All holdouts end. If a guy wants to up and quit – like Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson; like Marshawn Lynch, at least for a while – he up and quits. We can assume that Quintorris Lopez Jones, known to one and all as Julio, still wants to play football. He just doesn’t want to do it for the price the Atlanta Falcons are willing to pay, a price to which he once agreed.
The person with the problem is Julio Jones, whom the Falcons consider the world’s best receiver. He can’t go play for another NFL team. He can’t hold his breath and wait to become a free agent, but those three remaining contractual years won’t go away and besides, he’s 29 – he’ll turn 30 five days after the Super Bowl, which will be staged at the Falcons’ stadium – and the clock is ticking. Being human, he’d like to leverage more money from the peak years he has left, but he signed a contract.
His options are three – to grit his teeth and play for the agreed amount; to retire and make nothing from football (and any endorsements would surely go away if he’s not appearing on flat screens on autumn Sundays), or he withhold his services and hope the Falcons buckle. It was learned last week that the Falcons told Jones’ camp, “Um, we’re not buckling.” Whether that holds true into September is another matter.
Jones’ hope is that, sooner or later, his problem becomes the Falcons’ problem. He hopes that, come Labor Day if not before, Dan Quinn marches into Thomas Dimitroff’s corner office and says, “We’re playing the Super Bowl champs in three days; I’ve got to have my best receiver.” Maybe Arthur Blank sends one of his red-letter emails saying, “Forget everything else. Get Julio in uniform.” And maybe Julio shows up in Philly on Thursday night and catches four touchdown passes – four more than he caught there in January – and everybody’s happy.
One question, though: WILL everybody be happy?
As a rule, players tend to support players: If a guy wants bigger money, more power to him. Jones is – or at least was – considered a top-class teammate, even though the Falcons have gone to great lengths to pamper him. When he has a nagging injury, which is pretty much every week, he’s held out of practice. Coming off surgery, he barely took part in training camp last year, which was OK because he’s Julio and nobody plays harder when the TV lights go on.
This, though, is different. Presumably he's healthy, or as healthy as he ever gets. He worked out with Terrell Owens, bastion of stability, this summer. He made an appearance at Matt Ryan's (unofficial) passing camp and was kind enough to pose for a photo commemorating the occasion. If, as ESPN reported Tuesday, he plans to be a no-show when camp convenes Thursday – and if he is, as Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network tweeted, "comfortable sitting out the entire time" – will the great teammate still be seen as a great teammate?
In-season NFL practices tend to be glorified walkthroughs, the idea being to prepare for the next opponent and not get hurt. Training camp, however, is a grind. Players hate it. Coaches love it, but they’re not getting hit by somebody who weighs 350 pounds on a 95-degree day. Every player would gladly skip the whole thing if he could, but 99.9 percent of them can’t – because they’re not Julio and they don’t have his leverage.
And so we ask: Is it possible for Quinn’s Brotherhood to stay brotherly if the team’s biggest talent turns prodigal son? If all these Falcons are in it together, mightn’t one who’s trying not to throw up from the exertion and the humidity be tempted to think, “I’m sweating off 10 pounds in two hours; where the heck’s Julio?”
Faithful readers will know that I’ve never been a huge fan of coaching bromides: If those things work at all, they tend to work with collegiate players – because college rosters turn over every three/four years and the shelf life on slogans is three years, tops. A professional can only hear the same thing so many times before tuning out.
This is Year 4 for Quinn, who espoused the Brotherhood concept on arrival and hasn’t let up. Something along those lines had played well for Pete Carroll in Seattle, Quinn’s previous stop before Flowery Branch. Today the Seahawks stand as evidence that when a Brotherhood fractures, it’s not a hairline thing. There’s a splintering.
The aforementioned Lynch took a hike. The defense never forgave the offense – especially coordinator Darrell Bevell, since fired, but also Russell Wilson – for the goal-line interception that blew a second consecutive Super Bowl victory. Kam Chancellor just retired. Richard Sherman is gone. Earl Thomas wants out. It was a great team while it lasted, but it hasn’t been great since February 2015.
The year ahead should mark the culmination of all Quinn has built. USA Today is picking his Falcons to win the Super Bowl in their stadium. In and of itself, a Jones holdout mightn't be a big thing. But when you've taken a collegiate approach with your players, what happens when they're smacked in the face by the cold reality? See, they aren't collegians. They're pros. They're paid to do this. And one among them apparently wants to be paid more.
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