Clearing the air on the Vrabel trade

I couldn't help but think of what someone like Vrabel might have said to BB after the jam session with Bon Jovi. Ditching Vrabel might have been a great preemptive move (please note tongue in cheek).

Big Pats fan here, but Bob Kraft is full of s*&%. Vrabel questions the sacred cows of the NFL and the league's favorite son and then is sent out to pasture in Kansas. Nah, just a coincidence! Yeah, right! When the rubber hits the road it's all about the almighty dollar.

Kraft is worth well over $1 billion. And Kraft lied about V. Putin "pocketing" a Super Bowl ring. And Kraft misled the city of Harford about the possibility of the Pat's relocating to the Adrian's Landing location in downtown Hartford. Kraft is not a choirboy. He is a businessman who is more interested in the diamond trade than the NFL. But I have wasted my time typing, because you will not publish this post.

Vrabel and any player can be critical all they want. They are employees not owners. Have the brains and the money and they can own the team. I do not see any x players owning any franchises. Keep your mouth shut collect your millions and don't ruin the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you do not like your job quit and join us in the real world.We are in a friggin recession and you guys are still making millions. Bob Kraft has a big nut to crack with his debt load and it is not all profit in owning the team. AD should keep also his mouth shut and perform to the level of the millions he is getting as well. He has done jack since he has come here and maybe Ray Lewis was right about him. No Ray Lewis and he is invisable

how was the new mall built on the backs of the players? The players got paid their money and craft invested his. If the mall goes belly up the players lose nothing.

biilw - you hit the nail on the head

could not have said it better

Folks are making it sound like it was an easy decision. I doubt it was. Nobody questions Vrabel's value to the team, both as a football player with declining skills and as a locker room presence and leader. BB has made numerous other difficult decisions too in the past. For the most part he has pulled the trigger at just the right times - to either let someone go while he still had market value or to bring someone in when he felt they had enough in the tank to contribute. Nobody gets it right 100% of the time, but we've been blessed with Patriots braintrust that's been more right than wrong!

Vrabel thinks he should get profits from the shopping mall, are you kidding me? Are the players going to share the money they make from endorsments with the owners? Would Vrabel want his former team mate Colvin to share profit from his FedEx store with Kraft? You can't have it both ways!

Kraft deals with unions all the time in his other industries. It has always been ridiculous to believe that union sentiment would have anything to do with the trade.

Can we all please remember, there is a *NEW ENGLAND* Patriots BECAUSE of Robert Kraft. He stuck his neck out, put his own money on the line when they were a joke, and the owners were trying to move them to St. Louis. This is all a conspiracy theory, at best.

Chris, this post is about 10 days too late. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know about the situation. Why is the topic of "why Vrabel was traded" relevant on April, 4th?

If I'm reading Vrabel's comments correctly, his point seems to be that owners can't cry poverty at the bargaining table when they're building massive, billion-dollar stadiums in Dallas and shopping mall stadium add-ons in New England. And he's right. Whether or not he was moved out of NE for the comments, they probably didn't make the decision any harder

I like Mike Vrabel but if he said that, he is out of line. Th players get paid and paid and paid, many times over and not just their salaries, the extra perks too. What an owner, or any other business man may make off of an investment is none of his damned business.

Only a fool would believe the lame reasons being given for trading Vrabel. Coach on the field, ILB, OLB, offense on goal-line, team captain, a "team first" player, role model for younger players...all for 4 million or so- that's a bargain. Now, the pats will have to use the pick from KC to replace Vrabel (they will be lucky if they draft a starting OLB in the pats system), which means KC got Cassel and Vrabel, and the pats got, well, nothing. I know, in Bill We Trust, but this trade did not help the team, it hurt it. There is obviously more to this trade then any of us know, but let's at least be honest and admit that it had absolutely nothing to do with improving the football team.

Fact is, can I see BB trading away a player because RK tells him to? Or because BB thinks a player is out of line (or not) with some comments in the press?
I dont think BB gives two hoots about Vrabels union views. Are we to expect that Vrabel never said these things, or things like this, in private many times before?
I just dont buy it. I think it was a football decision - whether we the outside public agree or not - and nothing else.
RK is a successful businessman...he's dealt with people with different opinions all his life, its water off a ducks back to him what some player says. He's a tough nut.
I mean, is Adalius Thomas gonna get cut now? I would be amazed if that was the case.

Really now, what else is Kraft going to say?

"I think Mike Vrabel, while being a great contributor to our teams of the past, opened his mouth when he should not have, and we subsequently made the decision to trade him."

So you think that Kraft and Belichick would trade Mike Vrabel and lose a Superbowl just because he criticized a business decision? Apparently you forgot that Ty Law said that Belichick lied to feed his family, and he was kept for another year.

I believe the Panther are owned by a former NFL player.

The legendary. Bears owner george Halas was a player as well and stallworth is a partial owner of the steelers now as well

This is one of the dumbest stories I have ever seen in the Boston media. What do you think BB's reaction would have been had Kraft told him he was trading someone because of a comment about Patriots' Place that no one cares about? Do you think that is something Belichick would have been ok with? Do you think Bill, who loves veteran players especially veteran linebackers, trades someone like Vrabel all because of a comment. Go find another story to talk about.

In defense of Vrabel, although the players "got paid", it's far from a free market. They can't just quit and join another league and expect it to have a fair shot of competing with the NFL. The NFL has been given special protections (eg. antitrust exemptions) and favors (eg. stadiums, infrastructure, etc) by the government. This gives the league a lot of leverage when it comes to negotiating deals with player unions. And it's because of the negotiated labor contracts and collusion on the part of the team owners (through league rules) that players' salaries are capped, revenue is shared among team owners, and that the players don't see a dime of any profits made beyond what the CBA predicts.

As obscene as it may be that sports players (and other entertainers) make so much money relative to us working stiffs, the fact of the matter is that this form of entertainment makes a LOT of money for the owners. The players and coaches deserve a significant piece of the pie, IMO. The owners cry poverty when it comes to compensating players (either through salaries or retirement funds), but they apparently have the money to invest in extravagant business ventures. More power to them, but the complaints of the players shouldn't go unnoticed.

I totally disagree. As a 18-year season ticket holder, I've seen my ticket cost go from $18 per game, fifteen rows back from the field, to $89 a game to sit in the nosebleed seats. Add $40 per car for parking, $7.50 beers, and more outrageously priced concessions and the pro shop, and if you're Robert Kraft, you have plenty of money to build all those other businesses that will be closed for good within ten years, because everyone knows that no matter how good the shopping is, nobody in their right mind will drive to Foxboro if the Patriots aren't winning. Mark my words...the Patriot Place white elephant is built squarely on the backs of the fan base.

If anyone really thinks Patriot Place was built on $89 game tickets and $7.50 beers, you need to sign up for a course in economics (adult education). Owners borrow the hundreds of millions of dollars they need to build places like Patriot Place or a new stadium and end up paying millions a year over 20+ years to pay off the debt.
If Vrabel wanted a piece of Patriot Place, he should have ponied up some of his millions and gone in as a partner with Robert Kraft.

Ray Kelly Vrabel was sent out to pasture in Kansas City, Missouri not Kansas... if you going to make a witty joke, make sure you check to see what your actually saying first.

They got rid of him because of a million dollar signing bonus and he was going to be released anyhow. He just isn't a good pass rusher anymore.

Not sure if someone said this already but that was an interesting comment by Kraft at the end of the story. He said:

"I think at this point it was a football decision to where his future was best, where he could bring the most value at this stage of his career. I was sorry to see him go. But in no way... It was a football decision."

So is Kraft saying that they traded Vrabel because they believed that he would be best utilized by the Kasas City Chiefs? Did they analyze other teams? Is Bill that good, that not only can he find players for his system, but he's going to start distributing his players to other teams if they are a better fit?

Wow, what a load of Bull, I bet he wished he could take that one back.

Vrabel is right though....Patriot Place was built on their backs, plus Bill, his staff, the ground keeps, everyone in the back office and everyone that works for the Kraft family....but how but us?? They played and we paid. If he gets a piece, then everyone gets a piece. What a load of socialist BULL.