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People were saying to us today, “Jets Confidential was right with your cover story about trading Sheldon Richardson.”
But you know what, honestly, we take no credit.
First of all, I don’t like delighting in other people’s misfortune.
Secondly, when I said they should trade Sheldon (next off-season) and pay Mo now, I had no idea he was going to be suspended.
My theory was based on other things, which I got into the other day.
Sheldon got busted by the league for smoking pot, which is now legal in two states, with more likely to come.
“I bet it’s legal in the whole country in five years,” one long-time Virginia trial lawyer said to me today.
That is irrelevant. The NFL doesn’t allow it, and will try to keep that going as long as possible, regardless of what states are doing.
So you can’t smoke pot and play in the NFL. Sheldon knew that when he entered the league. Why he kept doing it, I can’t tell you.
An old friend of mine, who smokes pot, claims that it’s not addictive. Yet he needs to smoke it every day.
I’m no drug counselor, but I think it is addictive on some level. How else can you explain guys with so much at stake, continuing to do it? Remember Sheldon’s friend from Missouri, Shane Ray, got caught possessing pot before the draft. Right before the draft! It made him slip to 23. Randy Gregory, a potential Top 10 pick, failed a pot test at the combine, and fell out of the first round.
Josh Evans, perhaps the nicest player I’ve ever covered. Just a great guy, couldn’t stop and got suspended over and over again.
The Jets can survive this. Whether it’s on a one-year tender, or a long-term deal, Mo Wilkerson is going to be in Florham Park. So he will start at one end spot, and a combination of Leonard Williams and Quinton Coples can man the other spot, with Damon Harrison at nose tackle.
Some act like Coples doesn’t even exist anymore. I’m not one of them. I think he’s a good player. The Jets messed him up last year playing him out of position at outside linebacker, and having drop 20 pounds. So when Wilkerson got hurt, and Quinton moved back to end, he was undersized due to the weight loss. Coples is a defensive end, not a linebacker. He can help the Jets fill the void for Sheldon.
One positive for the Jets, and it’s hard to use that word about this situation, and I don’t want to be disrespectful, but now Sheldon will have to play out the rest of his rookie contract without a dispute.
We had written extensively about how next off-season was probably going to be messy. Honestly, Richardson has already outplayed his rookie contract, a four-year deal for $10 million.
He now has two terrific seasons under his belt, earning the 2013 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Award and then making a trip to the Pro Bowl last season.
As I mentioned the other day, Richardson makes $1.3 million in base salary this year, and backup DE Leger Douzable will make $1.2 million.
Before the news came out today, Richardson was grossly underpaid. Now, he’s lucky to get what he’s getting the next two years.
If this suspension didn’t happen, and he had another monster year, I think there was a very, very good chance of a holdout next off-season, an ugly contract situation.
So this bad news, will actually make him play out his last two years, at a relatively low salary. He killed his potential leverage for next off-season.
July 2, 2015
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