Today In Patriots History March 25, 1998: Pats refuse to match Jets offer for Curtis Martin

Happy 28th birthday to Trysten Hill
Born March 25, 1998 in Lee, Florida
Patriot defensive tackle, 2023-2024; uniform #97
Signed to the practice squad on October 24, 2023
Pats résumé: two seasons, three games


Trysten Hill entered the league in 2019 as an undrafted rookie from the University of Central Florida. He spent most of 2023 on the practice squad, and was released on October 10, 2024. In between he was elevated to the active roster three times, appearing in one game in 2023 and two in 2024. All told he was on the field for 16 snaps on defense with the Pats, plus one on special teams.

In memory of Chuck Weber, who would have turned 96 today
Born March 25, 1930 in Philadelphia
Died October 23, 2017 at the age of 87
Patriots DL coach (1964), DB coach (1965-66), DB coach/DC/asst HC (1967)
Pats résumé: four seasons on Mike Holovak's Boston Patriots coaching staff


Born in Philadelphia, Chuck Weber excelled as a multi-position player at West Chester State Teachers College, where he was named a Little All-American guard and co-captained the football team while also competing in wrestling. After serving two years in the Marines, Weber's professional playing career began in 1955 when he joined the Cleveland Browns as an undrafted defensive end and linebacker. He appeared in 81 regular-season games over seven NFL seasons, starting 43, with the Browns (1955–1956), Chicago Cardinals (1956–1958), and Philadelphia Eagles (1959–1961), recording 10 interceptions, 6 fumble recoveries (one for a touchdown), and 2½ sacks. He contributed to NFL Championship victories with the Browns in 1955 and the Eagles in 1960. His most notable season came in 1960 with the Eagles, where he led the team with six interceptions - including three in a single game against the Dallas Cowboys - all while playing with broken ribs.

After retiring as a player in 1961, Weber transitioned to coaching, beginning at his alma mater Abington (PA) High School, before entering the NFL in 1964. He coached for 21 years with multiple teams, including the Boston Patriots at the age of 35 (1964–1967), San Diego Chargers (1968–1969 and 1982–1985), Cincinnati Bengals (1970–1975), St. Louis Cardinals (1976–1977), Cleveland Browns (1978–1979), and Baltimore Colts (1980–1981), serving as defensive backfield coach, linebackers coach and defensive coordinator.

Happy 32nd birthday to Glenn Gronkowski
Born March 25, 1993 in Buffalo
Patriot fullback, 2016 practice squad; uniform #47
Signed as a rookie free agent to the practice squad on October 1, 2016
Pats résumé: one season on the practice squad, plus another full offseason and training camp


Gronk’s younger brother was a second team All-Big 12 at Kansas State, and first team Academic All-Big 12 in 2015. The Bills signed him as an undrafted rookie and he made the 53-man roster. Buffalo cut him the day after a week one loss to Baltimore, replacing him with Jerome Felton in a move to insure the veteran’s contract was not guaranteed.

A week later the Patriots worked out Gronkowski and several other players, and eventually signed him to the Practice Squad on October 1. Glenn won the Pats 2016 Ventrone Award, signed to the Practice Squad four times and released three times over the course of the season. The Patriots signed him to a futures contract on February 14; he was waived at the end of camp on September 2, 2017. No other team signed him after that, meaning his NFL career consisted of one game.


The primary fullback all three seasons of his career, earning three-straight All-Big 12 honors... Played in 39 career games with 20 starts... Averaged 24.6 yards on 15 career receptions, the highest average in school history among players with 15 or more catches... Of his 15 career catches, nine went for at least 15 yards... Helped K-State earn a 23-16 record and three bowl berths in his three-year career.





Jan 28, 2017:
He was first signed to the scout team on Oct. 1 and released on Oct. 12. That was a sign of things to come. This season, Gronkowski was involved with seven different transactions with the Patriots. After being released twice in November, the fullback was brought back on Dec. 2.


Jan 31, 2017:


Feb 14, 2017:


Aug 14, 2017:


Aug 15, 2017:

1977: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performs at the Music Hall in Boston for the last final night of The Lawsuit Drags On Tour. I have a story about a sweet young lady from Illinois that was going to Wellesley College at the time and this concert, but this is the wrong forum for that memory.




1942: The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was born in Memphis, Tennessee.



1947: Reginald Dwight, aka Elton John, was born in 1947. Also on this date in 2007 he set the record for the most performances at New York's Madison Square Garden when he played there for the 60th time -- on his 60th birthday.


1948: Rock singer-songwriter-guitarist Michael Stanley is born in Cleveland.


1955: The movie Blackboard Jungle is released, giving new exposure to the song "Rock Around The Clock," which is featured in the film. A few months later, Bill Haley and His Comets' song becomes the first ever #1 rock song. The movie is remembered for its innovative use of rock and roll in its soundtrack, for casting grown adults as high school teens, and for the unique breakout role of a black cast member, film icon Sidney Poitier, as a rebellious yet musically talented student.


1956: Bo Diddley recorded Who Do You Love.


1956: Hugo Burnham, drummer for Gang of Four, is born in London.


1957: Elvis Presley buys the Graceland Mansion in Memphis for $102,500.


1958: Having been sworn in as Private 53310761 the previous day Elvis Presley received the regulation short back and sides haircut from army barber James Peterson. Presley would earn $78 per month as an army private.


1960: In Nashville, Roy Orbison records Only The Lonely, his first big hit.


1961: Elvis Presley performs live at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena in a benefit for the USS Arizona Memorial; his return to the concert stage after a stint in the US Army raises $60K and worldwide awareness of the project. This would be Elvis's last live show for nearly eight years.


1963: Johnny Cash records Ring of Fire, a song co-written by his friend and collaborator June Carter that was first recorded by her sister Anita. The song becomes one of his biggest hits, and June marries Johnny five years later. Cash claimed he had a dream where he heard the song accompanied by 'Mexican trumpets'. It became the biggest hit of his career, staying at #1 on the US charts for seven weeks.


1966: At a photo session at Bob Whitaker's studio in London, The Beatles posed in white coats using sides of meat with mutilated and butchered dolls for the cover of their next American album, Yesterday and Today. After advance copies were sent to disc jockeys and record reviewers, negative reaction to the cover photo was so strong that Capitol Records recalled 750,000 copies from distributors to replace the cover. The total cost to Capitol to replace the cover and promotional materials was $250,000, wiping out their initial profit.


1966: Blues-rock guitarist and singer Jeff Healey was born in Toronto. He lost his sight to retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eyes when he was eight months old, resulting in his eyes being surgically removed. Healey played guitar with the instrument flat on his lap, fretting it from above. With his Jeff Healey Band, he had a hit in 1988 with Angel Eyes.


1967: The Who and Cream made their U.S. concert debut at RKO 58th Street Theatre, New York City as part of a rock & roll extravaganza promoted by DJ Murray the K.


1967: How is the weather? Bright and sunny for The Turtles, who hit #1 in the US with "Happy Together." If you have an open mind and off-center sense of humor, check out Frank Zappa's Fillmore East - June 1971 album, specifically Happy Together and the two songs preceding it, performed by former Turtles members Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman and Jim Pons.


1968: After 58 episodes, the final Monkees TV show aired on NBC in the United States, concluding the show's two-season run. Titled The Frodis Caper, it's a very sci-fi episode directed by Micky Dolenz. It opens with the band waking up to Good Morning Good Morning by The Beatles, one of the first uses of a Beatles song in a non-Beatles production.



1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono began the first of their two “Beds-in For Peace” protests, beginning with a week-long stint in The Amsterdam Hilton’s Presidential Suite, where they answered questions from the press and promoted world peace.


1969: Judy Garland plays her last concert at the Falkoner Centret in Copenhagen, Denmark; she dies three months later at the age of 47.


1970: Band of Gypsys, a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience is released.


1972: Deep Purple's album Machine Head is released in America. Most of it was recorded in their hotel after the Montreux Casino, where they planned to record it, burned down, a story told in the song "Smoke On The Water." The album starts off with the iconic song Highway Star, while side two is considered to be one of the best sides of an album in rock/metal history: Smoke On The Water, Lazy and Space Truckin'.


1975: Linda Ronstadt releases her cover of the Everly Brothers' 1960 song When Will I Be Loved.


1976: Jackson Browne's first wife, Phyllis, dies by suicide less than a year after they were married. She suffered from depression that got particularly acute after giving birth to their son in 1973.


1983: Motown Records celebrated its 25th anniversary with Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, a televised concert from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California. The event, which featured performances by some of the label’s most iconic groups, included a one-off reunion by Diana Ross & The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Martha Reeves, Jr. Walker, The Commodores, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and The Jackson 5. Michael Jackson stole the show with a performance of Billie Jean which featured him doing his famous “moonwalk” dance routine. A lowlight is no mention of the label's house band, The Funk Brothers. Bass player James Jamerson, who played on many of the hits performed that evening, has to buy his own ticket. He dies a few months later.


1983: INXS play in America for the first time, performing at The Spirit Club in San Diego to a crowd of 24 people. In May, they play to a more substantial crowd when they're on the bill at the US Festival.


1985: Prince won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score for the film Purple Rain. Even without the movie, Purple Rain is regularly called one of the greatest albums in music history, but as a soundtrack, it is even more highly praised.


1986: Guns N’ Roses, which had initially been formed less than twelve months earlier, signed a worldwide deal with Geffen Records. This came after turning down a more lucrative offer from Chrysalis Records, which wanted to alter their image. The band has now sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, their 1987 debut album, Appetite For Destruction has sold in excess of 28 million copies worldwide.


1995: Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder was rescued after a riptide dragged him 250 feet offshore in New Zealand.


1997: Sixteen days after he was shot and killed, The Notorious B.I.G.'s released second and final studio album, Life After Death is released. It features the singles Hypnotize, Mo Money Mo Problems, Sky's the Limit, and Going Back to Cali.


1999: 73-year-old Country music singer Ray Price was arrested in his Texas home for possession of marijuana. He was fined $200 after pleading no contest to the charges. According to Price in a 2008 interview, old friend Willie Nelson -- no stranger to marijuana arrests -- phoned and told him he'd just earned $5 million in free publicity with the drug bust.


2000: *NSYNC set a new world record after selling a million tickets in one day for the group's forthcoming tour, netting them over $42 million.


2000: Former Bay City Rollers drummer Derek Longmuir was given 300 hours of community service after being caught with a hoard of child pornography including 150 videos and 73 floppy disks. Despite his guilty plea, he maintained that the offending materials did not belong to him and he had been framed by an obsessed American fan with discs having been sent to his home anonymously days before he was arrested.


2001: The first Britney Spears Pepsi TV commercial was aired on US television. Spears had signed a multi-million dollar deal with Pepsi for her forthcoming world tour.


2003: Linkin Park release Meteora, the follow-up to their smash debut, Hybrid Theory. The nu-metal album features the singles Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Numb, From the Inside, and Breaking the Habit.


2005: Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Osbourne were forced to flee their Buckinghamshire mansion after a blaze broke out as they slept. Ozzy and his wife were roused by a fire alarm and ran to safety in the garden, rescuing their pets as they escaped.


2006: Country musician, singer, songwriter and band leader Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens, Jr. died at the age of 66. One of the most successful American singer-songwriters ever, he had 21 No. 1 country songs in the ‘60s and ‘70s with his band the Buckaroos. Beginning in 1969, Owens co-hosted the TV series Hee Haw with Roy Clark, and remained there until 1986.



2016: The Rolling Stones perform a free outdoor concert at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana sports complex, in Havana, Cuba, before an estimated crowd of 500,000.


2022: Drummer Taylor Hawkins dies at age 50 while on tour with the Foo Fighters in Columbia. Hawkins drummed for Canadian singers Sass Jordan and Alanis Morrissette before joining Foo Fighters in 1997, sharing vocals with David Grohl.



2024: Homes belonging to Sean "Diddy" Combs are searched by federal authorities amid allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, against the rap singer and producer.

Kraft was really stupid not to give a HOF caliber RB a contract before he hit free agency during a time when RB were really important, but what Parcells did was sleazy. The league should have never allowed the poison pill to go through. It set a bad precedent that they had to correct later.

It ultimately bit the Jets on the arse later because I am not sure Kraft would have poached Belichick the way he did because he might have respected Belichick’s contract with the Jets and Belichick’s succession agreement he made with them.

TheRainMaker said:

There is where I disagree. He was a meh athlete. Granted the Pats OL wasn't very good run blockers, but he was dead to rights if the blocking wasn't there ala Sony Michel in 2019. He wasn't much of a shake and bake guy rather running in a straight line. There was a 7 game stretch where he was getting stifled consistently averaging 2.3 yards per carry. It was bad. He had his best game in a blowout loss against the Rams. 49ers was good game, but then stuffed again against NY and Jacksonville in the Wild Card game. With that said, Pats make the playoffs in 1999 with Robert Edwards running the football. Terry Allen and Kevin Faulk were awful.

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It has been a long time, good call on the event that caused the injury. Beyond that you are a harsh grader. Edwards was a very effective running back who gained over 1,100 yards as a rookie. If he had remained healthy, he would have made the loss of Martin much easier to deal with.

Stu Pidassle said:

It has been a long time, good call on the event that caused the injury. Beyond that you are a harsh grader. Edwards was a very effective running back who gained over 1,100 yards as a rookie. If he had remained healthy, he would have made the loss of Martin much easier to deal with.

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The Pats dynasty began three years after Martin left. That made things much easier for me.

I still can't believe that Tuna is in the Pats HOF after the crap he pulled.

PATSYLICIOUS said:

Didn’t the jets put a poison pill in the offer?

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It’s jogging my old man memory quite a bit here, but IIRC not only did they put in a poison pill but wasn’t this the original poison pill?

XLIX said:

It’s jogging my old man memory quite a bit here, but IIRC not only did they put in a poison pill but wasn’t this the original poison pill?

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If I recall correctly, yes. I looked but I couldn't find anything like this happening previously.

A little more on it here:
It was a five-year, $28 million contract with a club option for a sixth year that would bring the total to $36 million, but what made it unusual was Martin's ability to void the deal after one year. It also included a clause that prohibited the team from using the franchise tag, meaning he could be unrestricted after one year.

It was too risky for the Patriots to match because they faced the prospect of losing him after a year (perhaps to the Jets) and receiving nothing -- no draft picks. The Jets leveraged that insecurity. It was a classic poison pill.

The Patriots complained to the NFL management council, insisting the offer sheet violated the collective bargaining agreement. Eventually, the league sided with the Jets.


The NFL didn't crack down on poison pills until the Vikings and Seahawks got into a pissing match with Steve Hutchincon and Nate Burleson in 2006. Minnesota offered Sea G Steve Hutchinson a seven-year, $49m contract with a clause stating the entire deal would become fully guaranteed if he was not the highest-paid offensive lineman on the team. That was fine for the Vikings, but the Seahawks had Pro Bowler Walter Jones, who made more. Then in retaliation Seattle signed Minn WR Nate Burleson to a contract with two poison pills, one of which guaranteed the entire $49 million if he played five or more games in the state of Minnesota in any season. It wasn't until then that the NFL refused to allow those type of contracts.

I liked Curtis Martin and I was bummed out when he left.

During his time with the Jets, the Patriots won 3 Super Bowls. The Jets never made it past the Conference Championship during that time.

I stopped being bummed out a long time ago.

As a followup to the Monkees trivia.... they likely were able to use a Beatles song because despite being positioned as rivals by the news media at the time, with the Monkees being judged inferior most of the time, the Beatles actually really liked the Monkees. They hung out together when the Monkees visited England.

jmt57 said:

If I recall correctly, yes. I looked but I couldn't find anything like this happening previously.

A little more on it here:

Curtis Martin changed two franchises

Curtis Martin did what great players are supposed to -- make everyone better.

www.espn.com

It was a five-year, $28 million contract with a club option for a sixth year that would bring the total to $36 million, but what made it unusual was Martin's ability to void the deal after one year. It also included a clause that prohibited the team from using the franchise tag, meaning he could be unrestricted after one year.

It was too risky for the Patriots to match because they faced the prospect of losing him after a year (perhaps to the Jets) and receiving nothing -- no draft picks. The Jets leveraged that insecurity. It was a classic poison pill.

The Patriots complained to the NFL management council, insisting the offer sheet violated the collective bargaining agreement. Eventually, the league sided with the Jets.


The NFL didn't crack down on poison pills until the Vikings and Seahawks got into a pissing match with Steve Hutchincon and Nate Burleson in 2006. Minnesota offered Sea G Steve Hutchinson a seven-year, $49m contract with a clause stating the entire deal would become fully guaranteed if he was not the highest-paid offensive lineman on the team. That was fine for the Vikings, but the Seahawks had Pro Bowler Walter Jones, who made more. Then in retaliation Seattle signed Minn WR Nate Burleson to a contract with two poison pills, one of which guaranteed the entire $49 million if he played five or more games in the state of Minnesota in any season. It wasn't until then that the NFL refused to allow those type of contracts.

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Thanks for the clarification. It seemed at first you were playing the Kraft is cheap angle.