Hey Michael, you're not out of the woods with me yet.
When Michael Crabtree finally signed with San Francisco 49ers last week, there was a sigh of relief for owners all around (besides the Jets, I assume) because the sanctity of the slotted draft system and its capitulation that money be doled out according to draft number rather than actual value was once again preserved.
That’ll be another issue come collective bargaining time.
But for Crabtree, who foolishly had to take the money he was already offered (minus whatever he lost in the first four weeks), and which contains much fluff, as explained by ProFootballTalk.com, is at a loss.
At what loss?
Oh gosh, where do we start … Practice, bonding and building chemistry with quarterback Shaun Hill, entering the locker room seen as a selfish outsider (by outsiders admittedly) and failing the smell test come press conference time.
Nope, I didn’t like most of what he had to say. Full transcript here. I say most because he did make one point, which I think is worth sharing on this site after I blasted him for allowing his cousin to speak for him in my column for The Union.
On what his cousin said about sitting out the year:
“I’m Michael Crabtree. Whatever I say is what I say.”
But there were many more responses that were disturbing and unfortunately, and even a week later, I can’t get over them.
For instance, he said:
“I’m very humbled right now,” after the holdout. “It’s a very humbling experience. It was just getting a chance to sit back and better myself as a person and as a player – as a teammate.”
What??? Holding out made him a better teammate, how? With his agent? Talk about idiotic.
You know what makes a good teammate? Blocking all the way down the field when you have nothing to do with the play, running streaks at full sprint for a half hour as your coach continues to call dives up the 1 hole, and showing up to the first 76 practices because, you know, it’s practice and that’s what teammates do with each other.
Playing the idiot does not recuse him from being a bad teammate.
Here’s another gem that’s been bugging me:
“My whole approach was let my agent handle all of my business. The 49ers came to us and we came to them, and everybody came to a reachable agreement, and it happened.”
Blindly following agents is the worst thing a young player could ever do. At one point or another, the kid has to remember that he is the boss and that, reasonably speaking, there are deadlines to get the job done for every employee. Eugene Parker failed in his task in two specific ways: Managing Crabtree’s expectations and delivering the goods in a timely fashion. His failure is now Crabtree’s failure, because Crabtree allowed the employee to wrangle the leash away from his hands. Not a good look.
In the end, what does Crabtree get? Far less than the $38 million he desired to be in contention with Oakland’s Darrius Heward-Bey. But he also isn’t banished from football for a year. And with a couple of touchdowns here and there, all will be forgiven.
It just pisses me off it took him and Parker three months to figure out they weren’t going to game the system.
