I have answered all of this in detail.
Yes. All you did was offer your own personal speculation. Time and time again, you shared what you guessed had happened.
A report not a fact, not an inside report on the negotiations. As I said likely glossed over the facts.
"Likely"? More speculation on your part, Andy.
From:
The Cruz Rules: A look inside the 'tender' options
"
The Giants can negotiate a trade with a team while Cruz is negotiating a deal with that team. That’s what the Dolphins and Patriots did in the Wes Welker trade in 2006. The Patriots were considering signing Welker to an “offer sheet” when he was a restricted free agent. Instead – and to guarantee the Dolphins wouldn’t match –
the Pats negotiated a trade. Welker then signed his RFA “tender” with the Dolphins, who agreed to trade him to the Patriots, who agreed to give him a five-year, $18.1 million deal – essentially three simultaneous transactions."
From:
How Patriots grabbed wide receiver Wes Welker from Dolphins - The Boston Globe
"From Welker's perspective, the interest from the Patriots was flattering. While some teams' views of him reflected the label with which he entered the league - a rookie free agent - he felt different on his visit to New England.
By that point, the only question was how to finalize the process. The Patriots were prepared to sign Welker to an offer sheet that included a "poison pill" that would make it difficult for the Dolphins to match. Yet in hopes of avoiding the bad blood that sometimes can accompany offer sheets - the Seahawks and Vikings recently engaged in a nasty back and forth with offensive lineman Steve Hutchinson and receiver Nate Burleson exchanging teams via offer sheets -
the Patriots instead called the Dolphins and proposed a trade.
The Dolphins were amenable, shipping Welker to the Patriots for second- and seventh-round draft choices. The Dolphins used the second-rounder (60th overall) to select Hawaii center Samson Satele, who has started all six games this season. The seventh-round pick (238th overall) yielded Abraham Wright, a linebacker from Colorado who has been inactive for every game."
From:
Miami Dolphins Revenge - Wes Welker Poison Pill
"After the 2006 season, the Dolphins offered Welker, a restricted free agent, a second round tender, with a $1.35 million one-year contract. However, the
New England Patriots suddenly came into the picture, and looked ready to snatch the wide out from the Dolphins. The Patriots were free to negotiate a contract with Welker, but Miami would have had seven days to match.
So, the Patriots were looking to add a poison pill to the deal. Essentially, New England was looking to add a stipulation stating that if Welker played a certain number of games (around 5) in the state of Florida, a huge bonus would kick in. That bonus would prevent the Dolphins from being able to match the offer, and New England would be able to sign Welker, sending a second round pick to Miami for him.
In the end, rather than officially put the poison pill into an offer,
the Patriots worked out a trade with the Dolphins, sending their 2007 second and seventh round picks to Miami for Welker."
The details of the Welker deal are known, Andy. You were right - the Patriots didn't want to deal with the bad blood of a poison pill so they chose to do something that you say Belichick knows is against the rules. THEY CONTACTED THE DOLPHINS AND WORKED OUT A TRADE FOR WES WELKER WHILE WELKER WAS AN UNSIGNED RESTRICTED FREE AGENT.
That is what went down. You can claim that it didn't happen that way, but all you have is totally baseless speculation on your part.
Only point? This is the entire debate
Not from my perspective it isn't. I wouldn't at ALL be surprised if the first call Belichick made with respect to Welker was to Welker's agent, and got the approval from Welker to move forward with negotiations. I am not of the belief that teams can just openly shop players around. Maybe others think that, but not me. But I *DO* think that they *CAN* negotiate with teams that the RFA is already negotiating a contract with. Because.... it happens regularly in real life.
I actually gave you several other examples from other teams making such deals.
Semantics?
If you are a free agent you see no difference between negotiating your own deal and letting the team shop you to whoever they want?
It's a major difference.
Right, and I've never argued the latter.
I haven't seen that repost if you wish.
I'm happy to repost it. But not only did you see it, you actually replied to it in post #1210 and #1215.
Post #1138:
Butler & Saints working towards finalizing a deal (Thread now UFC Pats Fans Event) - Cited from:
Rules Regarding Restricted Free Agents
Article 9, second 2 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (these are rules pertaining to restricted free agents, the class of player we're discussing here):
"Nothing in this Subsection shall preclude a Prior Club from entering into a Player Contract with a player subject to a Tender, and subsequently trading that player under that Player Contract to another Club,
provided that the player and the NFLPA must approve in advance any such trade that takes place during the Signing Period."
The idea of approving *in advance* is crucial, because it means that it all is worked out *ahead of time* before the signing-and-trading occurs.
You said in reply to this in post #1215: "It is about RFAs but does not address the issue at hand. For the umpteenth time this is an issue about the rights you have to players and the rules regarding trades and trade discussions not an issue about RFAs."
When, um, quite clearly, this is talking about negotiating and executing trades of players who are RFAs.
That teams cannot negotiate trading a player who is not under contract.
But obviously.... they can. Belichick himself did it.
I already posted these, but these are all just from 2010 alone.
From:
Pasquarelli: Restricted free-agent market never materialized
"
There have been four trades involving restricted free agents this spring, but a dearth of the more conventional offer sheets."
From:
Seahawks Blog | Seahawks trade Darryl Tapp for Chris Clemons, fourth-round pick | Seattle Times Newspaper
"The Seahawks have traded Darryl Tapp to the Philadelphia Eagles for linebacker Chris Clemons and a fourth-round pick. The news was first reported by Jay Glazer of FOX Sports, confirmed by Darrl Tapp and then announced by the team....Tapp was a restricted free agent....Tapp said
when he signed his one-year qualifying offer from the team, he did not know a trade was in the works. He said he planned to sign the qualifying offer regardless." (interesting that Tapp's trade was negotiated without him knowing it....)
From:
Makeover continues: Seahawks trade Sims to Lions
"The much-anticipated trade of Rob Sims by the Seahawks has finally happened, with the team confirming Monday afternoon that the veteran guard has been swapped to the Detroit Lions for a fifth-round draft pick....
Sims was a restricted free agent with a fourth-round tender offer, but he signed that $1.1 million offer sheet with the Seahawks last week in order to expedite a deal elsewhere." (so the trade was worked out in advance, and he signed the offer sheet in order to expedite the trade)
It all fits the theme that Florio cites here:
BELICHICK: PATS HAVEN'T TALKED TO PANTHERS ABOUT PEPPERS
"In a Thursday interview with WEEI radio in Boston, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said that talks have not occurred with the Panthers regarding defensive end Julius Peppers, Carolina’s franchise player.
“There’s no trade talks going on with Carolina,” Belichick said, as transcribed by Gregg Rosenthal of NBCSports.com. “They don’t have a signed contract. They can’t talk about trading a player that isn’t signed.”
But there’s no rule directly prohibiting trade talks. The prohibition comes in a roundabout way via Article XIV of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Specifically, Article XIV, Section 8(b) states that “[a] Club extending a Required Tender must, for so long as that Tender is extended, have a good faith intention to employ the player receiving the Tender at the Tender compensation level during the upcoming season.”
In other words, a team can’t apply the franchise tender to a player solely as a vehicle for trading the player. Thus, evidence that the team is trying to trade the player could provide the foundation for an argument that the team doesn’t have a good-faith intention to employ the player receiving the Tender.
Once the tender is signed (and thus no longer “extended”), the “good faith intention” requirement evaporates, and the player can be traded.
The irony here is that plenty of teams have engaged in trade talks regarding franchise players before the franchise players signed their tenders, working out the terms of the transaction with the new team while the new team works out a new contract with the franchise player. Then, once the two agreements are reached, the franchise player signs the tender, signs a new deal, and promptly is traded.
Indeed, the Pats traded safety Tebucky Jones to the Saints nearly six years ago, striking the deal before Jones had signed the franchise tender."
So Tebucky Jones, Wes Welker, Darryl Tapp, Rob Sims. You can find many, many more cases like this if you did a little homework on your own. And then we have the reports from sources saying that this is all well and good and perfectly legal (confirmed by the fact that this all happens and the NFL never has punished anyone for doing this):
From:
The Cruz Rules: A look inside the 'tender' options
"
The Giants can negotiate a trade with a team while Cruz is negotiating a deal with that team. That’s what the Dolphins and Patriots did in the Wes Welker trade in 2006."
From:
Kraft: Patriots don't intend to trade Malcolm Butler (a writer for the NFL's own official web site)
"As a restricted free agent who has yet to sign his tender, Butler could sign an offer sheet from another team, which the
Patriots would have the right to match. If they did not match such an offer, the Pats would be awarded that team's first-round pick (in the case of the
Saints it would be the No. 11 selection).
The Patriots could also work out a trade with another club like New Orleans, but such a deal could only be completed after Butler signed his tender."
So how does all this square with BB's comments? The amount of evidence that teams actually engage in trade talks regarding players who are unsigned RFAs is ENORMOUS. Whether it's directly or indirectly, with the player's permission or not (as in the case of Sims), it has happened, and does happen, in the NFL, and not once has a team ever been punished by the NFL for breaking the rules. Even Bill Belichick himself has done this.
How does it all square with Belichick's comments? Please explain without denying this mountain of evidence that this actually, you know, happens.
