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- Oct 20, 2007
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I wish we would keep him but I think by holding out and going for more money is the reason for the attacks.
He had a choice, take less money than he could probably get on the open market and a cap friendly deal and I think he could've retired a Patriot. He chose this path. FWIW I always thought he was a hard working player and one of the best on the D even after his surgery.
Yeah, he could have agreed to stay here for less, but he chose not to. How many posters on this board would pass up a raise to stick with a company that they knew felt absolutely no loyalty to you (ie would fire you in a heartbeat if it ever made financial sense to)?
The Patriots have shown time and again that they won't be bound by a sense of loyalty to a player, and that's fine. Rodney outright said that he retired because he knew they were about to 'whack' him. Has anyone given more than Rodney has? When it came down to dollars and cents, the Pats don't care about that stuff- they care about getting the most talent possible for their money. Yet when a player talks about wanting to get appropriate money for his talent, the guy becomes a pariah around here.
I have no problem with the Pats' philosophy, because that's how you win in the salary cap era. By the same token, though, if a player takes the same approach, I'm not going to rake him over the coals for it, because these guys have long lives ahead of them, and they want to make sure that they and their kids never have to worry about money. If someone wants to be paid appropriately, that doesn't mean that he doesn't care about winning, or anything like that. Hell, Tom Brady gets paid more than anyone on the team, and he's all but said that he's looking for a raise. Are you guys (not you specifically, more of a general thing) going to turn on him next?
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