Tuesday, February 26th, 2008...9:33 pm by Lee Gibbons
Brandon Lloyd Cut
At least he didn’t drop his helmet
Ah, the spring of 2006. The Redskins were coming off their 1st playoff season in years and hopes were high for the team to take it to the next level. The Redskins addressed their weaknesses by trading for WR Brandon Lloyd and giving a huge free agent contract to Adam Archuleta. What heady times those were.
Today, the Redskins officially released Brandon Lloyd ending a two year tenure where he basically did nothing but for the team but cash checks. In addition to his stunning lack of production, Lloyd added to his worthlessness by missing team meetings and being generally disliked by most of his teammates.
The Redskins will have to look long and hard to replace the 2 catches for 14 yards that Lloyd put this year, but hopefully they’ll figure something out.
In other exciting contract news, Washington restructured the contracts of Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen recently. The Washington Times bloggers say the team is still over the cap, the Post says they are under the cap, so pick your side. Either way, they’ll have room to make whatever moves they want when free agency opens.
2 Comments
February 27th, 2008 at 10:16 am
By cutting Lloyd now, the Redskins are free of him for 2009; that’s a good thing, but it hurts here and now. It also means that he’s less of a total Cap hit over the next two years; making him a June cut would have cost the Redskins an extra 1.5 million between the two years.
This actually bodes well for resetting up for the future, although not necessarily well for a “quick fix” in 2008. It’s a good way to get back to sanity in the way the Redskins do their offseason contracts. As I said before, I’m good with this; I’m surprised (the Redskins were tight, and this was the more expensive option now) but it just means no splashy signings this offseason, and a bit of belt tightening.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Actually, I stand corrected; the Redskins handled this the stupidest way possible, at least according to the Post.
They have released Lloyd, all right, but designated him a June cut. That’s what I originally thought they would do; however, they released him in February, instead of waiting until June.
While Lloyd could easily have been told that his services were not required and he could look elsewhere, doing the cut this way means that they MAY be on the hook for a Roster bonus (which they were trying to get out of paying by announcing the cut now) OR may have screwed up the computations for the Cap for this season by announcing it too early; it’s as if the Redskins are trying to have it both ways. That’s going to get them a grievance with the NFLPA; my guess is that the Redskins are going to end up having to pay Lloyd the additional $1.5 mil that they were trying to avoid because they’re trying to get cute, which means that if we DO start making signings, all of a sudden, we’re going to have to take a second hit on the Cap.
It’s like going into a Chinese restaurant and being told “You can choose one from Column A and one from Column B” and saying “Great, I’ll have A3 and A7″.
Leave a Reply