VITO'S VIEWS

When a player negotiates his own deal without an agent, there are always questions whether a team took advantage of his lack of negotiating experience.

So it wasn’t surprising that Richard Sherman was knocked – notably on Pro Football Talk – for negotiating an incentive-laden contract with the San Francisco 49ers.

Even after Sherman told Peter King of The MMQB that the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions said the incentive-laden deal was too rich for them, and the Oakland Raiders said they didn’t have the cap money to compete, PFT called it a “substandard deal, one that any good experienced agent could have improved upon easily and quickly.’’

Since it appears nobody else was willing to offer more, only the 49ers know if Sherman got the best deal they were willing to give or whether he left money on the table. It’s also hard to determine what the market is for a veteran Pro Bowl cornerback coming off a torn ACL.

I think he should have negotiated a one-year deal. Then he would have had more leverage next year if he returns to his Pro Bowl form this year.

Continue reading “Sherman and other young NFL stars are too willing to give up potential leverage”

Time for more popcorn.

The entertaining Roger & Jerry Show is back.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spent much of last year unsuccessfully trying to convince his fellow owners to delay commissioner Roger Goodell’s contract extension, but Goodell had the majority of the owners on his side.

Jones also was upset with the six-game suspension of Ezekiel Elliott, although his son, Stephen, said the Cowboys were only “observers’’ in that process. Not that Jerry Jones is noted for observing. He likes to be in the middle of the action.

Still, Goodell won on both counts. The NFL won the court fight and Elliott served his suspension and Goodell got his contract extension.

Continue reading “Goodell vs. Jones is bad for the NFL, but always entertaining”

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski started the guessing game right after the Super Bowl a month ago when he was asked if he was considering retiring.

“I don’t know how you heard about that,’’ he said, which is not exactly a denial.

Gronkowski added he would definitely look at his future in the next couple of weeks and “see where I’m at.’’

Since then he’s only had  three cryptic tweets about his future.

“There are NO limits,’’ was one.

Continue reading “With rings, his health and nothing more to prove, Gronk should retire”

Blake Bortles is a natural leader who has a team-first attitude.

He proved that last Saturday when he signed an extension with the Jacksonville Jaguars that is so team-friendly that you wonder why he agreed to it.

It is a good deal for Bortles only if he doesn’t have a good year.

The three-year, $54 million deal that could go up to $66.5 million with incentives has $26.5 million in guarantees. The fifth-year option would have cost the Jaguars $19 million. So for $7.5 million, the Jaguars now have him under contract for three years at an average of $18 million a year.

And it lowered his cap number this year to $10 million.

Continue reading “Bortles’ willingness to sign a bad deal (for him) is a head-scratcher”

The NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis has become a major media event that kicks off the offseason and has helped turn the NFL into a year round sport.

Most newspapers send reporters, the NFL Network will have 52 hours of programming and NFL Media is covering it with an army of 22 reporters.

Even fans now can apply for tickets to watch some workouts and even press conferences.

Not bad for an event that is largely a waste of time except for the media coverage the NFL gets out of it.

Most scouts would be better off staying home and watching film of the players actually playing football.

Continue reading “Continued rise of the useless NFL scouting combine still baffles”

College football’s recent National Letter of Intent Day has become a major media event.

The high school athletes hold press conferences for one of the most memorable days of their lives as they announce where they’re signing and the media grades the recruiting classes of the colleges.

But before the high school seniors head off to college, they and their parents should read a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mike McIntire entitled, “Champions Way: Football, Florida and the Lost Soul of College Sports.’’

The book chronicles how many of the athletes are exploited, funneled into no-show classes and often leaving school without a degree or a future in pro football.

And the football program – supported by free-spending boosters — often seems bigger than the university.

Continue reading “Riveting new book further exposes the seedy underbelly of college football”

Is this the way a sports dynasty sometimes ends?

Not with a bang, but a whimper, a victim of too many self inflicted wounds.

We now wonder if this is where the New England Patriots are after their Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Are they the victims of too much hubris, too much believing “The Patriot Way” is infallible, too much believing in one man having all the answers?

Is The Patriot Way still the right way? Will they make another Super Bowl?

Continue reading “Is this the beginning of the end for the Patriots?”

With 16 seconds left in the famed Ice Bowl in 1967 and trailing the Dallas Cowboys by a field goal, the Green Bay Packers called their final timeout and Bart Starr went to the sidelines to talk to coach Vince Lombardi.

The two men weren’t wired, but Starr has retold the story of that conversation many times.

The Packers had failed on two runs to get in the end zone, and Starr told Lombardi the runners were slipping on the ice and he thought a better option was for him to run a quarterback sneak because he could get better footing.

Lombardi said something like, “Ok, let’s run it and get the hell out of here.’’

Behind  blocks by Jerry Kramer and Ken Bowman (who never got the credit he should have on the play), Starr went under the Dallas lineman and scored the winning touchdown. Two weeks later, the Packers won their second Super Bowl and fifth NFL title.

Continue reading “Foles’ big moment evokes memories of Bart Starr’s iconic Ice Bowl play”

My eight takes on the eighth Super Bowl for Bill Belichick and Tom Brady:

1. Belichick’s decision to bench Malcolm Butler got most of the attention as the New England Patriots defense was shredded by the Philadelphia Eagles. But it obscured the fact that the Patriots defense wasn’t very good all year, even with Butler. It ranked 30^th in pass defense and 29^th in yards allowed. If not for Brady carrying the team and the Patriots playing in a weak AFC, it might have caught up with them before the Super Bowl. And who is responsible for putting such a bad defense on the field? Obviously, Bill Belichick, who makes all the decisions. Belichick the personnel guy hasn’t gotten enough good players on defense for Belichick the coach.

Continue reading “Eight takeaways from the eighth Belichick-Brady Super Bowl”

One of the more interesting matchups in this Super Bowl is between the two fan bases.

Even though Philadelphia and Boston are both Eastern seaboard cities with a rich history in the founding of the country, they have very different histories when it comes to football.

Starting with their names. The Eagles aren’t the Eastern Pennsylvania Eagles. They’re Philadelphia to the core.

Boston changed its name to New England in 1971 to try to become a regional team the year they opened the stadium in Foxboro.

And then there’s the stadiums. Philadelphia’s stadium is in the city of Philadelphia. The Patriots could never get Boston to build a stadium so the Sullivan family built a 60,000 seat metal bench stadium in Foxboro for $6 million  in 1971.

Continue reading “Even a Super Bowl loss won’t tame the white-hot devotion of Eagles fans”