As was mentioned below, the Jets placed Chris Baker – along with Jason Trusnik – on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list late this afternoon. Baker’s issues with the Jets front office have been documented and he lit into that front office after the first day of June’s minicamp (and the second as well) because of his contract situation. Baker spent the second day of that minicamp riding a stationary bicycle on the sideline, missing both day’s practices having “tweaked” his back during warmups. Baker was later fined $3,000 by the team for missing a treatment session.
Baker is currently at Hofstra, the Jets said, as he reported yesterday (July 20) along with the quarterbacks and other injured veterans. Players on the PUP list cannot practice and are not allowed to do so until they are removed from that list (by passing a physical). This seems like an odd twist to the Baker situation but in truth there's not enough information as yet to jump to any conclusions.
........you mean there was other news regarding a NY tight end today?
Comments (20)
Erik, This is a very smart move by the Jets. Now Baker will not be on the practice field holding court and bashing them. They will not have another Kendall circus and wouldn't be surprised if he is traded to the Giants.
Hey Erik, I was wondering about the picks that New Orleans sent to the Giants. Aren't they possibly the same picks the Jets could get based on Vilma's performance and contract situation there?
Brilliant!!!
The same deal over and over .... the players want long term contracts for security and up front money, then two years in they cry they're underpaid and nothing's guaranteed anyway.
I like Chris Baker's play on the field, but not off. I thought he was a better pass catcher than Becht all along. We still have to see why he's on PUP. If he came in fat and out of shape because he didn't participate in off season, then he only hurts his case more.
Erik,
I read this on rotoworld.com. Do you think we will have Gholston signed by Thursday?
NFL Network's Adam Schefter reports a "slow down" among the rest of the top rookie draftees signing can be expected after Chris Long completed his deal with the Rams late Saturday night.
Glenn Dorsey (Chiefs), Sedrick Ellis (Saints), and Vernon Gholston (Jets) are all not thought to be close to signing. Holdouts are nothing new in Kansas City, especially. Dwayne Bowe missed a substantial chunk of camp in 2007.
Love this move. Baker didn't feel like practicing during minicamps and complained of back problems. So the Jets call his bluff. It will be interesting to see how this plays out--I'm especially curious as to how the other players in the locker room feel. Ebola, do things like this make the other guys resent Mangini?
Also, the Saints just acquired Jeremy Shockey for a 2nd and 5th round pick. How is that possible, when their 2nd round pick may go to the Jets, if Vilma meets certain performance standards?
Would be nice if I could remember my "handle". Plus I'm having trouble posting...so forgive if I repeat.
Questions:
1. Baker claims T told his agent that the Jets would renegotiate. T claims that's not what he said. Baker claims T is lying. COuld it be that it's the agent who is lying??? Agent figures he's already manipulated a team...might try it again, and make more $$ from a higher commision fee...hmm.
2. Since Baker got a good chunk of this season's $$ ahead of time, what happens if he's traded? Does he have to pay it back to the Jets? Does this get negotiated in the trade? Does this make it more difficult to move him? (BTW, Baker gets no sympathy from me...I'd be happy with half of what he's earning)
Inquiring minds want to know...
This trade helps put the draft day move for Dustin Keller into better perspective. Finally, for once, all those naysayers that trashes trades to move up to "reach" for a player that a team actually wanted and casted as paranoid schiz-es that a team ahead of them may have grabbed that said player had they not made a trade should shsssh up!!
Kudos to Tangini!
Now, though, if Keller pulls a Johnny Mitchell and never hits his potential, I as a fan will criticize a team I love with the hardness. Let's just hope Keller can be pre-Johnny Mitchell long enough to make a name for himself.
Erik,
You got the story wrong. Chris Baker was put on the Publicly Unable to Pout list, which is pronounced with the long "ew" sound. It would seem as his agent had him training in Atlanta at Drew Rosenhaus' Performance Whining Unlimited training facility. During anerobic jaw limbering reps he severly strained his lateral complainus, which Mangini then refused to divulge which side the injury is on. It's a real loss for the team, as training camp will now be 23% less annoying.
Crazy Eddie, I'm still trying to get clarification on that. It was a fairly complicated deal they swung with New Orleans.
Seth, heading into the weekend there was no indication that the sides were a gaping hole apart. It will probably be last minute but we're not quite last minute yet.
Deb from NE, welcome back! I asked that question of Baker during the minicamp - if his former agent might have told him what he wanted to hear - and Baker flatly said that wasn't a possibility in his mind. Still, only two people - Baker's former agent Cliff Brady and Mike Tannenbaum - know for sure what was said in that meeting. I understand your premise on this but the agents are different. Baker fired Brady in March and hired Jonathan Feinsod. As for your second question, all contract and $ issues are worked out between the two teams making a trade on a circumstantial basis. The trouble the Jets would have in executing a trade right now with Baker is they have little leverage with other teams to get what they think Baker is worth in return. Plus, in truth, the Jets really don't want want to deal him. As I've said before, he's the only three-down tight end on the roster. I think they can get through one season without him but they'd prefer not to.
DB, from what I've been told, Baker's back injury is legit so I don't get the sense this PUP list placement is a message of any kind. As for the question about Mangini, I keep coming back to something: a lot of NFL teams don't play as hard at the end of the season when they're out of it. That didn't happen with the Jets last year and at some point that has to be a reflection of how the players feel about the coach.
Mr. Green T, "lateral complainus"??? I want to live in your mind for just five minutes. Tremendous.
Boland, my take on this whole Baker mess is, in light of the Shockey trade, has changed slightly. At first I just wanted the Jets to tell Baker to shut up and play, but since the Giants (whose front office I respect greatly) decided Shockey wasn't worth the training camp headache, I feel the Jets should take the same stance. Get a third round pick for him, let Keller develop and move on.
Bryan, I understand what you're saying but I would be stunned if the Jets could get that (a third-rounder) for Baker. Shockey, for all his shortcomings, at least has a resume that would make a team say, "you know, Shockey could be the difference for us. Let's get him." Baker [who really knows of course] could have that resume down the road, but he doesn't have it now. And, again, I just don't sense the Jets want to deal him. Of course that was said about Kendall at this time last season, too.
Thanks Erik, I can't find out info on this anywhere. Probably only Tannenbaum knows. That deal was so strange maybe the Saints didn't realize what could be in it? If in fact it is the case the pick could be potential compensation for a previous deal, wouldn't this trade be null and void?
haha first the Jets screw the Giants by moving up and drafting Keller, now the Giants are trading for a pick the Jets might earn.... nice pay back gotta give it to them.
I'm just rambling at this point aren't I?
Crazy Eddie, rambling? Don't worry about it; you'll fit right in here, and really that applies to me more than anyone probably. Definitely.
With this deal, maybe what was reported - that it could be a second round pick - wasn't quite correct. But I'm not quite prepared to say that yet either. How's that for hedging? Anyway, I'm still trying to find out if there's a simple explanation here but reading back on when this trade was made, there seemed to be some confusion about it.
Don't worry about the Saints giving away their 2nd rd pick to the Giants which they might need to give to the Jets if Vilma has a good year.First thing is they might have 2 picks in the 2nd rd for 2009 and if not they can always trade down and pick up a 2nd rounder if they do indeed owe that to the Jets if Vilam plays well. Baker's move unot the PUP was grear. And Erik, Thanks!
Erik,
My nose tells me it wasn't confusion. It was obfuscation by Mr. T to make him look clever and give us false hope that we weren't just throwing away Vilma. Tannenbaum wanted fans to think that we had an outside shot of a #2 for a former first rounder, whose loss (because Mangini couldn't make use of 51's intelligence and strengths) for a future 4th rounder was otherwise a terrible giveaway. So, I believe the talk of a mumbo-jumbo arrangement with the Saints was T's effort to create deliberate confusion by telling us we had a shot at a #2 if some vague incentives were reached. He knew that wasn't going to happen.
The season will be over before we find out we're not getting a #2. By then there will be less heat about a lousy deal. The Giants got the pick the #2 right way--straight up (plus a #5), while we got smoke. That's in keeping with our front office's history of no-talk or double talk. Blue gets value for a disgruntled, injury-prone TE, while we get very little for a good-soldier guy coming off an injury.
Now we have a disgruntled mediocre TE who's doing the Kendall dance. We've managed to set up the same scenario with Baker as we did last year. Of course, we'll get less for him then we should. It would be ironic if we traded him to the Giants for a future consideration--leaving us without even another journeyman TE. They'd wind up with a journeyman TE, a #2 and a #5, while all we get is a future consideration for Baker. Franks alone won't cut it and getting Kyle Brady would only be another over-the-hill replacement. Ira: You're dreaming. Looks like we screwed ourselves again.
Meany, You can't knock the Vilma trade. He is coming of a serious kneee injury.
"Get a third round pick for him, let Keller develop and move on."
lol, riiiight....why in the world would anybody want to pay a 3rd round pick for an average TE? If you were a fan of another team would you want to give up a 3rd rounder for Baker and then have to pay him more? We'd be lucky to get a 5th rounder for him. If they could have gotten a 3rd for him, they would have traded him a long time ago.
We need to keep him on the roster, he's under contract, and in the end he'll play.
Tom Rock reported this in today's paper regarding the Vilma 2nd rounder:
"According to a league source, the Saints could wind up paying for Shockey with a first-round pick. If Vilma plays 85 percent of the defensive snaps and is signed to an extension before the end of the season, the conditional pick owed to the Jets would be a second-rounder. In that case the second- and fifth-rounders traded to the Giants would become a 2010 first-rounder. That's unlikely because the Saints wouldn't sign Vilma to cost themselves a first-rounder."
Its even more unlikely that Vilma will play 85% of the snaps.
Never happen. Miss one game, 6% gone right there.