Clinton Portis To Announce Retirement

[44 goes 50 gut]

Originally Posted by HailGreen28

champ bailey was leaving dc no matter what. and the whole league knew it. this is 1 time the front office got the best deal possible.

at that time it looks like denver got the best of us. champ is special, and shanahan zbs was churning out 1000 yard backs with ease. and denver got our second round pick they used on clinton replacement tatum bell.

but since bell really didnt do much in denver, bailey did well but denver never really went anywhere, meanwhile portis carried our offense for a few years....

I think we got the better deal by sheer luck.

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".