Will Vinatieri get a tag or ticket out of town?

The Patriots have 11 days to decide whether to make kicker Adam Vinatieri their franchise player or let him join the team's free agents.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

BY TOM E. CURRAN
Journal Sports Writer

Even though they were the team that built a better mousetrap for the new-era NFL, the Patriots find their reward is simply to keep doing it.

The most immediate issue they face is with placekicker Adam Vinatieri -- the sport's ultimate closer. Vinatieri will be a free agent March 3 unless the team opts to apply the franchise tag to him again this year, as they did in 2005.

Vinatieri doesn't know what New England has planned.

"I haven't heard a word about anything," Vinatieri said from his offseason Florida home. "I figure it will be one of those things where, when they know, I'll know. I honestly try not to think about it. I've just left it as hopefully we get something done."

The Patriots have until Feb. 23 -- 11 days from now -- to put the franchise tag on Vinatieri. But for a player such as Vinatieri, the franchise tag is onerous.

Normally, a franchised player receives a one-year salary equal to the average of the top-five salaries at his position. But if the player already is the highest-paid at his position -- as Vinatieri is -- he gets a 20 percent raise over the previous season. Last year, Vinatieri's 20 percent raise gave him a salary of $2,509,000. If the Pats franchise him again, they'll pay him $3,010,800 in 2006.

Asked whether he had an inkling on which way the Patriots would go, Vinatieri said: "I don't. That number gets pretty high, and I know that in the past they don't want to be at the top of the scale (for a position)."

Perhaps more than any other position, the franchise tag favors a kicker as much as the team. Since the franchise tag is, in essence, a one-year contract with no signing bonus or guaranteed money, position players who get tagged are up the creek if they suffer a career-threatening injury. A franchised running back who blows out his knee or injures his neck would have gotten a nice one-year salary but lost his future earning potential.

Kickers generally don't get in harm's way enough to be in that kind of peril. Still, a level of security is valued by any employee and -- after having been franchised twice since 2002 (the Pats tagged Vinatieri, then worked out a two-year deal soon after in early 2002) -- Vinatieri would prefer a long-term deal to getting tagged.

Vinatieri is just one of several Patriots hitting free agency this offseason.

Wide receiver David Givens, tackle Tom Ashworth, right guard Stephen Neal, wide receiver/punt returner Troy Brown and tight end Christian Fauria all hit the market, as well.

A measure of hand-wringing accompanies every offseason, especially for a team as successful as New England. Players poised to leave have made contributions to championship seasons. Some repeatedly. The onus is on the Patriots' personnel department, headed by vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli, to look objectively at situations and make decisions bereft of emotion.

Troy Brown, for instance, may be the best pure football player ever to play for the Patriots. He may epitomize everything this team's been about since early 2001. But who he is takes a backseat at this time of year to questions of value, upside and whether or not a better option exists.

With Vinatieri, the Patriots are going to face a question of value. Do they want to franchise him at better than $3 million this season? Or do they have the temerity to let him hit the open market without an effort to sign him? If Vinatieri gets to free agency without New England making a run at getting him signed long-term, the chances of having to watch one of the NFL's greatest kickers using his right foot at another address will go sky-high.

Adam Vinatieri Signs Historical Guaranteed Contract

NFL peace guaranteed, salaries aren't
Aug. 12-18, 2002

In the swelter of twice-daily practices in the August sun, nothing quite focuses the mind of an NFL player like knowing he could be out of work within the hour. "That's the NFL," said Byron Chamberlain, Minnesota's starting tight end. "No security. Guys feel they can be cut at any time."

Most of them can be. NFL contracts, unlike those in the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, are rarely guaranteed. Only 3 percent of players, 58 of about 1,800, will get paid this season regardless of whether they make an NFL team.

That includes New England Patriots' place-kicker Adam Vinatieri, who in March signed a heralded, $5.375 million contract that is almost completely guaranteed. Far from being a harbinger of a new era, though, Vinatieri's contract is an aberration. Only players with at least four years' tenure are even guaranteed a paycheck from week to week once they've made an NFL roster. All the others can be cut on a whim and never get another dollar.

NFL owners are merely playing by the rules they negotiated with the National Football League Players Association in the 1993 collective-bargaining agreement, which was extended last year through the 2007 season and remains largely intact. While the NFLPA's ballyhooed "partnership" with the league ensures labor peace, and such peace is partly responsible for a substantial growth in television revenue and franchise values, it has come at a cost. Other leagues take guaranteed contracts as a given, but in the NFL they're more rumor than reality.

Despite the NFLPA's best efforts and the gains players have made in average salary and other benefits in recent years, a football team that finds its fortunes taking an unexpected bad turn, or that simply wants to cut payroll, doesn't have to figure out ways to offload players with heavy contracts, as baseball and basketball teams do. It can simply release them and be free of obligation, making those players wonder exactly what those union dues were for.

It happened in Baltimore after last season. Nearly two dozen contributors on a 10-6 Ravens team that advanced to last season's AFC semifinals — including starting quarterback Elvis Grbac, tight end Shannon Sharpe, wide receiver Qadry Ismail, safety Rod Woodson and defensive tackle Sam Adams — have not returned for 2002.

"I had seven and a half million dollars left on my contract," said Sharpe, who was released midway through a four-year deal and later signed with Denver for a substantially smaller salary. "It isn't like I'm going to go hungry here, but I wouldn't say the system worked for me. It didn't."