I want to pay him as little as possible.
DUH.
The way you win championships is by paying people less money than the fair market value of their talent. Whoever underpays the most, wins.
Here is your problem, this is simply not the case. Its not about underpaying your talent, its about getting the best talent you can while remaining under the cap. Paying Reche the full amount of his contract will not hinder the Pat's from putting together the best team they can, so there is no need to cut him or force a restructuring of his deal. They still have plenty of room under the cap, if they were in a bad cap situation and only had a little money to work with it would still not make sense to worry about Reche's deal sinceas people keep pointing out there are numerous other players you would deal with first. The new CBA has allowed the team be be much more flexible in how it can go after players as we have seen this off season, and it's time for us to change how we look at the Pat's handling of player contracts to be more congruent with the actual league environment.
That being said I understand that some people are still hurting after the loss to the Colts last year, thats a game we should have won but didn't. It's not fair to blame one guy so much more than everyone else though, when there are probably 25 plays and 15 players that could be singled out as being at fault in the second half collapse. Reche was one of the heroes of last season, without Reche that team doesn't make it nearly as far as they did. The Pat's system is difficult and a lot of receivers can't handle the demands it places on them, but Reche stepped up after the receiver situation fell apart in the off season and became Brady's favorite target. If its so easy to do what he did, then why didnt Doug Gabriel catch on? Why didnt Troy Brown become the go to guy and catch 60 balls? Why didn't they just pick up some other guy off the street at the beginning of the season and have him catch 60 balls? Obviously there are reasons for all of these things but the fact remains that what Reche did was very impressive, especially considering that teams must have been game planning around him. Keep in mind that no one cought 60 cought balls in either 2004 or 2003, and that Reche had the least help of any Patriots reciever since Troy Brown in 2001. If it were a matter of just forcing the ball to whoever was on the field regardless of their ability to play in the offense and get open then why didn't anyone else on the team get the same number of catches? Clealy Reche was able to make plays more regularly than any other reciever and his stats for last season reflect that.
It was a good catch.
My grandmother would have made it though and she would have stayed in bounds.
Most nfl receivers can make that catch.. but i'm sure that will be shot down since this is turning into the "Reche Caldwell is the greatest patriot receiver ever" thread.
This is the biggest bunch of bull and you either know it or are completely dillusional. That was a great catch on a ball that was not thrown particularly well while under good coverage. Reche made a GREAT play here under a ton of pressure and to write it off as an easy catch makes it look like you don't care if your arguments are true or not so long as you present them as fact. You know there was this other poster who used to do that all the time that pissed a lot of people off, what was his name? I can't quite remember...
As for people who challenge his toughness, please watch this to refresh your memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkyNVrwg1gk , and remember that he was back on the field right after that happened. That is not a guy who plays scared. Sometimes its smarter to avoid hits and duck out of bounds and get back on the field for the next play than to fight for two more yards. Considering how much Branch used to drop straight to the ground after every catch I find it hard to believe that this is really a big deal and not just people trying to demonize a guy for no good reason.
In short, yes Reche blew it in the AFCCG, but a collapse that huge does not happen because of one player. If you want to start cutting people because you can't trust them after that game then you won't have much of a team left because there weren't many players that were blameless in that loss. Add to that the fact that the Pat's are in good standing in regard to the cap and at this time there is no reason to believe that Reche will be cut or forced to renegotiate his contract.
