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There is a lot of belt tightening going on around the NFL, and One Jets Drive isn’t immune . . .
The Jets have another injury settlement controversy on their hands.
The Jets cut Jason Hill on Tuesday without an injury settlement.
Hill claims to have hurt his back in the pregame warm-up prior to the Jets- St. Louis Rams game.
The Jets brass doesn’t see it that way.
Hill and his agent are going to file a grievance to get an injury settlement for the wide receiver.
This is going to be messy.
Honestly, playing football leads to a lot of back injuries. Just look at the nature of the work. The human back isn’t a big fan of the sport. If any of us played this sport, we’d probably wind up in traction.
The Jets clearly feel that Hill arrived at the stadium with a back problem, and he didn’t hurt it in the pregame warm-ups.
This is going to get nasty.
And it once again points to the economy.
The Jets are looking to save every dollar possible during this rough economic time compounded by slow ticket sales. In all fairness, they are not alone.
We witnessed a situation early in the season where the Jets cut nose tackle Isaako Aaitui immediately after he blew out his knee in his first Jets practice in September. He received no injury settlement.
Aautiui had signed a waiver, clearly getting some bad advice from somebody.
These injury settlements, which are kind of like workman’s comp claims, have been leading to nasty battles between teams and players for a long time.
Wesley Walker told me about some nasty battle he had with Steve Gutman, who claimed an injury (it was either a knee or a back, I can’t recall), wasn’t football related.
What are the odds that a back, knee or neck injury, suffered by an NFL player, ISN’T related to them playing football?
I’m not saying guys don’t fake things from time-to-time.
I remember there was a linebacker, who I covered early in my time around the Jets, who walked around with a neck brace for about a year, and most people thought he was faking it.
Clearly some guys fake it.
But it’s just hard to imagine that Hill showed up at the stadium last Sunday with a back injury that had nothing to do with football.
It will be real interesting to see how this turns out.
However, it’s becoming pretty apparent that in a recession-like economy, Woody Johnson is looking for Mike Tannenbaum to save him money, any way he can.
Two other examples of this would be the Matt Slauson and Mike DeVito paycuts before this season, which seemed unfair and unnecessary. Neither player was making a lot of money in NFL terms.
Clearly it’s rough out there right now.
But you know what, the best way for the Jets to tighten their collective belts wouldn’t be to fight injury settlements and cut the salaries of easy targets, but to stop overpaying their “star” players like Mark Sanchez, Santonio Holmes and David Harris.
Those three contract right there are over the top, and a much bigger contributor to Woody’s financial worries than injury settlements or Slauson and DeVito’s original contracts.
November 21, 2012
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