Detroit Football Network<\/a>, Decker last spoke to Dan Campbell on February 23, to let him know he had a desire to return to the team for his 11th NFL season.<\/p>\nThat was the last time he had any contact with Campbell or Holmes.<\/p>\n
The news was delivered to him about the team wanting him to take a pay cut, but it did not happen until after the combine had ended, in the first couple days of March.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut here\u2019s what\u2019s driving Decker crazy. This does feel a little personal. Since talking to Campbell on Feb. 23, he hasn\u2019t heard from team leadership,\u201d writes Justin Rogers. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a follow-up from his coach, Holmes never reached out, and Decker had to make first contact with position coach Hank Fraley, a man he publicly went to bat for when Campbell was hired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Decker gave a lot to the organization, including playing when it was not in his best interest to go out and play at less than one hundred percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter giving everything he had to the franchise for a decade, Decker expected more. He wanted to hear from his coach, from the general manager,\u201d Rogers explains. \u201cHe just wanted a simple \u201cthank you\u201d on his way out the door. And, just as badly, he wanted to say \u201cthank you\u201d for everything the organization has meant to and given to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impact on future free agents<\/p>\n
Whatever supporters want to think or how they choose to downplay this situation, the NFL world talks and talks quite a bit.<\/p>\n
Potential free agents will understand now that Detroit is very similar to every other NFL team. Play and perform and you will remain in the inner circle.<\/p>\n
Once the team feels they cannot get anything more out of you, or they do not want to pay the contract that was agreed upon, the team will ask for money back right away.<\/p>\n
Al-Quadin Muhammad also felt the same way upon his departure, telling Buccaneers reporters he was not sure why he did not get a chance to return.<\/p>\n
A simple text from Holmes and Campbell would have cleared this up.<\/p>\n
At the very least, Decker should have been informed of the team\u2019s thought process much sooner than he was.<\/p>\n
Instead, he happily shared on social media he was coming back, only to be forced to create another graphic to share he asked for his release.<\/p>\n
This is not the prime example of how you treat aging players, given what Decker meant to the locker room and to the team over the course of the last decade.<\/p>\n
This article was produced by the staff at Detroit Lions On SI. For more, visit si.com\/nfl\/lions\/onsi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions did not properly handle the ending to their working relationship with veteran left tackle Taylor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[797,752,143,145,144,127],"class_list":["post-242114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-detroit-lions","tag-nfl","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}