Super Bowl Champions Say They Are Ready to Deal

If money talks, then Washington Redskins money currently has laryngitis. A few months back, linebacker Wilber Marshall’s $6-million contract rang in loud and clear, but the next sound you hear may be a crash, as in another defending Super Bowl champion finding pavement.

All too well, Marshall remembers the 1985 Chicago Bears, who pinched pennies and nerves following their Super Bowl victory. “We thought they’d come back and pay us,” the former Bear said recently. But, of course, they didn’t, which is essentially why Marshall is here today, richer and a Redskin.

Washington owner Jack Kent Cooke and his chief negotiator, Bobby Beathard, are not likely to be as foolish as the Bears. “The Bears try to call themselves a family,” Marshall said, “but right now, they’re ripping it apart.”

Yet, football players tend to overestimate their worth following Super Bowl victories, and their agents get in the act, too. If Cooke is aloof now, maybe that’s because he’s sizing up a situation that definitely needs it.

To be exact, the Redskins have 17 free agents unsigned. There are a few more in their option years, good young players whom Beathard probably needs to keep around--safety Todd Bowles, wide receiver Gary Clark, defensive end Charles Mann, to name three.

And a few more are a little underwhelmed by their contracts--cornerback Darrell Green and defensive end Dexter Manley, for two.

Finally, there’s Doug Williams, the Super Bowl most valuable player, who flew home last weekend to Zachary, La., for his daughter’s nursery school graduation. Williams’ good-guy attitude makes it a near certainty his $550,000 contract will be renegotiated this summer. He is all for it happening, but says, “I’ll let them come to me,” and although they have not knocked on his door, Redskins sources said they will.

Why? Partly because he understands what to do and say. “Coach (Joe Gibbs) doesn’t like controversy, bless his little heart,” Williams said the other day, not about to cause any.

So, the gamut will be run in this upcoming negotiation season, from Manley to Williams, with the end result possible mayhem (as in holdouts) or the norm (failing to repeat as league champion). If Beathard has a cure-all--besides owning the remarkable ability to loosen Cooke’s purse strings--it may be his sense of creativity as he searches for a way to keep his players hungry and humble.

Ever since the Super Bowl, Beathard’s party line has been, “Signing Marshall won’t help our team if everybody else has a bad attitude.” And he has endeavored to keep everyone on an even keel by making them nervous with roster moves, and spurring them to another athletic level with incentive clauses.

The roster moves are done, with the Marshall signing, the waiving of three veterans--running back George Rogers, linebacker Rich Milot and defensive back Vernon Dean--and the trading of defensive back Tim Morrison. If any Redskin players were resting easy, they aren’t anymore.

The New York Giants did not make one pre-training camp roster move after their 1986 Super Bowl victory, as the Bears did not in 1985. In 1984, the Super Bowl champion 49ers had two players retire (Jack Reynolds and Louie Kelcher) and another was waived (Lawrence Pillers) before training camp, but that was it.

As for the incentive clauses, Beathard said you can bet he’ll put a bunch of them in his new contracts. He has preferred incentives for years and probably uses them more than any general manager, although sources said Cooke became slightly perturbed in 1983 when the Redskins were Super Bowl runners-up and nevertheless earned about $800,000 in incentive bonuses.

Still, Beathard said incentive plans can end a contract stalemate. For instance, wide receiver Gary Clark was unhappy with his salary a couple of years back, and Beathard threw in mega-incentives. Thus, Clark, sources said, earned over $200,000 in bonuses the last two seasons.

“Sure, I think there’s a lot of merit in contracts with incentives,” Beathard said recently. “Because I think if you have a guy who feels he’s worth X amount and we can’t agree, you can put that in. Problem is, when you negotiate their next contract and a guy has made a lot of money in incentives, he doesn’t seem to count the incentives. All I count is what I see on the W-2 form, and that includes incentives.”

This, in a nutshell, explains Manley’s situation. Sources indicate the Redskins will not renegotiate Manley’s $405,000 base contract, because the front office feels he makes enough money with incentives--as much as $250,000 extra.

For instance, according to league sources, Manley gets $1,500 for a forced fumble, $750 for a fumble recovery, $2,000 per sack up to 10, $3,000 per sack up to 17 and $4,500 per sack over 17. He gets $1,500 for a quarterback hurry and $45,000 if he leads the NFL in sacks. And so on.

The apparent reasoning is that Manley needs a dangling carrot to play well, although he disagrees. “I’m a dedicated worker,” he said. “If that’s what (the Redskins) feel, fine.”

Meanwhile, Manley’s agent, Bob Woolf, said, “Yeah, he can make a lot of money in incentives--if he plays like a $2 million-a-year player.”

Manley, perhaps taking his cue from Williams, rarely has been bombastic since the Marshall signing. Of the possibility of no renegotiation, Manley would not comment. But when asked if he might hold out, he wouldn’t deny having that thought, and he said recently, “It’s up to Bob Woolf. He might tell me which hamstring to pull.”

Green is the other player with whom the Redskins aren’t likely to renegotiate. Like Manley, Green has several years remaining on his contract (1990 is his option year), and it’s a deal also chock-full with incentives. Still, Green said recently, “As far as my personal contract, I’d certainly like to see it better than it is.”

He’ll make $450,000 this season and $525,000 in 1989, and some could argue he’s worth a lot more. In last year’s playoffs, Green always covered the opposing team’s best receiver--Chicago’s Willie Gault, Minnesota’s Anthony Carter, Denver’s Vance Johnson--and his touchdown punt return against Chicago was perhaps the best individual play of the season. Yet, Redskins officials say he didn’t have a great season, that he was beaten a few times early. He went to the Pro Bowl, but consensus is this isn’t the best time for renegotiation.

Green has dangled the Olympics as an alternative--though, he says not to get more money out of the Redskins--but it may be an unrealistic option, anyway. Pete Cava of The Athletics Congress said it’s doubtful the International Amateur Athletic Federation would approve Green in time for the Olympics, though he said if Green quit pro football for good, the federation may be more expedient. Green, however, has said he’d like to return to football after the Olympics.

Nevertheless, it appears as if Green, too, is holdout material.

Where Beathard has been most aggressive is with free agents, option-year players and budding superstars. It has been team policy, almost, to pat young, underpaid players on the back with lucrative deals, a la quarterback Jay Schroeder, who in 1986 became the team’s highest paid player (before Marshall came along).

This summer’s Schroeder appears to be wide receiver Ricky Sanders, who is not in an option year, but who heard as far back as March he would get a new deal from the Redskins. Sanders’ agent, Harold Lewis, sounded cheerful recently when he said, “I told (the Redskins), ‘You don’t have to do anything for us, and they said they appreciated that, but definitely wanted to do something for Ricky. . . . Anyway, I know what I’m looking for. And it’ll definitely put Ricky up with the top receivers in the NFL.”

Sanders made $165,000 last season, but set Super Bowl records. And if you wonder what his agent means by top receivers, last year’s money leader was Seattle’s Steve Largent at $770,000. Art Monk was third at $600,000.

Strong safety Alvin Walton also is under contract (for two more years), but Beathard has begun renegotiation with Walton’s agent, Ron Lebow, who plans on using Walton’s ascension to the All-John Madden team as a negotiating tool. The agent for running back Timmy Smith, Steve Endicott, originally thought Smith should be renegotiated up from $75,000 to around $600,000, but Beathard set him straight. More than likely, Smith will get Manley-sized incentive clauses to go with his $90,000 base salary this season.

On the other hand, Beathard has some nuances that bother agents. For one, he is--as most general managers are--against giving signing bonuses to veterans, which is why some Redskins cried foul when Marshall received $500,000 for signing. Another Beathard trait is his reluctance to return phone calls from agents when he’s not ready to negotiate. Beathard, according to several agents, only returns phone messages when he has something to say, and though it’s nothing personal against the agents, it angers them to be stood up.

Apparently, one such agent is Jack Wirth, who represents Charles Mann. Wirth said he was supposed to hear back from Beathard two weeks ago, but never did. He went on to predict a possibly messy scenario at Redskin Park this summer.

Asked if the Marshall signing will be a factor in that, Wirth said, “Damn right, and it should be. If that’s the price ($6 million for five years), I’ve got no problem with that. But we have to put the other players in perspective on what their part is on defense. Is the next best defensive player on your team worth half of Marshall? Worth a third? That’s what someone’s got to ask (Beathard) in this negotiation.

“In the (financial) makeup of the Redskins, Charles has bit the bullet in the past. He’s played over the level of players paid more than he. . . . From a production standpoint, does Dexter Manley stack up with Charles Mann? If you take their defensive stats the last two years, I don’t think so.”

Cooke did not return telephone messages, but Beathard said there would be contract unrest even without the Marshall signing. “The Marshall thing just brings attention to it,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a tough year anyway.”

The toughest free-agent deals likely will involve guard R.C. Thielemann (last year’s highest paid offensive lineman at $500,000); cornerback Barry Wilburn (led NFL in interceptions last year, yet made only $102,000--less than rookie Brian Davis); and guard Russ Grimm (four times to Pro Bowl, yet made $302,000, less than Thielemann, tackle Joe Jacoby and center Jeff Bostic).

So far, negotiations have gone slowly, a pattern seen with free agents all over the league. The reason for the standstill may be that later this month, a Minneapolis federal judge will decide whether to do away with compensation in NFL free agency.

In the meantime, most Redskins players genuinely are confused why Cooke won’t put his money where his mouth is. By waiving Rogers, Milot and Dean and trading Morrison, the team cleared $1.47 million off its $19 million payroll, enough to take care of Marshall’s 1988 contract. So, some players want to know where all the other money is going.

One veteran player, fearing retribution from the front office if he revealed his identity, said: “All I know is, come July, this team could be very divided.”