Enjoy Your Weiners

July 02, 2009 at 10:00am by Scott   •  4 Comments »

That’s it for me until Monday. Please take a moment out of your Fourth of July to remember what the holiday is all about and punch a British person square in the face. It can even be a chick if you want. It’s not like you’re going to fuck up their teeth or anything.

I won’t even be near a computer, so the best I can do is use Twitter from my phone if I hear something or I happen to stumble across an all body-painted hot chicks barbecue and can take a focused cameraphone picture with one hand while vigorously rubbing myself with the other. That’s more likely to happen than you think. Enjoy.

Someone In The Tampa Media Did Real Work

July 02, 2009 at 09:36am by Scott   •  2 Comments »

Looking over my many, many tirades toward the various Tampa media outlets, I understand why some people have the impression that I hate them all and think they should have their assholes filled with sharpened pencils. But there are a couple good ones out there, and in the case of responding to the Jason La Canfora reports from last week, Tribune writer Anwar Richardson is, again, the voice of reason. Richardson took the radical approach of actually talking to Mark Dominik about the report and actually, you know, learning things.

“I’ve always lived in the mind-set that every player has a certain amount of value,” Dominik said. “You have to determine that and you have to stick to it or it means nothing.”

As is the case with anything from restaurants to hookers, pricier does not always mean better. And anyone who saw Antonio Bryant play for the veteran minimum last year knows that. Dominik gives another example.

“Just because you don’t bring home the most popular names doesn’t mean you’re not adding pieces to the puzzle, like a Jimmy Wilkerson last year,” Dominik said. “No one knew who Jimmy Wilkerson was coming out of Kansas City and he came on and played well for us. Even though he wasn’t the big contract everyone wanted to see the Buccaneers spend, he was an important piece of the puzzle and now has a chance to be our starting left end.”

There are other examples, but I think we all get the point. It’s a smart way to do business as long as they have people who know what they’re doing in the scouting and player personnel positions. I’m not going to doubt the Glazers‘ commitment to the team. Not after promising to have a better offense and then making two offensive players (Jeff Faine and Kellen Winslow) the highest paid players at their positions in the NFL. Not after spending $30-million on a new headquarters and practice facility. I think a lot of people forget what it used to be like.

This guy was cheap. Even his son says so.

“Dad always wanted to be a winner,” said Culverhouse Jr. “But he couldn’t get over this fatal personality flaw. He was cheap.”

Of course, it’s hard scrape together money for a football team when you’ve got a secret other family to feed. But the Glazers have no such problems and are a good middle ground between Culverhouse and, say, Dan Snyder, who still hasn’t found a way to buy a Super Bowl. Thanks to Richardson for pointing this out.

The St. Pete Times Hates The Glazers

July 01, 2009 at 12:01pm by Scott   •  6 Comments »

A report that’s getting a lot of attention during the news vacuum is this piece that Jason La Canfora put out on NFL.com which lists the total dollars spent (not salary cap used) per team for the 2004-2008 seasons. The Bucs are dead last, having spent $449-million in salaries and bonuses during that period. That’s $53.6-million, or about $10.7-million per year, less than the average. That’s a good chunk less, but not so crazy that you’d want to write some kind of sensationalistic piece deriding the Glazers and accusing them of dooming the franchise. Oh hey, guess what the Times published!

Two Times writers, in fact, jumped on the Glazers after hearing this news. The first one, Greg Auman, also references a follow-up piece by La Canfora that takes those dollars spent and divides them over the number of wins a team has. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is that money does not equal wins, and the Bucs came out #14 in dollars spent per win. And somehow this is bad news to Auman.

It’s disappointing news for Bucs fans, and La Canfora posted a follow-up story, looking at how much NFL teams have spent per win over the past five seasons. The Bucs have spent the least in the NFL according to the numbers, but they’re hardly the most efficient when it comes to cost per win — with 38 wins in those five seasons, the Bucs spent an average of $11.81 million per victory, and 13 NFL teams spent less per win than the Bucs.

So Auman takes a virtue like doing more with less and tries to twist into a negative. How does that work? In fact, the Bucs were among the best in terms of spending less but still cranking out some wins. La Canfora addresses this statistic himself.

It’s hard not to look at the list and throw some love at the front offices in San Diego and Jacksonville, hanging with the big boys despite their low spending.

San Diego and Jacksonville, the teams La Canfora singles out, are #1 and #3 respectively in the ranking disparity between dollars and overall efficiency. The Bucs are #5. That is a testimony to good scouting, good drafting, and shrewd contract negotiation. But please, let’s all take the easy way out and proclaim that the cure to the Bucs’ problems is just spending more money.

The other cockgobbler who weighs in on these reports is noted Buc hater John Romano. His piece is longer so as to stretch out the lack of logic, but don’t worry, it’s there.

For one reason or another, the Glazers are not spending money the way they once did. And, perhaps not coincidentally, the team is not winning as much, either.

Now, before we get too far, it is important to point out that a fat payroll does not necessarily guarantee more victories.

But that’s the whole point of your article! It takes a special kind of arrogance to set up the premise that everything you’re about to say is untrue, and then go ahead and say it anyway. I’d also like to contest the first sentence of that excerpt. He says he used the USA Today NFL Salary Database to come up with his 2000-2004 figures, but you tell me if this looks like they’re spending less than before:

2008: $104,329,311
2007: $98,105,565
2006: $78,779,519
2005: $73,770,494
2004: $81,989,547
2003: $88,084,700
2002: $64,486,295
2001: $76,976,459
2000: $58,054,900

Now this number is called “Total Payroll” which may or may not be the same number La Canfora is using, but the point is still the same. As you can see, payroll rose steadily until the period between 2004-2006 when Bruce Allen was trying to dig the Bucs out of the salary cap swamp that Rich McKay left him. And since then it has continued to rise.

From 2000-2004, the team spent $369.6-million, and from 2004-2008 (2004 has to overlap in order for the periods to be comparable), they spent $447-million. How is that “not spending money the way they once did”? The implication of that sentence is that they’re spending less, but that’s clearly not the case. YOU CAN’T JUST SAY UNTRUE SHIT, JOHN! Okay, anyway, let’s keep going.

Still, there is something larger than figures in a ledger at play here. These numbers could say something about a team’s financial condition. They could say something about ownership’s commitment to winning. They could say something troublesome about the future.

Wow, the numbers could say a lot of shit, eh? Well, I’m sure you back up all this speculation with facts.

The problem is we have bits and pieces of evidence, yet we never get explanations from the notoriously secretive Glazer family. And in the absence of candor, we are invited to jump to conclusions.

Now that’s some solid reporting! Oh thank god I have John Romano to jump to baseless conclusions for me because my imagination is so stunted from reading the Times all day. He’s not going to get all bogged down in hard-hitting “investigation” or “research” — that shit is for chumps. Better to just lower himself to the level of Joe Asshole and start spouting unfounded hate.

For instance, the time period covered includes the Glazers’ $1.47 billion purchase of the Manchester United soccer team. In a previous column based on USA Today salary figures, I pointed out the Bucs were in the top half of the NFL in player salaries every season from 2000 to ‘04. And, ever since buying Man U, they have been in the bottom half.

That part is true, but let’s adjust for the fact MANY teams jacked up their payroll to outlandish amounts during that time, too. For example, in 2005 there was one team that spent more than $100-million (according to USA Today) and that was Seattle with $100.6-million. The very next year, 16 teams crossed the $100-million mark with Indianapolis breaking the bank at $131.1-million. Tampa Bay couldn’t join in the party because they were still getting their salary cap house in order. They were falling down the spending ranks, but not really because they were spending so much less than before.

In effect, the numbers say no team has been cheaper than the Bucs when it comes to acquiring and securing talent for half a decade.

And still the Bucs are the only team to win the NFC South multiple times during that period.

In the face of those figures, how can you not wonder if the family’s mountainous debt from the Manchester United purchase hasn’t tempered their desire to spend whatever necessary to reach the Super Bowl?

But didn’t he say that payroll doesn’t necessarily guarantee more victories?

The Bucs were a very good team in 1999 — a touchdown away from the Super Bowl — but that wasn’t enough for the Glazers. They spent millions to get Keyshawn Johnson. They spent millions more to get Brad Johnson and Simeon Rice.

And spent millions more to get Jeff Faine and Kellen Winslow and Antonio Bryant. Oh wait, that was just recently.

All of that spending led to a Lombardi Trophy in the 2002 season…

Except not necessarily.

…but it also put the team in salary cap trouble.

And that could, at least partially, explain why the Bucs have not spent as much in the seasons that followed.

Welcome to the party, John. Anyone who knows their shit has been saying that for the last four years. You spent that time hating Jon Gruden and Bruce Allen and blaming them for losing.

Former general manager Bruce Allen dramatically cut payroll costs for a couple of seasons to get Tampa Bay back comfortably under the salary cap.

So, yes, that is a legitimate explanation.

But it is not enough.

Bookmark this entry, people. John Romano gave Bruce Allen credit for something.

Other teams have had salary cap woes and still managed to spend more than Tampa Bay.

Yes, the Raiders, the Lions, the 49ers. Model franchises, those.

And no team has had more room under the cap the past two off-seasons, yet the Bucs continue to operate as if they were a corner store with mom and pop counting pennies.

And all they have to show for it is two 9-7 seasons. Not where we’d like them to be, but certainly not as dismal as Romano makes it out. The rest of the article goes on to guess why the Glazers are spending less despite the factual evidence that they aren’t. They just aren’t spending as much as other teams these days.

It’s so easy to blow someone else’s money, isn’t it? I don’t know why the Glazers aren’t keeping up with the rest of the NFL. But I do know that they didn’t get super rich by being bad at managing their money. They know that football fans are generally fickle and will stop spending their paychecks on their teams if they don’t win, so the Glazers will do something to get the team back up to speed. And as this article has said and ignored repeatedly, that may not mean spending more money. They just changed everything about the team. Coaches, players, schemes… it’s all been overhauled. Maybe Romano should wait a year or two and see if that plan works out for the Bucs before accusing the Glazers of neglect.

REAR ENTRIES: Short Stack

June 30, 2009 at 10:26am by Scott   •  No Comments »

JUREVICIUS SUES BROWNS: Old news, but Joe Jurevicius has sued the Cleveland Browns for keeping their training and therapy areas filthy and riddled with disease, much like Brady Quinn’s bedpost, and causing him a staph infection that has essentially ended his career.

An NFL physicians survey of the 32 clubs determined there were 33 MRSA staph infections leaguewide from 2006-08. The Browns had at least six players stricken with some sort of staph infection in recent years.

If your team is responsible for almost 20% of all staph infections league-wide, guess what. You’re gross and you deserve to be sued.

The legal filing in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court included an affidavit by Dr. Bonnie Bock, an infectious diseases specialist from Newport Beach, Calif., who said her examination of the case showed that the player’s staph infection was due to circumstances outlined in the suit.

“Sterile techniques were not at all times used at the Browns training facility,” she said. “Therapy devices commonly used by multiple Browns players were not properly maintained, disinfected or cleaned, if at all at the Browns training facility.”

You like that “if at all” part? Ewww. It’s time to wipe Bernie Kosar’s sweat off the benches. It lost its mojo.

TRENT DILFER WINS SOMETHING: Trent Dilfer has won the Brodie Award, a prize which recognizes the winner’s “accomplishments in both a chosen profession and in the sport of golf”. And if you can think of a more meaningless award, I’d like to hear about it. I mean besides a Golden Globe.

The award is named after John Brodie, who replaced Y.A. Tittle as the 49ers quarterback in the early 60s. Apparently Dilfer and Brodie have been friends for a long time, so this award has special meaning for him. Here’s something else I didn’t know.

When Dilfer joined the 49ers as a quarterback in 2006, he was granted a special request to wear No. 12 (Brodie’s retired number) as a tribute to his mentor and friend.

I was pretty sure Brodie’s number had been retired, but I didn’t remember that it was #12 when I first saw Dilfer in it, so it never registered that he had requested to wear it. Dilfer’s special request doesn’t bother me like Jerry Rice’s did when Rice requested to wear Steve Largent’s #80 in Seattle. Obviously Dilfer and Brodie had a relationship and Dilfer wanted to wear it as a tribute. Rice didn’t give two shits about Largent, he just wanted to wear the number because he had been associated with it for so long in other cities. And then he goes and wears #19 in Denver’s training camp because he doesn’t want to approach Rod Smith about switching? That’s why no one was sad to see you retire, Jerry. Damn, that still aggravates me.

I can’t find a third story worth a damn, so here’s something to look at instead.

REAR ENTRIES: Rapid Fire

June 29, 2009 at 05:34pm by Scott   •  1 Comment »

YASINSKAS LIKES WILKERSON: Pat Yasinskas did a profile on Jimmy Wilkerson last week and called him a potential “breakout player”.

Here’s why I think Wilkerson is ready to do more than any of us expect. You might not know it yet, but this guy’s already a starter. Yes, he’s got precisely six starts in a six-year NFL career. But the fact is, the Bucs have designated Wilkerson as their starting defensive left end.

Well, we did know it, but the point is still valid. Wilkerson will be given every opportunity to fill Kevin Carter’s old role at left DE. I’m still not understanding why the Bucs aren’t putting Gaines Adams on the left side where he was much more effective last year, but I suppose all of that will be revealed in training camp. And for the record, Pat can kiss my ass.

WE’RE NUMBER NINE!: Reader Mark S. sends good links now and then, and he reminded me of a poll that came out last week ranking the Buccaneers as the #9 Team of the Decade. They are the lowest-ranked team with a Super Bowl win, which I don’t really have a problem with. But the Titans being ahead of them with one fewer playoff win should probably be adjusted. A few extra wins in the regular season doesn’t make the Titans more the team of the decade than a Super Bowl victory does. And you can’t count the Music City Miracle because that was the 1999 season.

How’s that? Two reports where I provide my opinion on other writers’ opinions. It’s the laziest form of writing, people. Sorry to have to resort to it this week. It’s either that or just post pictures of hot chicks all week long. And I know you guys hate that.

AGENT CONTROL: This has nothing to do with the Bucs, but I like B.J. Raji’s stand on his relationship with his agent.

“There will be no problem, as far as holding out on my end,” Raji said. “I’m a rookie but from what I’ve been told, holdouts are not necessarily a good thing. Especially a rookie coming in, you can’t afford to miss a week or two of training camp, especially when you’re trying to find a way to get on the field. Yeah, that’s my agency, but I’m in control, not the other way around.”

Too often you’ll hear rookies see rookies hold out and they’ll say something to the effect of “That’s out of my hands, I’m letting my agent handle it.” which is bullshit. It’s up to players to look out for their own best interests and not just leave everything up to the agent. In many cases, agents are looking for the big one-time payout since they get their percentage of money earned at the time and players can dissolve their relationship at any time. For example, high-end rookies are usually better served to get shorter-term contracts so they reach free agency earlier. Mark Sanchez’s agent, David Dunn, was somehow able to talk the Jets into a five-year contract instead of the standard six-year deal that most top picks have to agree to. This will come up big in four years when he is negotiating his big second contract while the rest of his draft class peers are getting frustrated because they’ve blown their rookie signing bonuses on pussy and beer. Mmmm… pussy and beer….

Anyway, yeah for B.J. Raji.

“We Up On It All Day”

June 29, 2009 at 09:45am by Scott   •  No Comments »

The Buccaneers rookies took some local kids from the Boys and Girls Club to Sea World recently. WFLA followed them around and posted some video on TBO.com. The nice thing about the video is that is doesn’t have a voiceover from a newscast; it’s just whatever the camera mic picked up, and it’s so much better than what some talking head could have done. Josh Freeman also does a quick interview at the end about how the Boys and Girls Club is a good thing. I can’t wait to hear his controversial takes on terrorism (bad) and puppies (good!)

Sorry about the screencap. The WFLA media player isn’t that great and doesn’t allow embeds, but you get the idea. I’m not going to bother naming the guys in the picture. I think I know who they are, but it’s hard to tell and if I get them wrong, then I’m the asshole. But I can tell you that they’re excited about riding the Manta and the direction they’ll be facing while on it. (When did Sea World get thrill rides? Last time I went it was just animal shows and dolphin feeding and when you left you smelled like walrus ass. Is this what happens when the Belgians buy you?)

This is what’s going to pass for Buccaneer news this week, so prepare for fluff and filler through Wednesday, after which I will be taking the rest of the week off for my traditional Fourth of July vacation. If you see something Bucs-related while surfing other sites, first of all eat my shorts for going to other Buc sites and secondly, send it on in.

“…And Even Dexter Jackson”

June 28, 2009 at 11:49am by Scott   •  6 Comments »

Rick Stroud posted an interview with Mark Dominik yesterday where he covered a few of the major topics that are ongoing through the offseason. The most sensationalistic one is whether or not the Bucs are going to pursue Plaxico Burress.

Dominik indicated the Bucs have no interest in signing former Giants receiver Plaxico Burress at this time.

I never really thought it would happen, but the quote from Dominik about who else they’re going to look at is priceless.

“We’re going to let Brian Clark, Maurice Stovall and even Dexter Jackson compete and go from there,” Dominik said.

“Hey, it could be ANYONE. The waterboy, the groundskeeper… hell, even Dexter Jackson. We’re THAT crazy.” Jackson is so gone. I can’t imagine a scenario where he is one of the six best receivers in camp. Unless Sammie Stroughter and Kelly Campbell collide during camp and tear each other’s ACLs in the process, Jackson’s on the waiver wire after the final preseason game. And the fact that Brian Clark’s name was the first out of Dominik’s mouth seems like a good indication that he’s making a positive impression.

Dominik also mentioned the fact that he’d like to see Josh Freeman sit for a while behind a veteran.

“I still think he’s a 21-year-old quarterback who came out as a true junior,” Dominik said of Freeman. “You’d like for him to grow and mature into his role and not be forced into it.”

This contradicts what Greg Olson said a couple weeks ago when he said we may see Freeman sooner rather than later. Dominik and Raheem Morris have the final say, so it sounds like maybe putting the best quarterback on the field is the goal after all? If that’s the case, we should see Luke McCown starting the season.

Dominik said the race between veterans Luke McCown and Byron Leftwich is extremely close

No it’s not. And that’s not how he’s even quoted.

“It should be very wide open,” Dominik said. “The competition still is ongoing. The important thing about what they did in the OTA’s as a group is that they got a foundation of the offense and showed an ability to grasp it mentally and then go out and operate it on the field. That’s why we’re anxious to put the pads on and see how they do in the (preseason) games.”

He didn’t say anything about it being close. He said it’s “wide open” which means no decision has been made yet.

I’m just going to stay positive either way. If Freeman starts, he starts learning earlier, which is good in the long run even though they may sacrifice some victories in the process. If he sits, I get to see how McCown looks and whether my irrational support of him has been justified. And if, in some weird alternate reality, Leftwich starts, I can stop paying for my DVR because his movements are so slow that I’ll never need to rewind to see what he did.

Does Florio Own A Calendar?

June 26, 2009 at 11:23am by Scott   •  7 Comments »

Mike Florio posted an article yesterday quoting a SOURCE who said that One Buc Place is basically deserted.

“One Buc Place has become a ghost town,” the source said, who estimated that half of the non-football staff has been laid off.

The source also said that the Buccaneers also have laid off their security guards.

“Anybody can drive into the facility and walk inside,” the source said. “At OTAs there were fans that actually walked up and watched practice from a fence that was only 10-20 yards from the players. Public relations staff asked the fans to leave.”

First, let’s take a look at the calendar. Hmm… June 26. The players aren’t due back until July 31, coaches are all on vacation, scouts have nothing to look at right now, no one needs kitchen staff or laundry staff or much of anyone when there’s NOTHING HAPPENING. This happens every year. Mid-June through mid-July are when people take vacations in football. Way to put a sensationalist spin on a mundane story. I’m surprised Florio didn’t file missing persons reports for all the Buccaneer staff. Where did they all go?!? Are the Glazers saving money on food by cooking and eating their own staff? Are the Glazers cannibals? One source says, “Yes, definitely. What’s a cannibal?”

In all fairness, I can definitely see the Glazers forcing staff to use their vacation time now or laying them off until mid-July in order to save money. That wouldn’t surprise me. The security guard thing is almost completely unbelievable, though. In my experience, they keep that place locked up tight, so if there was some time when fans were able to get in, I would have to guess that it was a one-time deal when maybe someone missed a shift or something. If you can count on the Bucs for anything, it’s to adhere pretty strictly to their own company policies, and one of them is to keep outsiders the fuck out.

UPDATE: HA! Never let it be said that Florio doesn’t have readers. The Buccaneers just posted an article announcing new staff additions. They were sure to include the little people, too.

Buccaneers.com previously reported the naming of Digger Daley as director of football administration in May. The team has also added four new scouts and personnel assistants and awarded new posts to two returning members of the personnel staff.

You know they’re serious when they announce the hiring of “personnel assistants”. Regardless of the obvious timing of this article to counteract the PFT effect, it seems apparent that the pirate ship isn’t sinking just yet.

Cheerleaders are considered staff, right?

No Amount Of Money Could Buy Haynesworth

June 26, 2009 at 09:42am by Scott   •  2 Comments »

Reader Mark S. was the first to send me a note about the statement Albert Haynesworth made regarding his decision to go to Washington instead of Tampa despite the fact that the Bucs offered more money. I appreciate all the tips since by the time the story broke I was responding to all my “Did you hear Michael Jackson died?!?!?” texts. The only shock is that it didn’t happen 20 years earlier, people. He’d have been remembered as a god if he had just sucked on a 16-gauge as soon as the Dirty Diana video wrapped. Instead, now he’s the weirdo kid-toucher who hung babies over balconies by their feet and had to sell his amusement park home and flee the country with blankets over his childrens’ faces. Hell, Michael Hutchence took the dignified way out compared to Jackson. And stop telling me “But Thriller was such a great album!” Of course it was. And O.J. Simpson was a great running back.

Sorry. I’ve obviously been talking about this for a while now. Back to Haynesworth.

“They offered me a whole lot more, and even with their tax situation, it could have been 20 percent more. But you look at Washington, they’ve got a lot of the pieces together. They’re right there. They’re in a huge market. It’s one of the largest markets in the world. You’ve just got a large, huge media outlet and it can be life beyond football. Going to Tampa, I mean, great city. Looking at it from the off-season standpoint, I love the water. I love to be out in the sun. It’s just awesome, but it would’ve been like another Nashville. Tampa doesn’t have that big market and they don’t have a huge fan base like the Washington Redskins do, so I think it was just a choice just to look at it that way.”

This is a well-crafted statement made to appeal to Redskin fans. “Other teams offered me so much more money, but Washington has the best fans in the world! You can’t put a price on that!” It really shouldn’t be a shock that he said something like this.

When he signed with Washington, Haynesworth mentioned that the Great February Purge didn’t help the situation, either.

“You couldn’t really say that, but cutting a bunch of those guys and having a bunch of new starters didn’t help the situation any.”

The only thing that’s a little strange is that Raheem Morris said specifically that the bidding got too high for Haynesworth’s services and the Bucs bowed out.

“We did make a bid for Albert (Haynesworth). It didn’t work out. We felt it went past our limit where we wanted to go, where we were comfortable going and we didn’t go there. We feel good about that.”

Morris isn’t the general manager, so he may not have been privy to all the dealings that were taking place. But if we’re to take everyone at their word, it seems that Haynesworth really didn’t want to come to Tampa and no amount of money was going to sway him. Haynesworth mentioned it would have been a 20% increase over Washington. He’s guaranteed $41-million now, so he’s saying he passed up over $49-million guaranteed, which shatters the record for money in the bank. And Haynesworth loves money, so he got a real bad vibe from Tampa.

It’s kind of sad that the Bucs’ reputation took such a hit in the span of a few months. Jon Gruden was a master recruiter and could cover up any perceived flaws the Bucs had with his charisma — long enough to get free agents to sign, anyway. Now the Bucs are ranked as the #24 team by fans who voted on NFL.com, the lowest-ranked team with a winning record for 2008. But maybe now the talk that Mark Dominik didn’t try hard enough to land quality free agents can stop. If no amount of money can buy a player who is all about the money, there’s more wrong than Dominik can fix by himself.

Grab That Cash With Both Hands And Make A Stash

June 25, 2009 at 01:37pm by Scott   •  6 Comments »

Mike Florio of PFT did a small bit on an interview Mark Dominik did with WQYK in Tuesday. Most of it has to do with how much cap room the Bucs have spent, but first I want to cover how much they had to start with. Here’s Florio’s quote:

In his recent radio appearance on WQYK in Tampa, Buccaneers G.M. Mark Dominik made a stunning claim regarding the team’s offseason spending in 2009.

“We started free agency with over $80 million in cap room,” Dominik said. “And we’ve spent almost $60 million.”

Um, really?

For starters, the notion that the Bucs had $80 million in 2009 cap space far exceeds all estimates and reports of their actual spending room.

I wonder if Florio actually listened to the interview or if he just depended on someone else to give him the broad strokes. Here is the full-length interview. It’s 20MB, so if you’re reading this over a phone or something, wait until you get home. A few minutes in, Dominik says this:

“I think the misnomer is that we started free agency with over $80-million of cap room.”

Those first six words are kind of important. They actually change the entire meaning of what Dominik says. I don’t think “misnomer” is the word he was looking for. More like “misunderstanding” or “misconception”. But whatever. The way Florio reports it is like asking a suspect if he committed a crime and he says, “There’s no way that I did it” and Florio only quotes the last three words.

That aside, his bigger point in his post is that Dominik claims to have spent “almost $60-million of cap room” (another direct quote from the interview — that part he gets right) and that number seems very high.

The suggestion that the team has spent $60 million this year seems flat-out incredible.

As in not credible.

As in not true.

I would have argued that maybe Dominik is trying to add up the total values of all the contracts that have been signed and passing that off as their total spending, but he makes the effort to emphasize the words “cap room” in the interview, so that’s not the case.

Maybe the guaranteed dollars add up to $60-million? Kellen Winslow gets about $20-million, Antonio Bryant gets about $10-million… hmm… Michael Clayton got $10.5-million, Derrick Ward got $6-million, Luke McCown got $5-million. That’s about $51-million. I think Angelo Crowell got $3-million guaranteed. Add in the rookies and the non-marquee guys I’m not mentioning and you can probably get up to $60-million.

In this “last capped year” scenario the league is currently dealing with, maybe all guaranteed money accelerates and hits the books this year? That seems unlikely, but I’m not up to speed enough on this aspect of the CBA to speak intelligently about it. But I think there’s enough grey area there that you can’t go calling Dominik “not credible”.

Oh, and as long as I’m reporting on that interview, Dominik was asked about Barrett Ruud’s extension situation. He never really answered the question about why they haven’t done it yet, as one would expect. But he did mention two reasons in passing. One was the CBA situation, which is a nice crutch. The other was this:

“It’s important for us to see him in the new system.”

He kind of blew through the quote and the interviewer didn’t follow up on it. But at least what I gathered from it is that they want to see how well Ruud adapts to the new scheme before determining how much they should give him. It seems clear that they’re going to do something at some time for him. Like Dominik said, you don’t plaster a guy’s picture on the side of your stadium if you don’t intend on keeping him around for a while. But I guess his potential in the new system is going to determine how much love they give him.

I suppose that’s fair, but it still seems a little dirty. The whole regime and system changed right when Ruud was going to get his big post-rookie contract based on the excellent work he had already done. It’s an unfortunate coincidence for Ruud. Of course, one could make the argument that the defense’s poor play in December caused the regime change, and Ruud was definitely part of the group that didn’t play up to their standards. Makes you think. [strokes chin thoughtfully]