Yup, guy is screwing himself big time. He’s been offered enough money that his grandchildren will never go hungry, and may not have to work. All he has to do is sign the deal, show up, and do what he’s told to the best of his ability. Instead, he’s getting no money this year, and won’t be offered anything close to what’s on the table right now in next year’s negotiations.
If he re-enters the draft, I’m calling him going no sooner than the third round.
Exactly, the major difference is the character issue. Williams was never considered a “diva WR”. He was just foolish enough to declare and hire an agent, thus eliminating his eligibility, before seeing how the Clarett case was going to play out. He still went top-10 but, as Omniscient pointed out, that was a reach and turned out to be one of the key draft picks (among several others) that people like to point to when describing Matt Millen’s draft acumen.
I wonder how well Crabtree will be received in the locker room, throughout his career; not very well, I imagine.
I think it’s probably just a crazy conspiracy theory that only I have, especially since Al Davis seems to be borderline senile and confused these days, but I’ll try and sum it up.
Heyward-Bey was drafted way ahead of projections and he was signed to a fat contract early in the negotiation process. The contract was for about $4M more in guaranteed money than last years 7th pick and almost equal to what the 5th overall pick got in this years draft, a QB. Basically he overpaid for Heyward-Bey, in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge amount of money on a per-year basis. But, that amount of money is a deal breaker when it comes to the NFL slotting process for signing rookies. Heyward-Bey’s contract has been used as leverage by the 6th overall pick and by Crabtree to get more money from the teams that drafted them. Without Heyward-Bey’s contract to work from and use as justification of demands the player and agent would have little standing to hold out.
So, a savvy GM/Owner could overpay a draft pick, an amount that is less than 1% of a given years salary cap and money that might even be paid anyway if the player turns out to be a good one, with the knowledge that the teams drafting before and after them would have much more painful negotiations on their hands. If those teams have a reputation for being hardliners you could gamble that paying your guy an extra few million could sabotage a rival team and cost them a first round pick’s participation in camp at the least and the player entirely in an extreme case like Crabtree.
Suppose Crabtree reenters the draft and slides to the 2nd round where the Raiders take him. Al Davis would look like a genius!
More like Inspector Clouseau.
Pow.
Crabtree slipped to 10th in a draft that was considered mediocre due to injury concerns and questions about how much he was helped by the system he played in college, too. None of that is going to go away over the next year and the 2011 draft will probably be better.
This is more a reflection of the enormous stiffy that Al Davis gets over whichever athlete clocks the fastest 40-yard-dash time in the draft.
Most likely true. Nonetheless players/agents use it as leverage in negotiations regardless of the motivation and soundness of the logic.
Your theory is pretty interesting, Omniscient. When this happened had Oakland traded away 1st rounders in upcoming years? In other words would overpaying not have come back and bitten them in the ass in their future dealings with early round draftees?
Not really. They’d already overpaid JaMarcus Russell- which was especially stupid because he was the first overall pick and they set the market.
Look, the Mike Williams thing has no bearing here. Williams didn’t fail at the NFL level because he missed a year; he failed because he was the same size as a tight end and equally slow, but couldn’t block. It wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference if he’d played in college for another year or been on an NFL roster during the year he sat out. Williams was so highly touted because Mel Kiper and the league’s dumber GMs assumed that he could box people out at the NFL level the same way he did in college.
Crabtree, on the other hand, has all the physical tools to be a top-flight wide receiver at the NFL level- including the diva personality, apparently. This will certainly hurt his draft stock, of course, but not in football terms, just in contract terms.
It is good to see the 49ers stand firm on this. Personally, I want to see an NFL team negotiate up to the start of camp and then simply tell the agent, “here’s our final offer. We will reduce the signing bonus by 1% for each day of training camp your client misses.”
Of course, Crabtree is being a complete moron, if for no other reason than because he’s giving up serious earnings for this year. On the other hand, I think it’s likely that San Francisco will trade his draft rights at some point during the season. As far as I can tell they don’t get a compensatory pick or anything if he reenters the draft, so it sort of makes sense for some team that doesn’t mind ponying up some cash to offer them a second- or third-round pick. Effectively, they’d be getting a top-10 caliber player (and in my mind, the best player drafted this year) for a lower-round pick.
It will also be interesting to see what happens if he gets signed and has a mediocre or IR year. Granted, the 49ers do not have a stellar WR corps but they have all had time to learn the routes and develop a raport with the QB that Crabtree has missed. He has weeks of catch up and rookie mistakes that could have been avoided. Natural talent will only take him so far.
Even if he does get signed there’s not a chance that he does more than appear in a couple of very specific packages. A veteran might be able to learn the route tree and playbook in a week or two but not a rookie.