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Date Posted: 07:33:51 03/13/03 Thu
Author: bfny
Subject: Clayton on Spikes/transition tag

taken from a longer article, but I think it's great in refuting those who say we made a mistake by transitioning Spikes. Clayton does a great job of breaking down the nuances.

from clayton:
Underappreciated is the smart, mature maneuvering of the new Bengals regime. A transition tag for Spikes, their best player? At first, everyone thought they were crazy. Wrong. They were smart. A franchise tag would have been totally restrictive. Unlike the Price situation, a Spikes trade for value would have been tough to do in 15 days because there are so many good linebackers available. Certainly the Bills, who didn't have a first-round choice before the Price trade, weren't going to give up their second for Spikes and have no draft.

Look at the linebacking options available -- Rosevelt Colvin, Mike Peterson, Shawn Barber, Kevin Hardy, Chris Claiborne and others. At receiver, there was a big dropoff after Boston and Price. It shows in the salaries coming in. No receiver in free agency has gotten more than $2.5 million a year after Boston and Price were taken from the market. Conversely, linebackers are signing for $3 million and $4 million a year daily.

Second-guessers might argue that the Bengals might have gotten value for Spikes, but that would be unrealistic. Remember, had the Bengals franchised Spikes and not traded him by Thursday, he wouldn't have signed a longterm deal and negotiations with the Bengals would have been frozen until training camp and beyond.

Give Marvin Lewis and team president Mike Brown a lot of credit. The transition tag was the perfect solution. Lewis had time to learn his team, study tape of Spikes and make value judgments on team needs. Brown would have automatically matched in the past, but the new Bengals regime has more dialogue. In the end, Spikes was happy because he got a six-year, $32 million contract and a one-way ticket out of Cincinnati.

Lewis had a chance to rebuild a team with players who wanted to be in Cincinnati. He has signed four new starters -- defensive linemen John Thornton and Carl Powell, middle linebacker Kevin Hardy and cornerback Tory James.

"We spent our money on players who have been in championship games, and their leadership is needed in our lockerroom," Lewis said. "You've seen how winning players such as Bill Romanowski and Jerry Rice helped the Raiders with their work ethic and leadership. I need leaders here."

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