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When we first made the deal, I was afraid...shit, I was petrified. Wait...I won't let yet another post degrade into a Gloria Gaynor song. (Though the music video of Cake's cover is legit.)
With all the craziness of Lebron's impending announcement, I am freaking out just a little. You have Bosh and Wade being followed around by camera crews documenting their forays into free agency, and now ESPN is packaging an hour special so King James can tell us he is going to Miami? You know he is going to do the whole "hat" thing, which is only fitting since he never got to do the college selection coming out of high school.
Even in the NFL, free agency is bigger than ever. Guys like Karlos Dansby, Julius Peppers, Dunta Robinson and Kyle Vanden Bosch made their rounds this spring and got paid. Between Twitter, Facebook and all the other digital trappings of 2010, when millionaire athletes become free agents, we all get healthy doses of updates, headlines and speculation. The business of just being a free agent is booming. Every athlete in America worth his salt is counting the days until he/she hits the market. McNabb currently has just one year until he would become an unrestricted free agent. By the way, don't even try and argue that "representatives" of teams around the league don't "reach out" to agents and players a year away from free agency to gauge interest levels. It is a joke that everyone was making a fuss out of what time it was on the first day of free agency when we signed Albert Haynesworth. If you're going to tamper, you're not going to wait to tamper a few hours before the deadline. You are going to be tampering all year long. If that is true, then McNabb already has an idea of who might be willing to pay up for him next season. If it is a city he wouldn't mind playing in, why wouldn't he roll the dice and play for a year in D.C. on a one-year deal? Worst-case scenario he gets injured and goes the TV route.
Now, I maintain that my heart would not break if Donovan McNabb stayed for little more than a cup of coffee, if for no better reason than he has made a living out of crapping in my mouth over the years. But he is a bona fide NFL quarterback and today he is a Redskin. Also, we gave up our standard payment of a 2nd rounder plus an additional potentially high future pick. Renting an Eagle for one season at the cost of a 2nd rounder is not even close to worth it. Losing 2nd round picks for any team is bad, but when you have an old team that can barely win 4 games it is catastrophic.
If you were Donovan McNabb and you saw the way free agent athletes of his caliber are treated, you don't think you would be tempted to tell the Redskins, "Thanks for getting me out of Philly, but I am going to go ahead and do my own whirlwind tour of the league next offseason and feel some real love. Don't worry, you'll have an edge in all negotiations."
If I was him, that's what I would do. Healthy or not, as a free agent, there is little doubt at least two teams would have significant interest in him, and two is all it takes. Maybe I am worrying for nothing and the Redskins are currently very close to announcing an extension with Donovan. Maybe the idea that he will be our starter for at least 2-3 seasons is as likely as ever.
Then again, maybe we just got fleeced for yet another 2nd round pick.
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