FOXBOROUGH - If you didn’t think Robert Kraft’s public declaration about making Christian Gonzalez an offer to make him the highest paid at his position and in team history was a negotiation ploy, you haven’t been paying attention too well.
This owner doesn’t like to be viewed as the bad guy. In fact, it’s an impossibility for him, at least publicly. Behind closed doors is a different story, but that’s not where the Patriots ownership took this conversation. He put that out there for the whole football watching/listen world to know, thereby increasing the pressure on Gonzalez and his representatives to make a deal that, as of yet, hasn’t come.
Of course, Kraft left out the details: was the offer the most guaranteed money or the highest average annual salary? Both? When and how the team would disperse that cash (signing bonuses, incentives, new money versus the money he’s already owed on his rookie deal)? But hey, when you want to paint a good picture of yourself, that’s one way to go about it.
Speaking to the media for the first time since camp opened, Gonzalez took a different tack than Kraft. After praising the owner for all he’s accomplished, the talented cornerback said of that proclamation by Kraft, “It’s something we don’t want to handle to the media. We want to keep that with the team and my team and go on about that.”
Are you surprised? That public volley couldn’t have gone over well for the Gonzalez camp, especially when what got lost that day was Kraft being unable or unwilling to say that he thought that deal would get done soon. Gonzalez found himself in a similar spot.
“I hope,” he said. “I hope so,” and left it at that.
There were several other attempts to get Gonzalez to shed some light on how he is feeling about the negotiations, or how advanced they are. But those forays were met with this response, or something close to it.
“I assumed there would be a lot of this,” he said of the number of questions about the contract. “But anything with that, you know, I want to keep that between my team - my agents - and the team in the front office, and let them deal with that.”
Gonzalez, though, has his own marketing campaign going on. On the opening day of training camp, the reserved fourth-year pro ran over to the crowd pre-practice (almost at the time Kraft was making his statement), throwing a football with fans up and down the sideline. I don’t recall seeing him do that before (doesn’t mean he hasn’t, but in talking to other media members, they couldn’t recall an instance like that either). The pop he got from the masses was arguably as loud as any we heard that day.
There’s also been an overwhelmingly positive response from teammates, some who openly wondered if Gonzalez would conduct some form of a hold-in as he awaits a megabucks extension that will no doubt be life-altering. Instead, the former first-rounder has not skipped a single rep, be it in individuals or team periods, despite knowing one misstep could sideline him and derail a deal.
“It’s hard to sit and just watch,” he said. “I like to be out on the field. This is what I love to do. At the end of the day, I’ve got to get better for myself and for the team. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do and grind and continue to push myself.”
There has been, and remains, a ton of reporting/conjecture that attaches Gonzalez’s financial future to Seattle’s Devon Witherspoon. Mike Vrabel is on record as saying the team is not negotiating with the Seahawks, but the belief remains that when one goes (it has always been expected Witherspoon will hit lead-off), the other will soon follow.
Of course, the fact that Witherspoon recently rejected a three-year extension for somewhere around $90 million may have tapped the brakes on that, or at least made clear to all parties - fans included - that this might not happen as soon as first thought.
“I mean, Spoon's my guy,” Gonzalez said. “We work out all the time together. I respect Spoon, an amazing player, but I feel like it's kind of like what I said: you know, keep that between my team and the front office.”
Gonzalez hasn’t let the lack of a new deal impact his play. He has been all that you could ask for over the first four days in camp, getting the better of whoever he lines up against, including A.J. Brown.
The next checkpoint for him and his participation will come on Thursday when the team wears full pads for the first time. Gonzalez wouldn’t say if he’d be full go for that, or when joint practices roll around, instead repeating, “I’ll be out here” three times.
“At the end of the day, it’s business and it’s ball,” Gonzalez said. “I’m blessed to be able to do this as my job. I can’t get too much into it. We get to wake up and come out here and play football for a job, so I’m very blessed. I’m happy I’m able to come out here and run around and do what I love for a living.”