Atlanta Dan
02-24-2006, 11:42 AM
This is on the restricted site portion of the P-G so I will post the following column in its entirety. Sounds like Ike Taylor and his agent are going to expect to be paid very well by someone in 2006 (note the statement by Taylor that I have placed in bold face "I don't want to leave but if it happens it happens."). If Ike wants paid now it makes it even less likely there will be $$ to pay Chris Hope. Given the respective worth of a potential shutdown corner entering his prime and a good but not All-Pro caliber safety, my $$ would be spent on Taylor, not Hope.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The most conspicuous mutually exclusive term that ever wiggled its way into the NFL's labyrinthine offseason protocols is "restricted free agent."
You can't be free and restricted at the same time, but that never seems to the stop the Committee on Absurd Linguistic Constructions, the people who gave us "congressional ethics," "jumbo shrimp," and, again, "Temple football."
It is hardly surprising then, that there are few restricted free agents who change teams during the annually frenetic free agency period that begins just a week from tomorrow. A fistful of unrestricted free agents, which is redundant but at last makes sense, will trade laundry and experience a severe bling upgrade, but restricted free agents, like the Steelers' Ike Taylor, are rarely seen in the open market.
Unless ...
"More times than not, a restricted free agent is pretty much locked in, but when you have the kind of postseason Ike had, the kind of season he had, and your team wins the Super Bowl," Scott Smith was saying yesterday, "it creates a unique situation."
Smith is the agent who represents Taylor, and while Ike has averaged one agent every 18 months since the Steelers drafted him out of Louisiana-Lafayette in 2003, that doesn't change the perfect little storm of circumstances that could make the best Steelers corner since Rod Woodson a little slipperier than everyone assumes.
The obvious element is Taylor's dramatically improved play, especially in the playoffs, when he kept a frustrated cadre that included some of the game's top receivers out of the end zone. Taylor essentially held Cincinnati's Chad Johnson, Indianapolis' Marvin Harrison, Denver's Rod Smith, and Seattle's Darrell Jackson to an average of four catches for 55 yards and zero points over 60 minutes.
Small wonder then why some have sprayed the Internet with the judgment that Taylor is the third hottest cornerback, after Buffalo's Nate Clements and Oakland's Charles Woodson, in free agency, such as it is.
The simultaneously arriving storm front is the convergence of the particulars in Taylor's restricted standing. While a restricted free agent is defined as a player who has completed his third year in the league and whose contract has expired in that year, few premier players ever fall into this particular slot. High draft picks, for example, often get longer contracts, which is a method by which their team avoids this exact situation. It's why Ben Roethlisberger's deal is for six years.
"Things could happen; I definitely understand it's a business," Taylor said yesterday from Orlando, Fla., where he's already begun offseason workouts. "I don't want to leave, but if it happens, it happens. I totally understand the situation, and it's a priority for a lot of teams to have a pretty good corner."
It's likely all this will mean in Ike's case is that, in his first year as a starter, he became one of the game's better corners a bit faster than the Steelers anticipated that a fourth-round draft pick would. If he'd have delayed his competitive maturity until next season, he'd be due a ransom as an unrestricted free agent, but the current restrictions remain onerous.
The Steelers can keep Ike by matching any offer he gets from another team, which, if Pittsburgh declined to match it, would have to compensate the Steelers with one or two draft picks, including in all likelihood, a first rounder. The exact compensation depends on the Steelers' qualifying offer to Taylor, which is due by March 2. If, as expected, the club makes what's known as an upgraded offer -- something in the neighborhood of $1.7 million on a one-year contract -- the compensation is a first-round pick.
But here's the final element in the perfect Taylor storm -- dense fog, a.k.a. the now alarmingly tenuous nature of the collective bargaining agreement between owners and NFL players.
"With 2007 being an uncapped year, they put a bunch of poisoned pills in the CBA in the next to last year," Smith said. "These things were designed to trigger negative consequences on both owners and players to get them back to the bargaining table. So with the current situation, the situation is very difficult for big free-agent deals, in part because signing bonus money is now able to be prorated only over four years right now. If you do a big free-agent deal, a team usually needs to prorate that over five, six, seven years. Also, incentives not likely to be earned now count against the cap."
Naturally, teams are very skittish about how this will flesh out. The notion that someone will gladly part with a very-likely-to-be-overpriced draft pick for a reasonably priced, established corner probably has never been more solid.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The most conspicuous mutually exclusive term that ever wiggled its way into the NFL's labyrinthine offseason protocols is "restricted free agent."
You can't be free and restricted at the same time, but that never seems to the stop the Committee on Absurd Linguistic Constructions, the people who gave us "congressional ethics," "jumbo shrimp," and, again, "Temple football."
It is hardly surprising then, that there are few restricted free agents who change teams during the annually frenetic free agency period that begins just a week from tomorrow. A fistful of unrestricted free agents, which is redundant but at last makes sense, will trade laundry and experience a severe bling upgrade, but restricted free agents, like the Steelers' Ike Taylor, are rarely seen in the open market.
Unless ...
"More times than not, a restricted free agent is pretty much locked in, but when you have the kind of postseason Ike had, the kind of season he had, and your team wins the Super Bowl," Scott Smith was saying yesterday, "it creates a unique situation."
Smith is the agent who represents Taylor, and while Ike has averaged one agent every 18 months since the Steelers drafted him out of Louisiana-Lafayette in 2003, that doesn't change the perfect little storm of circumstances that could make the best Steelers corner since Rod Woodson a little slipperier than everyone assumes.
The obvious element is Taylor's dramatically improved play, especially in the playoffs, when he kept a frustrated cadre that included some of the game's top receivers out of the end zone. Taylor essentially held Cincinnati's Chad Johnson, Indianapolis' Marvin Harrison, Denver's Rod Smith, and Seattle's Darrell Jackson to an average of four catches for 55 yards and zero points over 60 minutes.
Small wonder then why some have sprayed the Internet with the judgment that Taylor is the third hottest cornerback, after Buffalo's Nate Clements and Oakland's Charles Woodson, in free agency, such as it is.
The simultaneously arriving storm front is the convergence of the particulars in Taylor's restricted standing. While a restricted free agent is defined as a player who has completed his third year in the league and whose contract has expired in that year, few premier players ever fall into this particular slot. High draft picks, for example, often get longer contracts, which is a method by which their team avoids this exact situation. It's why Ben Roethlisberger's deal is for six years.
"Things could happen; I definitely understand it's a business," Taylor said yesterday from Orlando, Fla., where he's already begun offseason workouts. "I don't want to leave, but if it happens, it happens. I totally understand the situation, and it's a priority for a lot of teams to have a pretty good corner."
It's likely all this will mean in Ike's case is that, in his first year as a starter, he became one of the game's better corners a bit faster than the Steelers anticipated that a fourth-round draft pick would. If he'd have delayed his competitive maturity until next season, he'd be due a ransom as an unrestricted free agent, but the current restrictions remain onerous.
The Steelers can keep Ike by matching any offer he gets from another team, which, if Pittsburgh declined to match it, would have to compensate the Steelers with one or two draft picks, including in all likelihood, a first rounder. The exact compensation depends on the Steelers' qualifying offer to Taylor, which is due by March 2. If, as expected, the club makes what's known as an upgraded offer -- something in the neighborhood of $1.7 million on a one-year contract -- the compensation is a first-round pick.
But here's the final element in the perfect Taylor storm -- dense fog, a.k.a. the now alarmingly tenuous nature of the collective bargaining agreement between owners and NFL players.
"With 2007 being an uncapped year, they put a bunch of poisoned pills in the CBA in the next to last year," Smith said. "These things were designed to trigger negative consequences on both owners and players to get them back to the bargaining table. So with the current situation, the situation is very difficult for big free-agent deals, in part because signing bonus money is now able to be prorated only over four years right now. If you do a big free-agent deal, a team usually needs to prorate that over five, six, seven years. Also, incentives not likely to be earned now count against the cap."
Naturally, teams are very skittish about how this will flesh out. The notion that someone will gladly part with a very-likely-to-be-overpriced draft pick for a reasonably priced, established corner probably has never been more solid.