RAMS : The Hard Line, According to Robinson
Holdouts won’t hold up this training camp, says Rams Coach John Robinson, who saw last season begin to go aflame when camp was hit by a rash of absences.
With training camp opening Wednesday at UC Irvine, No. 1 draft pick Todd Lyght and unsigned veterans Irv Pankey, Buford McGee and Fred Strickland are not near deals and appear to be certain holdouts.
Last year, the slew of holdouts, which included Kevin Greene, Doug Reed and Michael Stewart, triggered a slow start that snowballed into a disastrous 5-11 record.
Robinson, taking a hard-line approach this season, says he will not allow his team to become distracted by missing players, no matter how protracted the absence. He said the Rams will move on to Irvine with or without some of their best players, and will not look back.
“We’re not going to get caught in the starting gate like we did last year,” Robinson said Monday, during the final practice of a five-day mini-camp at Rams Park. “What I have to do this year is build this team with the people that are here.
“I really have to do that. Last year, I think we all got caught up in it. Maybe we exaggerated it. Maybe it’s a reality of football now in the league. . . . Now I just want guys. I want guys to be here.
“And I’m very much prepared to go with the guys who are here and give whoever’s here an opportunity to be a starter. I’m determined to do that. At all the positions (with) holdouts, I look at someone else at everyone of those positions and say, ‘You know, we can get along without this guy.’ ”
Other unsigned players who might be holdouts are No. 2 draft pick Roman Phifer, No. 4 pick Robert Bailey, center Tom Newberry, tackles Robert Cox and Gerald Perry, running back Robert Delpino, linebacker Brett Faryniarz, defensive end George Bethune and wide receiver Flipper Anderson, who has a contract but wants it renegotiated.
But even if the entire gang stays away from Irvine for a good portion of time, Robinson says it won’t take away from what the Rams are trying to accomplish.
“This in no way is a threat,” Robinson said. “In every way, the player who doesn’t have a contract has a right to negotiate the contract and get the best deal for himself, and there’s no way there should be any kind of punishment or any kind of negative thing there.
“But in the same respect, when we line up and play our first game, we’re going to have the players who are most prepared to play. And I do not believe anyone in (training camp) for four days or six days is in any way prepared to play.”
Part of Robinson’s resolve includes a willingness to implicitly second-guess a few of his players’ decisions to stay away from mini-camp. Last week, he specifically mentioned Strickland as a player who cannot afford to skip camp, and Monday he did not leave Lyght off that list.
Robinson was not pleased by Lyght’s boycott of mini-camp, and did not buy the reasoning offered by his agents that the cornerback feared getting injured without a signed contract.
“I don’t think the agent should make those choices, I think Todd has to make those choices,” Robinson said. “The obvious alternative that he had was to come to meetings and watch practice. . . . The chance of injury there was low.”
In general, Robinson said that even if somebody says he’s working out during a holdout, they never do, and when they do arrive in camp after a lot of missed time, they get hurt almost immediately and are basically useless for months. He said he just wished players knew all of this before holding out.
“But that’s what they call the coach’s lament,” he said.
In specific negotiating news, Lyght’s agent said the $1.5 million-a-season contract that safety Eric Turner, the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft, recently signed with the Cleveland Browns should open up things for the rest of the unsigned first-rounders.
As of Monday afternoon, the sides hadn’t spoken since the weekend, but Bob Woolf, Lyght’s agent, said everybody was waiting for the Turner deal to be set.
“I assume things will start to move on pretty quickly now,” said Woolf, who also represents linebacker Mike Croel, whom the Denver Broncos took with the No. 4 selection overall. “There was no market value set, but now the signing of Turner should be very helpful to give fair market value.”
The Rams have offered Lyght a five-year deal worth $850,000 a year and Woolf has countered with a four-year package worth more than $1.5 million each season. But given Turner’s deal, Woolf said, $1.2 million a year for Lyght “makes some sense.”
Although Phifer remains unsigned, the Rams are believed to be very close to a deal with the linebacker from UCLA, and Bailey said earlier this week he hoped he could sign a contract in a few days.
Rams Vice President Jay Zygmunt had a 90-minute meeting Monday afternoon with Ted Marchibroda Jr., Anderson’s agent, and while Marchibroda reported little progress, he said the sides agreed to meet today. The Rams have offered Anderson a three-year extension that would pay him about $550,000 beginning this season through 1994. But Marchibroda was seeking a two-year deal that would pay Anderson an average of $725,000 a year.
Bruce Allen, the agent for Strickland and Faryniarz, said Monday that although neither is close to signing, he doesn’t foresee either holding out for a long time.
In the next few days, Rams’ Executive Vice President John Shaw is scheduled to meet with Marvin Demoff, agent for unsigned cornerback Jerry Gray, to try to work out the details of a two-year deal that was agreed to in principle a few weeks ago.