Write On Sports LLC - "Sick I Tell You Sick: A Perspective on the Deion Branch Holdout" by Sean Sweeney

Sick I Tell You Sick: A Perspective on the Deion Branch Holdout

2006-09-08 00:04:15 | By: Sean Sweeney

Sick, I tell you, sick.

This whole tete-a-tete between the New England Patriots and wide receiver Deion Branch has made me sick. To be honest, I need a heaping helping of Pepto Bismol over this whole thing, and unfortunately there is none in the house.

In case you haven’t heard, Branch and his agent have filed a grievance with the National Football League’s Players Association claiming the once-removed Super Bowl champions have handled the proposed trade of the wide receiver poorly and reneged on their promise to trade him.

So let me get this straight: the Patriots did what any other professional club would do – turn down a trade that in their eyes didn’t make sense nor improve their team – and Branch and his cronies are upset over that? And now that New England has filed a grievance over Branch’s grievances – apparently they and the NFL believe the arbitrator that Branch selected doesn’t have the jurisdiction to handle this and want a league-appointed mediator to hear the arguments – relations between the team and the player are at the breaking point.

As I write this diatribe, today’s Boston Globe hasn’t hit the Internet and today’s Boston Herald only devoted a few lines to the Branch saga in its online edition – head coach Bill Belichick said, “Sure don’t” when the great John Tomase asked if he had any updates. The usual suspects – espn.com, si.com – didn’t have any updates either, but there was supposed to be a conference call last night between the Player’s Association and the NFL’s Management Council to try to find a way to resolve the situation. Obviously, details of that haven’t been leaked – erm, shared – with the Fourth Estate.

The way I see it, the Patriots were well within their rights to reject the trade that they so graciously allowed Branch and his agent to seek. Seattle and the New York Jetropolitans had reportedly came to an agreement on respective contracts with Branch, but New England didn’t like the compensation they would receive in return.

That happens a lot in professional sports. The Patriots wanted at least a first-round pick and second day draft choices in exchange for the first stringer: hey, they have to cover their own rear ends and be able to step to the podium and tell Patriots Nation that they made a trade that would benefit them in the long run. Those two teams didn’t come to the table with something the Patriots felt was tangible enough, so they rejected it.

Branch, obviously, is worth what they wanted: the former second-round selection has made a name for himself in Foxboro, where he has already claimed a Super Bowl MVP trophy for his mantle and two Super Bowl rings. Dissenters to that may look to his stat line: he was a near-1,000-yard receiver in 2005 and had five touchdown receptions.

But the kicker here is that Branch is totally in the wrong: he is holding out for a better contract with the Patriots, and he still has at least one more year on his contract in order to become an unrestricted free agent.

The fact of the matter is that Branch is the Patriots’ property, and they have the right to reject a trade for any of their players. They had the decency to let Branch seek out a trade because he wasn’t happy along Route 1. No one has ever accused the Patriots to be cold-hearted.

Now if the Seahawks or Jets wanted him badly enough, don’t you think they would meet the trade demands of his current team? He would be the front-line wide receiver on each squad, and each team would behoove themselves if they didn’t give the Patriots what New England felt he was worth. Obviously, New England wouldn’t be stupid enough to trade him to the Jets, so Seattle’s deal would more than likely be the better of the two from their perspective.

If I were Deion Branch, I’d be upset not at the Patriots but at the other teams for not ponying up what New England wanted. If he wants out of New England as badly as he claims, then he should have gone to those two teams during the negotiations and said, “Give them what they want.”

And right now, Branch is being fined upwards of $14,000 a day for missing training camp. This week the team can begin withholding his game checks.

Is it worth it Deion? Is it worth losing nearly a million dollars in income? I don’t think it is.

To me, the matter should be closed. Branch is still a Patriot, and even though there is a snowball’s chance in Hellenic of him being on the roster this Sunday, that is good enough for me.

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