Holdouts often are couched in terms of the player wanting more, with the not-so-subtle suggestion that they want too much. They\u2019re holding out, for more.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s often more accurate to say they\u2019re standing firm for what they deserve, and that the team is being unreasonable. That it\u2019s not about the player putting the squeeze on the team, but the team putting the squeeze on the player. When that happens, the team has failed.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what the Bengals have done. For reasons neither known nor apparent (other than \u201cthey wanted to\u201d), the Bengals have changed the default language in their contracts to extend the consequences of voided guarantees to the balance of the deal. It\u2019s a new term, and this year\u2019s rookies are the Cincinnati guinea pigs.<\/p>\n
First-round edge rusher Shemar Stewart has refused to accept the new language without a fair concession. The Bengals refuse to make one. Their attitude has been \u201ctake it or leave it\u201d (or, more bluntly, \u201cshut up and play\u201d). Stewart has left it, and he has not shut up.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now officially not with the team for his first training camp. The Bengals have failed to get a deal done. And they\u2019ve shown no inclination to bend.<\/p>\n
Although the Bengals are cheap, this one isn\u2019t about money. It\u2019s about power. It\u2019s about who\u2019s in charge. \u201cWe are, you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bengals are also stubborn. They\u2019ll expect Stewart to cave. Maybe he will.<\/p>\n
Or maybe he won\u2019t. Maybe he\u2019ll try to play college football. Maybe he\u2019ll sit out the year and re-enter the draft.<\/p>\n
The problem is that the Bengals don\u2019t sufficiently care about working something out. They want Stewart to surrender.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re prioritizing that power over winning. If they truly cared about winning, they\u2019d come up with a win-win that would get Stewart in camp and get him ready to help the Bengals not stumble out of the gates.<\/p>\n
Again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holdouts often are couched in terms of the player wanting more, with the not-so-subtle suggestion that they want…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-8587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}