Maurice Jones-Drew Has Lost All Leverage In Contract Holdout
It’s over Maurice Jones-Drew, it’s time for you to get back to training camp and get ready for the 2012 season.
The Jacksonville Jaguars seem prepared to move on without you, and you have lost any leverage you thought you had in trying to get them to tear up your contract that has two years remaining on it.
In fact if you think that you can just walk back in the week before the start of the regular season and move to the top of the running back depth chart, new head coach Mike Mularkey has different ideas.
He came out this week and said that you were way behind in learning his new offense and that he has no problem if Rashad Jennings is the starting running back for the Jaguars this season. In fact nobody has a problem with Jennings becoming the starting running back, and he showed in the Jaguars first preseason game why he is ready to become a featured back.
Jennings showed the world that the Jaguars rushing offense could survive without Jones-Drew, even if he is one of the five best running backs in the NFL.
The truth is that Jennings gives the Jaguars the explosive playmaking ability that the Jaguars rushing game lacked without him last season. Jones-Drew has lost a step and has evolved into a power back, a very good power back but he cannot run away from opposing defenses like he used to.
The Jaguars have given no indications that they are going to cave to Jones-Drew’s desire for a new contract and they shouldn’t. They hold all of the leverage.
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It’s about time NFL franchisees stand up and enforce contracts! Hopefully Shad Khan will show the rest of the owners in the NFL how it’s done. I have never had a contract that I could get out of without suffering a penalty. Neither should these primadonna players!
Contracts are meant to work both ways. Each party is legally-bound to withhold the terms of the contract they sign. The owners (and people such as yourself) seem to want it both ways: they want players to play out their contracts in full, but they are more than happy to cut that player and void the remainder of the contract if they view them as being expendable. MJD is a running back who is in the prime of his career, and because his earning potential is limited due to the nature of the position, he’s exercising the only leverage that he has at this point, which is to hold out. He’s not being a primadonna, he’s simply playing the only card that he has to maximize his earning-potential for the remainder of his (very short) career. People can debate whether it’s a smart move on MJD’s part, but to label him as selfish for trying to secure his financial future the only way he can is a bit disingenuous to me.