonus for cap purposes prior to his indictment). That is also why signing bonus money started to disappear in favor of guaranteed money for a time, because the teams could put stipulations in the deals that voided the guarantees. The new CBA was altered to allow for limited recovery of signing bonus, which is advance payment on service in most contracts. The recovery limits are for situations where a player lies or somehow withholds services or is unavailable to a team due to suspension or incarceration or NFI.
Still, persuing it in this instance will be a tough sell to an arbitrator. He practiced here during OTA's and was cleared to and practiced the first 5 days of camp and his knee is injured and it may be arthritis has set in. Welcome to the NFL. A scope may fix it for a time, or it may continue to get worse. Unless they can prove he knew he had arthritis (and it was diagnosed and documented privately prior to last March) and was aware they didn't and he didn't disclose it you have no case. They are probably hoping he is willing to settle and avoid the hassle of being dragged through the mud in arbitration to the tune of keeping the $2.5M in hand and foregoing the $1.35M that was deferred. They're playing hardball with a contract/player who disappointed them and who perhaps they discovered six months after the fact they didn't really need.
And there is also the news that the league may be banning the use of Toradol, which is the kind of thing older players with increasingly chronic aches and pains as well as acute injury used routinely in the past to play through them. And that too may alter some teams roster and contract decisions going forward.
Still, persuing it in this instance will be a tough sell to an arbitrator. He practiced here during OTA's and was cleared to and practiced the first 5 days of camp and his knee is injured and it may be arthritis has set in. Welcome to the NFL. A scope may fix it for a time, or it may continue to get worse. Unless they can prove he knew he had arthritis (and it was diagnosed and documented privately prior to last March) and was aware they didn't and he didn't disclose it you have no case. They are probably hoping he is willing to settle and avoid the hassle of being dragged through the mud in arbitration to the tune of keeping the $2.5M in hand and foregoing the $1.35M that was deferred. They're playing hardball with a contract/player who disappointed them and who perhaps they discovered six months after the fact they didn't really need.
And there is also the news that the league may be banning the use of Toradol, which is the kind of thing older players with increasingly chronic aches and pains as well as acute injury used routinely in the past to play through them. And that too may alter some teams roster and contract decisions going forward.
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