Quote:
Originally Posted by barrett
A few things. (1) Dunta was far better than mediocre in 2007 and before. (2) We had no choice but to pay Dunta while he was hurt. It wasn't like we did it out of the goodness of our heart. (3) He is our best option at CB if healthy and would be one of our 2 best this year even if he doesn't make it all the back.
Make him play for the franchise tag and buy yourself a year in the negotiations to see if he can still play like he did pre-injury. If he doesn't like it he will sit out and not get paid and hurt his own value for other teams.
So I have no problem with Dunta trying to get paid (especially since he is looking at what might be his one big payday in a league heavily slanted to the owners), and I have no problem with the Texans not paying a guy coming off of a serious injury. Lets just let it play out. We haven't even hit training camp yet.
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Dunta was better than mediocre in 2007, but his best year by far was his rookie year when he exceeded expectations for a rookie corner. He hasn't played at that same level since then. I blame a lot of it on scheme...but that doesn't change the fact that he hasn't performed as well as I had hoped he had.
I have zero problem with him for trying to maximize his money right now. I think he's taking the negotiations a little too personnel, but I guess it's hard not too sometimes. I'm not a fan of some of the comments he made publicly either. I think it should be handled a different way, but it's his contract not mine. If he were to ask me for my advice I would tell him that he should have taken the 23 Mill deal...if that's what he really got offered. It's entirely possible that the the Texans slipped a big roster bonus on the back end of the contract that they included in the gauranteed money when it "accidentally" got leaked to the media. Pure speculation, but if they did something like that then Dunta is smart enough to know that he would be released before ever seeing that big bonus. He would probably also feel like the Texans were just trying to make him look. You never know.
He's very aware of how fragile an NFL career is. This is probably his one shot at a really big deal. Very few players get a shot at more than 1 big free agent deal. Holdouts happen all the time, we've just had very few players of a high enough caliber for it to be an issue. Every year guys get included on the "potential" free agents list and everyone starts drooling over who they might be able to sign next year. Most of the marquee names end up staying with their team. We don't know what's being said behind closed doors, and that's why I'm just can't get too worked up over this. He's here this year for sure unless something wild happens. Beyond that there's nothing to do but wait and see.