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No “issues” on the Redskins, or the Cowboys

When dealing with difficult people, we say they have “issues.”

There are no issues on the Redskins these days.

I’ve spent time this month posting stories to The NFL Source, providing MVN’s general coverage of pro football players. The biggest NFL post-draft stories involve unhappy players not participating in mandatory minicamps, players going on or coming off suspension, player arrests, players demanding trades in the middle of commitments to their team.

None of those stories involve Washington Redskins.  

We have Joe Gibbs to thank for that. We I derided St. Joe for the term “core Redskin” that seemed so meaningless come contract time. But Gibbs applied the term to players with a sense of values. It’s a rare Redskin that embarrasses the team.

Sean Taylor gave the coaches a few fits, but with a lot of mentoring by Gregg Williams and his own maturation, Taylor grew to be a player were proud to cheer for.

I have to give the nod to the owner, too. There is a long list of Drew Rosenhaus clients unhappy with their current contracts. Clinton Portis, Santana Moss, London Fletcher-Baker and Devin Thomas are not among them. (Rookie Thomas is negotiating his first NFL deal with Washington.) 

Daniel Snyder’s good relationship with Rosenhaus must have something to do with that. It’s hard to pinpoint what that is, but I would love to be the fly on the wall at some of their meetings.

With Rosenhaus’ client list, good relations with him is a competitive advantage.

Snyder makes a practice of extending contracts for select Redskin players, essentially re-doing the deals before the player becomes an “issue.” That’s viewed as a salary cap tactic, but it plays a role in player satisfaction, too.

It keeps issues out of the news and on the practice field.

Dallas taking chances

Gibbs and Washington made a fetish of avoiding “issues” players. The Dallas Cowboys are making a point of picking them up.

Pacman Jones is the Cowboys’ latest reclamation project. They signed Tank Johnson last season and Terrible Owens the year before.

Owens delivered for the ’Boys on the field and in the locker room, never becoming the cancer he was widely expected to be. Johnson managed to avoid the incidents that kept him in hot water in Chicago.

I don’t think these are coincidencal. Dallas is structuring some type of support for troubled talented players that leads Jerry Jones to take risks no one else would. 

With Owens, it was a contract that paid the player the money he wanted, but gave Dallas easy outs for silly behavior. Pacman has latched onto mentors in the Cowboys family, Deion Sanders being one of them.

Big employers offer employee assistance programs to help their people over rough patches in their personal life, covering anything from domestic strife to addiction. It would be no surprise to learn that Jerry Jones is doing something similar for his high risk bets.

If Dallas has  a better support structure for elite but troubled players, it would be a real competitive advantage over other teams. Any team could do the same, but the biggest impact comes when an already elite club, which Dallas is, can channel an already elite player on the rebound. Think Dennis Rodman and the Chicago Bulls in the ’90s, or Randy Moss and the Patriots last season.

Pacman Jones may need a year to make news on the field. Going by Owens, Johnson, Rodman and Moss, he won’t make news off.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 8:49 am and is filed under Redskins, Dallas Cowboys, London Fletcher-Baker, Gregg Williams, Pacman Jones, Santana Moss, Drew Rosenhaus, Daniel Snyder, Washington Redskins, Clinton Portis, Joe Gibbs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.