The Cap - Mar., 4, 2001
For all of the talk about "getting it done" last week and how everybody chipped in, things are not all rosy at Jaguars headquarters. Owner Wayne Weaver said all the right things, quarterback Mark Brunell and his agent Leigh Steinberg were both quoted about how they were glad they could help the Jaguars get under the cap, but it all rang hollow. 
Weaver didn't like how the negotiations went and Brunell is sticking to the business side of the football relationship, trying to get as much money as possible, even apparently, at the cost of winning. It all depends on your perspective as to where to place the blame, if there is any. Brunell stuck it to the team by not agreeing to a new deal, but on the other hand, he didn't put them in their salary cap "circumstance." Kevin Hardy didn't agree to an extension, further causing the Jaguars to trim their roster of contributing players.
Weaver, Head Coach Tom Coughlin and capoligist Michael Huyghue were all willing to go, as they say, "outside of the model" for high-priced talent, trying to get to the Super Bowl. "The Super Bowl is a powerful intoxicant," is how Weaver put it, "but we won't make those same mistakes again." When asked this week if the Jaguars would have a different salary cap situation in the future, Weaver uttered a terse, "you bet."
Since the inception of the salary cap in the early '90's, some teams have fallen into the cap quagmire quicker than others. The 49ers and the Cowboys were loaded with salaries and kept paying, knowing it would cost them in the future. They won championships and now are every day teams, trying to figure out how to get out of their own way.
The cap helps sprinkle talent around the league, and that's it. Players like John Randle, Marcus Robertson and Leon Searcy are now free-agents, released by teams desperate to get under the salary cap. They're still productive players, still stars in fact, but the cap makes teams decide which stars they'll keep and which ones they'll cut.
Searcy said last week, "I'm important too," when asked what the Jaguars might do. He's right. The Jaguars had to decide between an All-Pro type lineman who is a great "locker room guy" and their Pro Bowl quarterback. The quarterback won out in the short term, holding the team hostage with his demands for more money.
When the 49ers recently signed defensive lineman Bryant Young to a long term deal, Bill Walsh said, "this will cost us untold numbers of productive players in the future." If that's the attitude around the league, why keep the cap? Certainly the NFL could come up with another way to restrict the movement of some players and give others the freedom to seek their own deals. The NBA created the "Larry Bird rule" allowing teams to keep the stars on their rosters while paying them accordingly, and have enough money left under their cap to put a good team around them.
The NFL, with its higher incidence of injury, needs to look over the cap. If a player is eating up a big percentage of a team's cap and gets hurt, their season is over. They can't sign somebody else, they don't have the money.
Tweak it, massage it, figure out a way players can stay in towns and with teams for their entire careers if they want to. Doesn't it seem funny with all the different dates and rules that the league created the salary cap, and they immediately started to look for ways to get around it?
John Unitas, Tom Matte, Art Donovan, they're all Colts. Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris are Steelers.
Dan Marino is a Dolphin.
Will there be any career long Jaguars?
Under the current cap structure, I wouldn't load up on Brunell jerseys in the near future.
Trying to decide what is the public's right to know versus a family's privacy can be a touchy situation for any news entity. Dale Earnhardt's widow, Teresa is trying to keep his autopsy photos private, hoping they won't be distributed by any medium, including the Internet. According to the law in Florida, autopsy photos are part of the public records and are to be made available, if requested. So, it is not unusual for the Orlando Sentinel to request to see the photos. They do not want to publish them according to the request, but rather want an independent investigator to see them to determine if NASCAR's explanation of Earnhardt's death is accurate.
This is new territory for NASCAR. When guys died on the track before, they just held the funeral and moved on. Nobody paid that much attention. Now, people want answers and they want to make their own decisions. Managing the news isn't part of the equation any more for NASCAR officials. When cars are going around the track at nearly 200 mph, accidents are going to happen.
NASCAR was ill prepared to deal with this kind of scrutiny. The information put out on the night of the race was incorrect, either on purpose or in the emotion of the moment, but since then, the story has been completely different. Which one is true? The privacy of the Earnhardt family is a consideration, but when you choose a high-profile position, part of your privacy is forfeited forever.
Fox apparently has the in-car camera tapes that show Earnhardt's actually hitting the steering wheel and viewing them would give a definitive answer. None of it is pretty, and there's no easy answer. It's easy to see both sides but eventually the photos and the tapes will come out and there will be some answers. But we don't have to like it.
I can remember the first time I saw Cheryl Tiegs. It was in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I was in my early teens, and couldn't get enough of what I thought then was the most perfect woman in the world. I can remember seeing Carol Alt and Kathy Ireland for the first time too. They were beautiful women wearing swimsuits I could care less about. But they had swimsuits on.
I've seen the progression of the swimsuit issue from its focus on the suits and the location to the models, or rather the bodies of the models. As a guy it fascinates me, as a Dad of teenage daughters and a 10-year old son, I'm not so sure. I admit to leafing through the magazine to see all of the photos, but I also read the articles (sure, Dad) and actually thought some of the suits, especially the ones Heidi Klum was wearing were cute. The outright nudity in the magazine should come with some kind of warning though.
I know times have changed and we're much more permissive than before, but how am I supposed to explain that to my kids without warning? It's like when Madonna was first starting her career, passing herself off as a pop artist, targeting young girls as her audience, then doing all kinds of outrageous things. I don't have a problem with outrageous, or even beautiful women doing whatever they want when modeling. They should just let us know before it arrives in the mail with my Sears bill.
Players whining about salaries, especial ones in the $9 to $10 million range had to get old eventually. The sporting public has always laughed it off before, but the recent reaction to Gary Sheffield and Frank Thomas should be a signal to athletes to take their money and shut up. The notion that somehow these guys are being "disrespected" because somebody is making more money than they are is laughable. What ever happened to signing a contract and sticking to it? Doesn't a long term deal give security on both sides? Even Thomas' agents quit because they thought he was too greedy. Agents? Calling somebody too greedy? Maybe we've reached the saturation point, finally.
Because they had no prior commitments to salaries, the Jaguars were able to be free spending from their inception and put together a team that was competitive right away. Head Coach Tom Coughlin was able to identify his key position players like Mark Brunell and Tony Boselli and get them under contract. It was the fine tuning, the other pieces to the puzzle the Jaguars were unable to come up with.
Bad second day drafting cost the Jaguars a chance to develop some players into contributors, so instead, they turned to the free-agent market to grab players like Bryce Paup, Carnell Lake, Hardy Nickerson and others to fill in the gaps.
Running through a 14-2 regular season and getting to the AFC Championship game were the payoffs for their free spending, but when you spend the money and don't win the Super Bowl, it seems like failure. By putting a talented team around good skill position players, the Jaguars thought they would stay competitive for several years, reloading instead of rebuilding. Now they're stuck.
Brunell and his agent Leigh Steinberg have held fast to Brunell's worth, inflated as it seems, saying a quarterback is a valuable product, perhaps the most valuable in football. That might be true, if, a quarterback has a proven track record as a winner. Twice in his career, Brunell has been in a championship game and failed to deliver. Now he wants to be the highest paid player in the game? Brett Favre's "lifetime" contract with the Packers pays him a $10 million bonus and guarantees his first year salary. He's a three-time NFL MVP, a Super Bowl winning quarterback.
Is Brunell worth more than that? Absolutely not.
Somehow, Steinberg thinks the natural progression is that the next guy in line should get the higher salary. Weaver believes that Brunell falls into the quarterback type that "goes with you to the Super Bowl," as opposed to the ones that take you there. They're stuck, and so are the Jaguars if they stand by and think the team they put together in the beginning of 1999 is the same one that can make a run in 2001.
The team's lack of ability to convince Brunell and Kevin Hardy to sign extensions on their contracts forced the Jaguars to cut many of the players they were counting on to fill certain roles in the coming year, if not be stars.
Hardy was projected as a Lawrence Taylor type coming out of Illinois as the second pick in the draft, but he hasn't progressed anywhere near that. He doesn't dominate games, he doesn't scare quarterbacks into changing the play. Hardy is a very good player who can be complimentary in the right situation, but not one you build your whole defensive game plan around.
The Jaguars say they would like to re-sign some of the players they released. Perhaps they'll get Brant Boyer or Jamie Martin under contract. The one player they won't be able to bring back is Leon Searcy and that will be their biggest loss. Not just on the field as a personal blind side protector for Brunell, but especially in the locker room as a leader. Searcy is a highly respected professional who, with a look or small comment, can motivate his teammates.
The cutting is not over either. The Jaguars will have to clear around $3 million after the draft at the end of April to create their rookie pool, and they need to sign some players to fill out the roster, so they'll have to get that money from somewhere. They're hoping to have extended deals with Brunell and Hardy in the next 30 days to create some more cap room.
If that's their answer, the negotiations will have to go better with both players and that seems unlikely.