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Maybe we should think about it this way. If it wasn't for the uncapped year. Mankins would have been an UFA. The Pats would have made their $7MM offer and some team would have given him his $8MM and he would have been long gone by now, and all our discussions would have be on who would replace him. IMHO if he comes back its a bonus.
Instead we are left with sort of an "open sore" situation and a lot of questions are still to be answered. I don't see the Pats moving much from their original offer, and I don't see Mankins coming off his "high horse". (pride coming before the fall). I agree that the best situation would be to let his agent try and make a deal with another team and then judge whether it is worth it. I don't want to see this unresolved as we go into the season. Personally I'd take a 2nd in 2011 or a first in 2012
First off, ken, Deion was under contract, Mankins isn't. Bill can't trade him now unless he signs his reduced tender. When Bill told Deions agent to shop him he was calling their bluff because other than tampering Tangini he didn't believe anyone would give that player the $9M he wanted and give us a first. Guess what, one idiot did...and lived to regret it. The Patriots offered this clown $35M...they want to retain him. The last thing they will do is tell him to shop himself for a draft pick that can't help them this season. There may not be a next season, and the player they'd get in exchange might not see the field until 2012. Remember when Reche Caldwell couldn't catch a cold down the stretch against Indy in the AFCC...he was the #1 because Deion was allowed to seek a trade for a 2007 first round draft pick. Deion would have shown up by week 10 at the latest. He did most of his best work in his career here AFTER week 10...
If not for the uncapped year the Patriots might have signed Wilfork and Brady up out of the gate and tagged Mankins... Or insulted him with a discounted early offer back in 2009. And the Saints might not have paid Evans what they did, not to mention there is no reason to believe anyone else would have set the market with Mankins.
The Pats made a mistake with Deion and they know it and learned from it. They aren't ever going to take that prove it approach again. In part because you cannot get sufficient return for the player heading into camp or pre season and because once you open that door you enable the player to shoot his way out of town via threats of arbitration. It would be different if these players were up front with the team from the get go and they could be traded in March or April and a replacement secured via FA or the draft. They didn't let Asante off the hook once that window had passed and he started squawking how he wasn't going to report, and I don't think they should or will with Mankins. He will have to sign his tender and report before they even consider persuing a trade which would have to satisfy their demands before any talk of a new team extending Mankins is even broached. They will never again empower an agent to seek a deal for a holdout because that places them in an untenable position over which they have basically ceded control.
Mankins was a RFA because his union agreed to those terms in an expiring CBA in persuit of the panacea that the uncapped season was going to being players. Only no such panacea unfolded and any team that didn't take advantage of those rules would be managed by idiots. 200 players were subjected to the same misfortune, only a handful remain unsigned further screwing themselves in the process. Foolish as they have behaved, none of them is going to hold out once the season starts. No player has held out in a decade...too much money at stake and this year the potential to be out of work involuntarily next season.
For three months Mankins was available for the price of a first and a third and no one came calling to offer him (or any of them) a market deal. He is not going to net a first now and get the $8M he thinks he's worth, either. He's also not going to sit out 10 weeks because there is a 1 in 3 chance there will be a work stoppage well into 2011 in which case he is royally screwed, a 1 in 3 chance that the union will decertify in the alternative and ownership rules will prevail for a couple of years as the league and union hash things out in court - in which case he likely remains screwed, and a 1 in 3 chance that a deal gets done in time for him to ever recoup the couple to several million he will have lost by not signing his tag or negotiating a very realistic deal this season.