So the Packers
could be heading down the road for contract drama with cornerback Tramon Williams.
I say ‘could’ because we don’t know anything definitive yet.
We do know Williams did not sign his tender by 4 p.m. on Tuesday. We know the Packers told Williams and Atari Bigby they would have their tenders replaced with 110% of their 2009 salary if the players did not sign their original tenders.
Maybe Williams signed late last night. Maybe the Packers decided not to use the 110% rule after all. Maybe they decided to give him a contract extension. Maybe I’ll be thin someday.
But all signs were pointing toward Williams not signing his tender, and the Packers cutting his potential 2010 salary by over $2 million.
So the popular question I’ve been getting is, “Does Williams deserve beyond his one-year, $3.168-million tender?”
No.
And yes.
As a matter of personal opinion, I believe a player is entitled to get whatever he can because the NFL is a harsh business. I believe special players that clearly are better than their rookie contracts should have their contracts redone as soon as possible.
I also believe the NFL should live up to their original contracts. That means for players that were set to become unrestricted free agents this year, I think it’s categorically unfair that, because the owners opted out of the CBA early, players are the ones that suffer.
You can say all you want about they should have known or their agents should have known, but come on. How was a college kid or even their agent supposed to anticipate in 2006 that two years later, without much conversation ahead of time, the owners were going to suddenly change the rules?
So guys in their fourth or even fifth year, I feel for them and think what the owners have done is just wrong.
But here’s the thing: none of that applies to Williams.
He’s only played three years. And while a good player, he’s not special yet. And his tender is more than fair for a player with only 20 starts under his belt.
So in that sense, no, I don’t think Williams deserves a contract extension, all things being equal.
But they aren’t. And the Packers have only themselves to blame for that.
The Packers set themselves up for this on Aug. 5, 2008 when at the height of the Brett Favre drama and with Russ Ball handling his first major contract as the Packers’ contract man after Andrew Brandt departed,
the Packers caved in and gave running back Ryan Grant a four-year contract that was worth $20 million at the time.
Now it’s worth much more.
It wasn’t hard to see how that decision was going to come home to roost for the Packers at some point.
Some of us have talked about it a time or two.
Up until that point, the Packers had been decidedly disciplined in how and when and to whom they gave contract extensions to. It was a big reason why they got in good cap shape in such a hurry after Mike Sherman.
The players that got new deals had put in their time, signed their tenders and just played along with the program.
But the decision by Ball and Ted Thompson to do that deal then with Grant eroded much of what the Packers had done previously.
You can point out how the Packers had to do that deal at that time. And you can also say looking at it now, it was a good deal for the Packers and continues to be.
Both may be true.
But they don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not to other players and agents.
Some of you don’t like it when I say that every contract has ramifications inside the Packers’ locker room. That if so and so gets this, then this guy is going to want this.
Tough. It’s the truth. Happens in every single locker room in every sport.
And you certainly aren’t going to hear any player talking about the ramifications of a teammate’s contract. That’s a big locker room no-no. Doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of complaining going on behind closed doors. There is.
So when the Packers gave Grant that deal, after his first accrued season in the NFL, his first with the Packers, after 15 games played and seven regular-season starts, they set the stage for guys like Williams to want theirs.
He and they have a point.
How can the Packers give Grant his deal, yet refuse to give the same kind of deal to Williams after he did everything they asked of him for three seasons and he started more than twice as many games as Grant (20 - 10 last season)?
Can the Packers tell Williams that Grant was more valuable when he got his contract? I don’t think so.
Throw in the situation at cornerback and that it’s an uncapped year, and it’s hard not to see that Williams has a fairly compelling case to want his contract extension now.
So at face value, does Williams deserve a new deal? No. But context does he? Probably, yeah.
And the Packers made this bed and now it appears they’ll have to lay in it.
About the only way for the Packers to have avoided this, besides telling Grant to kick rocks, was to make him a take-it-or-leave-it one-year offer of about $3 million with the promise to do something down the road if he continues to perform. That’s essentially what they’ve done with Williams.
Maybe the Packers are trying to get back on contract message with the Williams negotiations and they’ll make a stand on this.
Will it work out? No one knows.
Is this the right time and position to do it after what happened last year in the secondary and with the team on the brink of being a Super Bowl contender?
That might be the key question.
And that, also, is in the Packers’ hands.
