James may have just signed with cincy

Really?
You get that emotionally charged about people that you've never met and who chase a football around for a living?

 

Sure do. I want him to regret turning down our offer.

 

My brotha from anotha motha!

 

What offer? He said he didn't want to take a paycut. He said he would rather stay with the contract that was negotiated between himself and the Pittsburgh Steelers. This is what I can't understand, people acting like this is Harrison's fault. The Front Office gambled here not Harrison. They gambled that the cap would go up, that playing fast and loose with some of these salaries wouldn't come back to bite them in the rear, that they would have the room to resign players they felt were core. The only reason they asked Harrison to take a paycut was that he was coming off a down season stats wise due to injury and that they may have a replacement ready in the wings. Now given that they rewarded Colon with a 29 million dollar deal after he spent a year on IR and finished the following year that way I would say having a down year shouldn't mean that your contract is meaningless.

I don't want to hear about how he isn't a team player for not taking less because they could have asked Ben to take less, Troy to take less, Woodley to take less, Timmons, Brown and so forth but they didn't, they restructured them and put everything on Harrison. This fantasy that they offered him 4 mil a year in a incentive laden deal is just ridiculous because none of us a privy to what the deal was and what the conditions were. My guess would be x amount of sacks for the season, y amount of snaps played, and z amount of games. None of that is a solid guarantee not like a signed and valid contract. i can't understand this venom towards him for keeping a contract that he and the FO worked out. This to me is like my boss going to the casino and gambling away the companies profits and then coming back and saying yep I goofed you are going to have to a cut in pay sorry. I can say nope and get fired but the choice is mine like it was Harrison's but taking less just to be a "team player" when it isn't asked of others is just stupid.

 

Putting crip tag up on mirror?? What?

 

Pretty much sums it up.

I do think that he gambled and maybe over estimated his value, but we won't know for sure until the #s come out. What does need to be factored in though is guaranteed money. Choosing to take a pay cut and stay with the Steelers would have netted his $4M guaranteed (going by popular belief of what Pgh offered him). You do have to look at the guaranteed cash Cincy will pay him. It probably will be more than $2M/yr meaning more than the $4M guaranteed that Pgh offered him. So from that perspective, he may have very well gotten a better deal.

Also regarding the popular belief that he wanted to stay in the AFCN, maybe that is true as well. But what no one is considering is the proximity of those 3 cities to Pittsburgh and James' home. Anyone who follows him on FB knows that hes a family man with 2 young boys. I'd imagine that being a short flight...or even drive (Cleveland) to his next job to allow for more family time would be a big consideration. What gets me are peoples complete disconnect with football players as human beings. Although the job is high profile and high paying, to them it is still a JOB just like rest of us have. And their thought process regarding of where and who to work for is going to be no different that ours. People may chose to envision themselves behaving differently in their situation, but I guarantee 99% of the people wouldn't.

 

He will be a non factor in Cincy. He became a non factor here and now he's gone. Thanks for your contributions James. The day comes for every NFL player. Such is life.

 

Well, it was simple: Either take a pay cut or get cut. The Steelers didn't gamble on anything here. They had no desire to keep James at the salary he was making. As for holding true to contracts: the NFL doesn't care about contracts. The players don't (when they hold out) and the owners don't (by releasing players). I wish contracts didn't mean squat to the rest of us, but most of us don't live in that world.

 

Well said. It was as simple as that. The Steelers didn't "gamble and lose". That's a ridiculous assertion. The Steelers asked a 35 year old linebacker with bad knees and a bad back who was largely unproductive last year to consider taking a reduced salary that would be a fairer representation of his market value AND (read this one closely) HELP HIS TEAM BE MORE COMPETITIVE BY FREEING UP CAP SPACE IT SO DESPERATELY NEEDED!! James thumbed his nose at that, which was his right to do, and came away in the end looking delusional and unreasonable. At one point he and his agent came back to the Steelers, hat in hand, and said they would "welcome a call". The Steelers said NO THANKS.

Now he's a Bungle. Congratulations, James. Hope that 4-3 works out for you. Had you simply been more of a realist and team player you'd still be a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers and, in all likelihood, making more money than you're currently making as a member of the Bungles. Sometimes you've got to swallow your pride and do the reasonable thing. Bettis did it, Casey did it, Hines did it. But you couldn't do it James. Maybe your agent was giving you bad advice, who knows? Whatever the reason, you're now a member of a divisional rival. Thanks to your foolish miscalculations you're now the enemy and your legacy in Pittsburgh, while still a great one, is less than what it could have been!

 

:goodpost:

 

Harrison is gone. Let's worry about our program and get on with it.

 

The difference, BF, is that McClendon and Sanders are players on the rise. Harrison's skills and abilities are in decline and his body has shown significant signs of wearing down. That's the reality of the situation and Harrison and his agent refused to look at it objectively. I think the decision that the Steelers made with regard to all of these players supports what I am saying.

 

They all do. thats the shame in those agents. #bottomfeeders

 

Yeah, it's taking some getting used to for me too. Kind of like having a friend that hardly ever agrees with you but you like anyway that all of a sudden one day decides to change his legal name. But I'll get used to it.

I'd like to send JH a note but it would begin with "how could you be so stupid?"!

 

You're exactly right they didn't gamble here and I never said they did. This is a calculated move. I said they have gambled with the salary cap going up, playing fast and loose with some of these salaries as evidenced by the Sanders and McClendon deals not to mention ridiculous deals to offensive linemen and gambled that they would have enough room to resign the players they thought were core players to having a successful playoff run. When those things didn't work out they had to restructure some deals which just puts the problem off till next year and they had to make some tough cuts like Harrison.

 

First of all I feel your pain here Jack. I went through this last season when it was Ward and Smith being given the boot and to me they were the definition of Steelers to me. Last season I argued that a million for all the intangibles that Ward brought was worth it. Now while they choose to retire it was still hard to get over. Now as I just responded to 12to88 i never said they gambled and lost on Harrison. I said they gambled on some of the moves they had made over the last five years or so which led to the cut and dried situation of having to say to someone like Harrison take a cut or get cut.

The problem with applying the metric you are suggesting is that it is a hindsight metric at best and at worst a strawman argument. If the metric for taking a pay cut is that you are aging player coming off an injury and have declining skills then Troy should have been player one to ask to take a pay cut followed by Ben. Ben got a huge deal coming off a second Superbowl win and rightfully so because he had earned it much like Harrison but then he lost a Superbowl, missed out on getting at least a home playoff game because he stubbornly insisted he was ready to go and then got bounced by a team lead by Tim Tebow and then led the team to an 8-8 season if that doesn't warrant a paycut I don't know what does. I think the bottom line here is that if Harrison had been 100% and played close to his DPOY form would we be having this conversation? Maybe we would, maybe not. To me I can not blame the guy for not taking a paycut when no one else was asked to. As far as the staying in the AFC North to stick it to the Steelers I can't say I blame him if that is the reason but like others have said he gets to stay close to home without uprooting his family, and the number of teams that run a 3-4 or hybrid 3-4/4-3 is small and it just happens that the Division has four of those teams and they all had needs for a outside LB, the other teams have young guys at the position and don't have a real need at this point of the calendar year, maybe they would have had more of a demand during the actual season. Either way I can't fault the guy with doing what is best for him.

 

Just wait till next year if some of the high priced players
don't put up pro bowl numbers. Troy ,lamaar,Ike, Kiesel. PRODUCTION BABY ,Contracts mean
nothing in the NFL No guarranteed contracts, and you know what, I like it this way, not like MLB/NBA
where you have a 230 hiiter getting 8miil/ year it has ruined baseball.What would Roberto(THE GREAT ONE) Clemente be worth? LOL
Yankees paying juiced up A-Rod ,Jeter all this money for what 20 HR a year? Come on now, this is a farce and so is baseball.

 

I didn't blame him I said he was on a team that got bounced from the playoffs in round one by the Tebow led Broncos. He is a member of the team so a loss is a loss. If we use Jack's metric then yes any player that has a drop off in production should be asked to take less and be a "team player"