Rams Sign Ellard for Four Years : Top ’86 Receiver Given Incentives

At long last, the Henry Ellard holdout is over. It was so simple in the end, one team official handing a contract to a player, and the player signing it.

With Ellard and the Rams, though, it must have seemed more like an armistice.

After 89 holdout days last year, six more this season; after the bickering, the bitterness, the negotiating in the press, the threats; after broken Georgia promises and Fresno hideaways, the wide receiver has finally been signed and delivered to training camp.

This, after a Friday morning meeting from which Ellard emerged with a four-year, $1.8-million contract, plus incentives. It was a true compromise between two sides that had bitterly held firm on their positions.

The Rams have had a standing offer of $1.6 million over four years while Ellard insisted on $2 million for the same period.

So what gave? Who blinked? What took so long?

“It all just came together,” Ellard said. “I don’t know exactly what caused it.”

Exhaustion was one guess.

Another was the fact the Rams need Ellard to get to any Super Bowl and that to trade Ellard ultimately seemed silly, especially dealing for a player who would command a similar salary.

To get the deal done, Ellard accepted less base salary for more incentives. For a battle that has raged for more than a year, it sounded so easy.

Ellard, who had not received extra money for returning punts in the past, can now earn close to $100,000 in incentives for punt returns, receiving and touchdowns.

“I think the Rams bent over backward on the incentive package,” Mike Blatt, Ellard’s agent, said.

For Blatt, those were the first kind words spoken about the team in some time.

The deal was completed by Blatt and Ram general counsel Jay Zygmunt at about 9:30 Friday morning. Ellard arrived in Los Angeles from Fresno at about 1 p.m., picked up his passport for the upcoming London trip, and arrived at the Rams’ Cal State Fullerton training complex in the late afternoon.

Coach John Robinson may have been the happiest Ram.

“Obviously, we’re thrilled to have Henry back,” Robinson said. “The holdout was long and tough.”

Some Rams have viewed Ellard as somewhat of a martyr for standing up to the Rams’ money-tough front office, a claim Ellard doesn’t totally dispute.

“This may be a stepping-stone,” he said. “A lot of people were waiting to see what was going to happen with me. We stood our ground to fight for what we thought was fair.”

It would seem for Ellard at least a partial victory. And while the holdout was painful, it was worth it.

“We’d do it almost the exact same way,” he said. “Hopefully, some of the bitterness would not be involved. . . . But I have no hard feelings toward management. I don’t think it will be a big problem to put the bitterness behind me.”

But it has been one difficult holdout.

For more than a year, the feet of the two parties were all but planted in cement, each side unwilling to compromise. Ellard first became a free agent after the 1985 season and the Rams initially wanted to re-signed him for $1.2 million over four years.

Ellard, an emerging star, sought the star-like salary of $2 million for four years. The Rams later improved their offer to $1.6 million, but wouldn’t budge from that position.

By league standards, Ellard’s requests were hardly out of line, but the Rams, with Vice President John Shaw at the trigger, play by their own pocket calculator.

It is the Rams, remember, who are paying the NFL’s best back, Eric Dickerson, $683,000 this season, $217,000 less than Marcus Allen will earn with the Raiders.

But while many Rams complain privately about their salaries, Ellard was the one to test the team’s mettle.

His holdout last season lasted seven games into the season before Ellard, determined to prove his worth, agreed to play the final nine games for $90,000. He still led the team with 34 receptions for 447 yards and four touchdowns.

After the season, though, nothing had changed. Ellard was again a free agent and the Rams again offered him $1.6 million for four years. Again, Ellard refused. And again, he held out.

Last week, Ellard publicly demanded a trade, claiming that Rams’ owner Georgia Frontiere had promised him that much if nothing could be resolved.

Interestingly, Ellard said he thinks Frontiere may have pushed to get the deal done. Maybe Friday.

“Maybe that’s when Georgia said something,” he said.

Blatt, however, said it was just a matter of compromise.

“I think we gave a little and the Rams gave a little,” he said. “Both sides, to get the job done, came to the realization that neither one was going to be happy.”

Of course, if that was the case a year ago, the Ellard contract and story might have already been written.

“You can look back and say this is what we wanted a year ago,” Blatt said. “So why did it take a year? I think both parties think that. It just took us time to get there.”

Ellard, a holdout in three of his possible five training camps, now has five exhibition games to ready himself for the season.

“In the back of my mind, I always thought something might work out,” Ellard said.

Finally, it did.

Ram Notes

After Henry Ellard’s signing, Robinson took what seemed to be a subtle jab at cornerback LeRoy Irvin, who is signed, but out of camp. “We feel like once you sign a contract you have a responsibility to the team,” he said. “Everyone knows Henry will fulfill that responsibility in a dramatic way.” . . . A decision to perform arthroscopic knee surgery on receiver Chuck Scott, injured in Thursday’s practice, has been delayed.