Came across this - good fuel for the debate:
Loss of Asante Samuel costly to Patriots
Bad return on decision
By Ron Borges | Tuesday, January 6, 2009 |
If you really want to know why your Patriots [team stats] aren’t in the playoffs, the reason was running down the sideline in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon with a football in his arm.
There, with pilfered pigskin in hand, galloped a familiar figure, Philadelphia Eagles Pro Bowl cornerback Asante Samuel [stats]. With him was a pass thrown by the Vikings’ Tarvaris Jackson, one Samuel would return 44 yards for a touchdown that helped the Eagles advance to the divisional round of the playoffs and set a postseason record for most career interception returns for touchdowns. It was a pick that came courtesy of the Patriots business model.
A little more than a year ago, the Patriots braintrust decided it was too much to pay Samuel what he could get on the open market, which was $20 million in guaranteed money as part of the six-year, $57.14 million deal the Eagles threw at him on the first day of free agency. The Pats made a similar decision the previous two years, declining to renegotiate with Samuel for a market-value contract at the time, thus having to franchise him to keep him in the 2007 lineup.
Since that time, Samuel signed with the Eagles, returned to the Pro Bowl, returned to the playoffs and returned a postseason pick for a touchdown for the fourth time in his career. The Patriots? They returned to their offseason homes in large part because they returned to the field with a string of sorry replacements for Samuel. Add all their contracts together plus the revenue from at least one home playoff game (and perhaps more) had the Patriots won one more game this year, and you could have paid most of Samuel’s salary, if not all of it.
Samuel played 2007 for the $7.79 million franchise tag figure. Add to that the estimated $2,597,980 paid to Deltha O’Neal, Jason Webster (which includes an estimated injury settlement likely reducing his vested veteran’s pay of $730,000), Lewis Sanders, Mike Richardson, Jonathan Wilhite, Terrence Wheatley and an additional $46,270 paid to the long-departed Fernando Bryant and you total a two-year expenditure for Samuel’s position of roughly $10,387,980, or about $5.2 million a year. Had Samuel’s deal been redone before 2007, it would have been cheaper than what he received a year later from the Eagles, and if it had been done two years before, it would have been far cheaper had the Patriots made that happen.
So what’s a trip to the playoffs worth? Some would say priceless, but in this case it’s easier to calculate.
According to STATS, Inc., Patriots No. 1 cornerback Ellis Hobbs [stats] tied with Arizona’s Rod Hood for most touchdown passes allowed with nine. Not far behind was O’Neal, tied for third with seven, and he was benched after the loss to Pittsburgh that was one of four defeats directly attributable to shoddy pass coverage.
That two-man total of 16 touchdown passes allowed also tied with Hood and Cardinals teammate Dominque Rodgers-Cromartie for highest cornerback tandem in the league this season. Meanwhile, Samuel allowed about the same amount of completions as Hobbs (47 completions on 90 passes defended, to Hobbs’ 46 on 84 defended), gave up nearly 200 fewer yards (594 to 762) and more importantly allowed only a third as many touchdowns (three). Samuel also broke up 24 passes to Hobbs’ 11.
If the apologists, bum kissers and FOBs still can find a way to conclude Samuel wasn’t a difference-maker worth being paid top dollar by a team that, according to NFLPA statistics, was well below this year’s salary cap, than listen to Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson.
“That’s what he’s done his whole career,” Johnson told the Philadelphia media about Samuel on Sunday night. “He has a knack for making plays like that. He’s a playmaker.”
If one wants to argue Hobbs was limping much of the year they would be right, but according to Johnson, Samuel is a playmaker under similar circumstances.
“A lot of guys wouldn’t have been out there today,” Johnson said of Samuel, who came off the field several times with a bad hip. “He’s hurt.”
Asante Samuel hurt a lot of people this season, including the Vikings on the field and the Patriots watching him at home Sunday.
