00:00That was kind of a big one.
00:01Burt Burrell last night on Early Edition.
00:03There was no setback for Christian Zales.
00:05It's the same injury that he suffered day one.
00:09And a couple of things stand out, but that last part,
00:12the dynamic of a player who's about to be very, very wealthy,
00:15that's got to be in the back of everyone's minds.
00:16Who's got a thought, Murray?
00:18Yeah, I think this was kind of what we were maybe assuming in that,
00:21all right, you can't mess with the contract and hold out now,
00:24but he can take his sweet-ass time to make sure he's in tip-top shape
00:28and feeling 100% that he does come back and ball out
00:31and show that he is worthy of getting some sort of big payday next year.
00:36I think that's what was probably going on here,
00:37especially if there was no setback.
00:39I mean, given what happened with Sauce Gardner last year,
00:42how do you not connect it?
00:44Like, you know, that he wouldn't dig in and make tackles
00:47and risk injuring himself because he wanted to get paid
00:50at the end of his third season.
00:52And as it relates to that, look, it's got to be a factor somehow, somewhere.
00:56And the way that Burt said it, I never thought of it in this way,
01:00but it's a good way to look at it.
01:02The owners wanted it in the CBA that you couldn't extend your contract
01:06before the end of the third year.
01:08That's what they wanted.
01:10Well, now the players are playing by the rules.
01:13This is where I was going to go.
01:14The owners have asked for this.
01:15Yes, absolutely.
01:16I mean, and it never crossed my mind until Burt said it.
01:20In the effort to save themselves money,
01:22they've cost themselves quality football players.
01:26Absolutely.
01:27It's just like it's kind of like this thing that they did with the holdouts
01:32that if you hold out, you're automatically fined,
01:35and the teams can't forgive the fine money
01:37because they got sick of some teams having a player hold out,
01:41fined that player under the terms of the CBA,
01:43and then when that player finally resigns, they forgive all the fine money.
01:47And the owners didn't like some owners forgiving that,
01:50so they said that you can no longer do that.
01:52If you get fined for holding out, you have to pay the fine.
01:56So what the players said was, okay, fine, I'll show up.
01:59Oh, my back hurts, and now I'm going to malinger and lounge around the building
02:03but not practice or not play, but you can't fined me.
02:07The owners walked right into that one,
02:09and now the owners have walked right into this one.
02:11They didn't like teams renegotiating on rookie players too early.
02:15So they said, you know what, to save ourselves money
02:17and to save ourselves from some of our members
02:20who are renegotiating rookie contracts after one or two years,
02:23now you can't do it until after the third.
02:26How have the players responded in the third year?
02:30I'm going to take my time.
02:32You can't pay me?
02:32Well, that doesn't mean I've got to play.
02:34I have my hamstring heart.
02:35The owners, in the effort to save themselves money,
02:39have once again cost themselves.
02:41I mean, you can see totally how that went down in the labor negotiation.
02:45The owners sit there and say, okay, but listen, when we draft the guy,
02:48we don't want to hear anything about a new contract
02:50until after year three at least.
02:52You've got to give us three years before we want to,
02:55we'll even bring it up.
02:56You don't get it until at least three years.
