Clinton Portis To Announce Retirement

[HailGreen28]

Originally Posted by 44 goes 50 gut

I can pretty much guarantee you Shanahan would have done the deal without Danny throwing the pick in. He took advantage of an Owner who was meddlesome and had an outsiders (a fan really who bought the team) inflated idea of RB value. Shanahan's tendency to rarely if ever draft RB's in the first round all the way back to TD, should be all the proof you need to draw that Conclusion. Shanahan's always been ahead of the curve in that regard...

So it's pretty easy to say he would have done the deal straight up, even given up a pick himself if push had come to shove.

Oh and one other thought, "leaving DC no matter what" sorry but lots of unhappy players go no where with trade demands, they really have zero leverage, unless the owner runs his team like a fantasy football manager. We've even seen a guy demand a trade, then "retire" only to be traded for 1st and 2nd round draft picks a few months later, and that was a older guy who was coming off two lackluster years who hasn't looked good since his knee injury... Champ was a shut down corner coming into his prime with the better part of his career ahead of him.

Caving in and getting desperate because a restricted free agent is demanding things isn't exactly what most teams do, and the idea that Champ was in charge and dictating things only holds merit because of the inexperienced owner who allowed that to work for Champ, and then got over excited by the thought of getting his very own Fantasy Football RB1... Like any fool who doesn't know what he has, he got taken by the guy who "saw him coming".

Ordinarily you'd be right. But like SS alludes to, the Champ situation was different than the normal "demanding free agent". He wasn't resigning with us, probably through no fault of the Skins.

Agreed about Shanny being good at dealing with RBs, same way Andy Reid has recently done a brilliant job managing his QBs in trades. It's just in this case, we weren't in position to demand full value for Bailey. Love how we ended up with CP, though! Denver missed Portis since he left!

[Lotus]

Hog1, thanks for the awesome Larry Brown highlights.