Good news out of Texas... no more acronym talk

The word has come down and it is good. The NFL owners have accepted the players union proposal and have extended the CBA for another 6 years. Thank goodness. Too bad they could not have extended it for another 50 years so we would not have to talk about it again for a very long time...

Now that the CBA is out of the way, free agency will start on Friday at some point (there are reports on ESPN stating that the owners would like to extend the start of free agency for one more day.)

With the new salary cap sitting at close to 110 Million, the Pats are in extremely good shape to go out and sign free agent players. Even if the CBA had not passed, the Pats would have been ok. They would have still been under the cap, but they would have been very restricted in their ability to go after players. Now, that will no longer a problem and I am very interested to find out who the Pats will try to go out and get on the free agent market.

As far as some of The Patriots own free agent players go, it has been reported that the team made an offer to Adam Vinatieri that would have kept him the highest paid kicker in football but he turned the offer down. Apparently Adam wants to find out what his value is on the free agent market and nobody can blame him for that.

Hopefully Adam will enjoy his ride in the waters of free agency and then decide that New England is the place to be, but if he does not, I am content with the knowledge that The Pats tried to sign him with a lucrative offer, which was then not accepted by the player. The Pats have done their best to keep Adam in New England and that is good enough for me. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

Comments

[rebecca]

I am so thrilled they got it done. Personally I think the Pats management philosophy does better with a cap, although in true Belichick style I must say that whatever the rules are, they would find the best way to work within them.

As for Adam, I am looking forward to seeing what he gets offered myself. Hopefully the pats can keep up. hopefully he's not feeling "hurt and disrespected".

[Me]

Hi Reb! That Pats certainly seem to do a better job of managing the cap than a lot of the other teams in the league, that is for sure. I am very glad the deal got done as well.

I'm hoping Adam decides to come back to N.E. but the ball is in his court now. We'll just have to wait and see what he does. It would be nice if we could keep Givens as well, but it's not looking like that will happen. He is going to be getting $$$$ somewhere else. Too bad. There will be a lot of receivers in camp this year, that is for sure!