Vinatieri may get to test the market
(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in Friday's Sports section about Patriots placekicker Adam Vinatieri misstated that he would have received a 120 percent increase in pay if the team had designated him as its franchise player. He would have received a 20 percent raise.)
INDIANAPOLIS -- The Patriots allowed a deadline to pass yesterday afternoon without placing a franchise tag on kicker Adam Vinatieri, effectively meaning the star kicker will have the opportunity to test the market as an unrestricted free agent.
New England coach Bill Belichick said the team didn't designate Vinatieri as a franchise player, resulting in a $3 million salary for the 2006 season, because it ''didn't feel like it was the right thing to do."
The Patriots have until March 3 to sign Vinatieri to a new deal. But negotiations have been almost nonexistent, and Belichick indicated he doesn't expect that to change because of the uncertainty surrounding the collective bargaining agreement between the players' union and the teams.
''I don't think you can do much of anything," Belichick said yesterday from the NFL Combine. ''I don't know what we're working with [financially]. Until that's defined, it seems like an exercise in futility.
''In a way, then, we've tried to put more of our time and energy into football and the draft, the known quantities, rather than work on contracts and you don't know what the system is going to be."
Should Vinatieri, one of only two kickers in NFL history (Denver's Jason Elam) to score 100 or more points in each of his first 10 seasons, sign with another team, the Patriots would not receive compensation.
''If we don't have a deal done with him, he'll be a free agent," Belichick said. ''We've had players in free agency before and we'll have 'em again. So has everybody else. That's part of the system.
''We don't have a game for quite a while, so there's a lot of things that can happen. It might be sooner, it might be later, but we have to be ready when we go to training camp and we have to be ready when the season opens. And there'll be changes in training camp. It would be nice to get it all done now but, realistically, I don't think that can happen."
Vinatieri, 33, has been named the team's franchise player twice, including last year, when he was forced to take a one-year tender at $2.5 million. He was the highest-paid kicker in the league in 2003, and was the same after being franchised last year before new contracts for Arizona's Neil Rackers ($4.79 million) and Philadelphia's David Akers ($3.73 million) left him third on the base pay list. Had the Patriots made Vinatieri the franchise player this year, he would have received $3 million, which is 120 percent of his 2005 salary.
Apparently the Patriots were unwilling to take that much of a salary cap hit, even for the man who was responsible for the winning kick in two Super Bowls.
''Every situation is independent," Belichick said. ''It takes two parties, or three to a point, to make a deal, and when that happens, we have one, and if it doesn't, we don't. That's just the normal course of negotiations.
''It's hard right now. I don't really know how . . . it's so hard to do a contract when you don't know what you're dealing with [with the CBA]. There've been a few done, but not many."
The Patriots have 17 unrestricted free agents, with the most notable being Vinatieri and receiver David Givens.
The franchise tag for wideouts (roughly $7.7 million) far exceeds what the Patriots are willing to pay Givens, particularly with Deion Branch entering the final year of his contract.
