Each year, one of the first signs of which teams are contenders and which teams are pretenders can be seen in what each team does in the off season. Good selfless GM's who truly do what is best for their team with the money and privileges they possess ultimately turn out good, committed teams with at least a chance at winning it all come February.
But money does get in the way, and no matter how rich they may be, cash does not flow into the NFL's individual teams with infinite quantity. In New England, much of the Patriot's financial talks of late have circled around two players - Aqib Talib and Julian Edelman - and more to the point what might happen if either of them escaped to free agency.
Fact is, even with the deep cash pool that Robert Kraft has accumulated since he took over the Patriots 20 years ago, with both Edelman and Talib coming off spectacular years in which Talib owned the Patriots secondary and Edelman accumulated over 100 catches, they knew that the price for bringing them back in 2014 might be very stiff. However, at least until 3:00PM Monday, there was another option.
In what has been named as the franchise tag, each NFL team is presented with the opportunity to retain one player, no matter their level of play and no matter another team's interest for one base rate. In Patriots history, they have never been a team in love with the tag but most notably utilized it 2 years ago on Wes Welker.
But for the second straight season, the annual deadline for teams to either use or forgo the franchise tag came and passed without action in Foxbourgh and at least for the time being, it appears to be a rather questionable decision.
In what was surely the best season of his career, Talib in particular made a serious case to get paid the 11.5 million dollar salary for a franchise tagged CB. He made 4 interceptions and defended 13 passes while making 35 tackles.
"[Talib] wasn't on the field a lot of the time since he's been with us," Robert Kraft said at the Super Bowl. "It's a balance, of us balancing all that out and what is he worth. I think he's happy here and would like to be here. We're happy with him and we'd like to have him here. Now it's just about doing business."
According to ESPN Boston's Matt Reis, one of the biggest reasons the Patriots did not hand Talib those 11 million dollars was his health. Though he played all but 3 games this season and was a key role player in every single one, he has now been knocked out of two straight AFC Championship games. But nevertheless, the latter of those two injures was certainly not his fault. He is no Danny Ammendola.
So if that does not make sense, what does?
More than any other, a logical explanation for the Patriots' negligence is that that there have been rumors that he and the team are negotiating a contract at a substantially lower annual salary. In a scenario like that, the Patriots are being smart in knowing that by locking down Talib for 2 or 3 years at say 7 or 8 million a year, they would then have the additional 3 or 4 million dollars to add on to a big contract to lock down Julian Edelman who will most likely be a far more sought after name than Talib.
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