Sheldon Brown softens stance, will report to minicamp
by JasonB on Apr 28, 2009 2:00 PM EDT
in Philadelphia Eagles News
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This little nugget has been mentioned in the fanposts and fanshots, but it's certainly worth mentioning again. Disgruntled CB Sheldon Brown will report to the Eagles' mandatory mini camp this weekend.
"Yeah, I'll be there," he said as he boarded a plane in South Carolina
He also said his comments from last week didn't mean he'd all of a sudden become a "villain"
"You can take that in another light," he said. "I'm the leader on the football team, and it's bad for players to see me in a situation where I'm not happy. But I'm not going to blow up the NovaCare Complex. I'm not going to be one of the guys who puts on a show week in and week out when the media comes to my locker."
That's certainly a better stance than "you don't want me in that locker room." Sheldon may be angry and may or may not be right... but he didn't become a bad guy overnight. This sounds more like the Sheldon I know.
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Does this mean he's now regruntled?
rim shot
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Bear Bryant
Gruntled
is actually a word. Hopefully he’ll feel gruntled in the morning.
My grundle, at the moment, however, is feeling disgruntled. F’n heat.
Business is Business
I know I am in the minority here but I still feel this has all been a business move by Sheldon. Get what you can while you can. Did he do it the right way? No. Did he make big mistakes along the way? Absolutely. Big time. Should the Eagles budge? Hell no. At the same time, I have never felt he was some evil bastard who was going to bring down the team, ala TO. Sheldon learned from Troy Vincent. That is his mentor. Troy was all about getting what you can while you can. I still feel one of two things will happen. He will either play as the Sheldon we have come to know or he will be moved and get more money. I still don’t see this being a big problem in the end.
Great post, I think this is how we should all view the situation.
At first I felt like I just got bitchslapped by Sheldon, and then I realized that my fanhood was clouding my ability to think rationally. The guy just wants money, it’s not like he’s criticizing his coaches or starting drama with teammates. Granted, I disagree with him 100% and so does our FO, but the guy is just trying to get his piece of the pie. He came out with his demand for more money, and that’s that. He probably won’t get it here, so eventually I see him switching teams. Normally I would care, but he lost that bleeding green appeal that he used to have, so if he must leave then so be it.
"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -Joe Theismann
by southjersey89 on Apr 28, 2009 3:23 PM EDT up reply actions
BTW, my personal prediction is that Sheldon will stay put this season because he has lost all leverage due to the Ellis Hobbs signing. He will play harder than ever to secure his value in the trade market, and then our FO will let him go get his money elsewhere in the offseason next year.
"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -Joe Theismann
by southjersey89 on Apr 28, 2009 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions
Totally behind Sheldon
This is just business, so long as Sheldon plays hard still and doesnt add any drama, which I dont think he will do. It seems a little two faced for the Eagles and their fans to get on a guy for wanting more money when he can play, as the Eagles dont bleed their hearts out for veterans at all — Dawkins, Hugh Douglas, Kearse, a bunch of other guys I cant remember — once you get to a certain age, it doesnt matter how much you and the Eagles love each other, they simply are going to drop you.
That is business too, and that is how the Eagles stay so competitive so consistently. There is no need for that or for the current issue with Sheldon to get personal at all, and hopefully it doesnt.
In a lot of ways, both sides made out pretty well with the contract — the Eagles get a star player pretty cheap for a lot of years, and Sheldon got a big signing bonus, and a decent amount of guaranteed money — it turned out that Sheldon might have been able to earn more if he signed a shorter contract with less guaranteed money, but hey, he may get (hopefully not) injured on the first play of the first preseason game and never fully recover. These things happen, and then he will be thankful he has that long contract with the guaranteed money.
Also, I dont know how this could work, but privately could the Eagles and Brown work out a deal where he gets a few incentive based bonuses, so that if he does have a great year or two in the next couple of years he will get a little extra dosh. I am not sure how this would effect other guys and their contracts, and that is the big issue I geuss. Otherwise, it seems like a no brainer - if Eagles win Superbowl, Brown gets 250,000 extra, if Brown goes to Pro Bowl he gets 250,000 extra -
Then you say to Brown, just play like a star and you can go far ;)
I could be very very wrong about this, but in my mind I compare the Sheldon situation to the T.J. Houshmandzadeh situation.
Last season, Houshmandzadeh clearly was not happy playing for the Bengals. He was set to become a free agent once the season ended, and he knew every game he played would decide his value as a free agent. When we played the Bengals this season, Houshmandzadeh said something to the likes of, “I just made plays and put in my resume for Andy Reid to look at”.
That is exactly how Sheldon should look at this. Sure, Sheldon is not set to become a free agent for a few more years, but I think he will get what he is looking for (money) if he continues to show his abilities on the football field. Let’s hypothetically assume the Ellis Hobbs signing puts enough pressure on Sheldon that he has an absolutely amazing season. Well in my mind, the Eagles would be obligated to give the man his money or trade him if that were the case. If he is mature and professional, comes out and plays hard every game, and has a good season, then I would not be opposed to him getting what he deserves. If he wants to pull the Lito route and half-ass it, then he can be benched and his value will most likely plummet.
I personally think Sheldon will have a great season, and then he will get rewarded after all is said and done, whether it be by the Eagles or another NFL team.
"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -Joe Theismann
by southjersey89 on Apr 28, 2009 3:58 PM EDT up reply actions
copycat?
did sheldon’s comments resemble the newest O-lineman mr. peters from a year ago? make a little stink, still play well, then next year demand a new contract or trade? this may pan out the exact same way peters did for us… only for some other team… also we wont be getting any 1st’s for sheldon…
Except...
Peters is a 27 year old two time pro-bowl LT.
Sheldon’s a young probowler right?
by AshburnAlley on Apr 28, 2009 3:42 PM EDT up reply actions
Just when I was starting to hate him, he does that! Sheldon, stop toying with us!
City of Champions!
BrianS can’t hate Sheldon Brown, even when BrianS doesn’t agree with Sheldon Brown.
BrianS appreciates Sheldon Brown trying to not cause any more trouble.
I wonder if I can bill Jeff Lurie and Peter Angelos for the years of therapy their teams are going to put me through.
Channeling...
I feel a channeling of Gilda Radner… “NE-VER MIND!”
---AstrosFan (Austin Lawyer and Sports Fan)
it's all crap
He said he’s showin up to camp so he’s in shape to play for whatever team the EAGLES trade him to…
"Eagles fans are a passionate group who love their team," said McNabb, "if not the actual players. It's not like winning a Super Bowl before the first month of the season is the hardest thing they've ever asked of me. That'd be all those times they asked me to go kill myself."
by greenbean#twoOH on Apr 28, 2009 5:22 PM EDT reply actions
I'm 50/50
I don’t really want to get rid of him but I think he really crossed the line when he tried to bring other players into the conflict. He should have let his agent do the talking.
Phil Sheridan makes a pretty good case for dumping his ass.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/sports/20090428_Phil_Sheridan__Time_to_cut_Sheldon_Brown_loose.html
The road to victory!
all you guys
you all talk shit on sheldon .. i told u he didnt do anything wrong and he would show up and play .. he can ask for more money .. its his god given right
by jack is better than asante on Apr 28, 2009 6:05 PM EDT reply actions
its his god given right
Please cite your reference…
And you can come back and say this when he actually does show up and play and not cause problems… There’s a difference between saying and doing
"I tried to run him over but Eli had his big boy pads on and he kind of stopped me from getting in the end zone. The next time I’ll try to jump over his head.’’ - Asante Samuel
Equal rights
And its managements right to tell him to honor his contract. Either way, I guess this weekends aquisitions got his attention!
He can ask for more money, but he can’t threaten that his unhappiness will affect his play, he can’t say stuff like "you don’t want me in that lockeroom, he can’t bring up other teammates and say they should be unhappy with their contracts… That’s the stuff that annoys me.
Agreed 100%
Anything that translates to “I’m going to be a problem for the Eagles” or “I want more money, and I don’t care what happens to the Eagles” bugs me. Obviously, as an Eagles fan.
You say, look, “I’ve put my body on the line 112 games in a row for the good of the Eagles franchise/team,” and I’d appreciate it if the Eagles to put a little more on the line for me, and I think you win over 75% of the people he just turned off. Especially if you consider dude was swimming in a cauldron of fan goodwill up until this point.
Maybe he doesn’t care about fan/media perception, but when you’re well aware the Eagles FO holds all the cards and is planning to stonewall you, I don’t know why you wouldn’t use public perception to your advantage.
BL: He was trying to get another team to make an offer for him around draft day the way the Eagles did for Peters. It didn’t work.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
Thanks goodness
We are much stronger with Sheldon- this is probably not over but it looks like we took a step in the right direction
Seventy-one percent of the world is covered by water, the rest is covered by Brian Dawkins
Hopefully his take is ...
… play my tail off, win the Super Bowl, and get dealt to a corner-desperate team in the aftermath.
There’s definitely the danger of seeing how Lito sucked and still got out, and following that path, but it seems Sheldon realizes the best way out is to play your way out. (or in … to a new deal)
I thought it was cool that he said his top priority was to stay with the Eagles, but in the same breath he says money is more important and he’d prefer to play for a crappy team that paid him a lot. So I don’t know what to make of that.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
The double-good news is ...
… as a fan of the Eagles (rather than as a fan of individual players), we really don’t have to expend a whole lot more emotion on this since we’d be better with Sheldon on board, but could survive with Hanson/Hobbs.
Obviously the local media will poke at this when camp begins, especially if no other storylines develop. But sounds like it won’t fester.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
Sheldon's got a pretty good grasp of the situation
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Unhappy cornerback Sheldon Brown says he’ll report to the Eagles’ mandatory minicamp this weekend so that he’s prepared to play somewhere this season.
And he knows that he might still be in Philadelphia — and not playing.
Brown wants a trade from the team he began his career with in 2002 and speculated he could be bumped from the starting lineup after the Eagles acquired cornerback Ellis Hobbs from New England last weekend. Still, the seven-year veteran will be at the NovaCare Complex beginning Friday to avoid daily fines of up to $14,000.
"I have to prepare to play the season, no matter where I’m playing," Brown said. "This is where the season starts."
Brown went public earlier this month with his wish for a new contract or a trade after team president Joe Banner, in a radio interview, denied Brown had any dissatisfaction with his current deal, which runs through 2012.
The team responded with a terse statement making it clear that Brown will not get a new deal, nor will any Eagles player with four years remaining on his contract.
On the second day of the NFL draft last weekend, Philadelphia sent a pair of fifth-round draft picks to the Patriots for Hobbs, who was a third-round draft pick by New England in 2005 and a starter the past two seasons.
The trade gives Philadelphia some options at cornerback, a group that also includes Pro Bowl player Asante Samuel, who was a teammate of Hobbs in New England, and the recently re-signed Joselio Hanson. The Eagles also drafted Virginia Tech cornerback Victor Harris in the fifth round on Sunday.
"If I get demoted to the fourth corner, that’s the way it will be," Brown said. "I fought for what I believed in and that’s how it’s always going to be with me. If Ellis is good, he’ll play, I know that. Everybody knows that. They’ve been trying to give my job away every year."
Since becoming a starter in the Super Bowl season of 2004, Brown has not missed a game. He played through a sports hernia injury one season and through a shoulder injury that ultimately required surgery another year.
Brown said the Eagles questioned Lito Sheppard, who has since been traded, for not playing through injuries, but fails to reward players who do.
"They don’t care about that," he said.
Brown said his first preference remains to get a new deal and play for the Eagles.
"I doubt that is going to happen," he said.
His next choice is to be traded, but even with the addition of Hobbs, he also isn’t sure that will happen.
"Anything is possible," he said. "But I’m sure I’m going to be here."
Brown said he’ll report to camp with no regrets about signing his current deal in 2004 or going public with his unhappiness earlier this month.
"I did the right thing, then," he said of signing the long-term contract. "I was a starter making the minimum, a couple hundred thousand a year. And I knew the repercussions of what I’m doing now. People want to blame my agent, but it’s not my agent. He’s not telling me what to do. My agent works for me."
So Brown said he’ll show up on Friday because, as of now, he still works for the Eagles.
Some of those quotes are telling.
He obviously knows the Eagles have the upper hand, and he’s been paying attention when guys have tried to do this before.
He obviously knows that if he plays well, he will increase his trade value, regardless of if the trade happens right away or sometime in the future.
He takes responsibility for signing the first long-term deal.
He feels motivated by Ellis Hobbs’s presence, yet no ill will toward Hobbs.
He still refers to himself as a team leader (I think that was in a different story, but anyway … )
I still don’t like it, but it sounds like it could’ve been a lot worse.
And he does have a point about the Eagles knocking Lito’s health but not rewarding his. Unfortunately, that’s about all he has, a good point.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
Yep
This has been my point all along. I don’t feel like people were taking his history into consideration before the entire Eagle fandom just villified the guy. I think he knew what he was doing and did so as as a business motive. Just the same way that the Eagles handle the players as a business. But the the bottom line is that he has always been a class act guy who works his tail off. He has never spouted off before. And if you look at everything he has said throughout this mess, he has made some valid points. He just got into trouble by trying to over explain his situation. It was a no win situation and he kept opening his mouth and making it worse. The next thing you know everyone on this site wants him dead because he is going to be a cancer in the locker room and let receivers run past him into the end zone. I agree with Foos, if his agent had handled the media aspect and the first comments out of Sheldon sounded like the ones we read today, this would be a non issue.
I will throw out one last point about some of the “retarted” things he said. I think he got too emotional about Banner’s comments and reacted. Again, he should have let someone else do the talking. Since it is uncharacteristic of the Eagles to respond to this kind of thing publicly, I am guessing Sheldon took those comments personally. The reality is that they were just trying to make a stand before other players got the same idea.
"They’ve been trying to give my job away every year."
I think that’s BS. Everyone on this team has to deal with competition. Sheldon has continually won those battles and it has made him a better player. He was coming off a poor year when the team signed Will James and JJ said that James would have a chance to start.
JJ was trying to light a fire under Sheldon and it worked.
Yeah, that comment rubbed me the wrong way ...
… he says it as though adding players and trying to improve the team is a personal affront.
He’s smart enough to know, and given a chance would probably admit, that a team has to improve itself any way it can, that depth is helpful, especially in the secondary and especially behind players who play at a high level (since an injury to a player like that can devastate a team with high hopes).
Part of me remembers the kind of tunnel vision players have, that everything is competitive and everything is the world against them. You need to think like that to work as hard as you’re required to work to be that good.
But I really don’t think they’ve been trying to give his job away. The fans & media, maybe. The team … they could have easily gone with Lito over Sheldon last year and used Pro Bowl selections to justify it. If anything, he got the benefit of the doubt last time.
I also wonder is Sheldon knew he was poised to be the new Dawk and that by becoming a household name or the face of the Eagles’ defense that he stood to gain financially, potentially … though maybe not more than if he got a new contract. But he was clearly aware that battling the Eagles’ FO was a high-risk gamble with a low chance of paying off.
I agree with foos05 and Dawk … you come out and say “I’ve made 112 consecutive starts, I haven’t whined one time, I put my body on the line for the good of this team, you think I could get rewarded for that.” I realize he probably did that behind closed doors for the past year, but framed that way he comes off more like Westbrook and less like Lito.
He’s obviously trying to make one more money grab before he turns 35 and doesn’t know what he wants to do for work for the next 30 years. Can’t blame him for that. But I never like to hear a guy put himself above the team.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
I just think he didn't have the balls to follow through with what he started
If he was going to make a stink like that, precedent shows this organization will get their way one way or another. Now it just seems like he’s trying to “squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube” as they say. Well it’s gonna take a little more than some words to win me back.
“Pandora doesn’t go back in the box, she only comes out!”
"I want to maintain my flexibility."
-Andy Reid
I don't think it's an issue of balls at all ...
… I think Sheldon’s smart enough to realize that with no contract leverage and a replacement already on the roster, that he’s painted into a corner and can only win more money by playing well and getting traded (or, inexplicably, rewarded by the Eagles) later.
Still waiting for the Eagles to Bring It Home For Jerome
i really don’t care for this “i was never loved by the FO” attitude from brown. sure he has been a good player for the eagles over the years but it’s not like he has been a shutdown corner by any means. twice a year, he got his butt handed to him by plaxico and he routinely got beat by deep balls. the reason why he was considered to move to the safety spot was b/c he could tackle but he was becoming a liability on deep passes.
i understand that he is 30 years old and is looking to cash in before he gets any older. if this is the only way that he thinks can get it done then he is being short-sighted. let your agent do his job behind close doors. isn’t that why you pay him the 30% commission? why jeopardize your legacy as a great eagle by involving yourself in business matters and make yourself look greedy and selfish? furthermore, aren’t agents suppose to protect their clients from acting foolishly in public? i just don’t get it…
on opposite point of view, i noticed that the steelers rewarded hine ward with a 5-year extension even though he probably has a good year or two left in his tank. this is mark of an organization that values it’s loyal players. i couldn’t help comparing this situation to what happened with b. dawk… as much as i try to despise our cross state rivals, i just can’t help but respecting them more and more…
by ringordietryin on Apr 28, 2009 10:02 PM EDT reply actions
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