Tag Archives: says
DeMarcus Ware says it’s ‘put up or shut up’ time for Tony Romo
Dallas Cowboys linebacker-turned-defensive end DeMarcus Ware is happy quarterback Tony Romo received his long-term extension, but the seven-time Pro Bowler would like to see Romo step up and take the team to the next level.
“I feel like everybody is deserving to whatever is given to him, but at the end of the day, to me it’s put up or shut up,” Romo said during a Thursday appearance on SiriusXM radio (via the Dallas Morning News). “I’m just being straight-up honest with you. Get out there and be productive, and that’s with any player. Whatever they get, they’re deserving of it. You just got to get out there and play and I know he can be and will be the quarterback that is going to be the quarterback that is going to take us to the next level.”
It’s hard to argue with Ware, who has certainly lived up to the six-year, $ 78 million extension he signed midway through the 2009 season. Ware led the NFL in sacks with 15.5 in 2010, posted 19.5 sacks in 2011 and battled through injuries to lead the Cowboys with 11.5 sacks last season.
The pressure will certainly be on Romo the next two seasons.
According to a source with knowledge of the details of Romo’s extension, his 2013 cash compensation has more than doubled, going from $ 11.5 million in his previous deal to $ 26.5 million, mostly through a $ 25 million signing bonus. The increase can be attributed to Romo holding all the leverage in contract negotiations with the Cowboys, who needed cap space to continue building their roster and were unable to use the franchise tag on Romo once his previous contract voided after the 2013 season. Romo had additional leverage to get an extension done this offseason as previous restructures of his contract to clear cap space would have forced the Cowboys to carry $ 8.181 million in “dead money” from Romo’s signing bonuses on their 2014 cap, even if the quarterback was playing elsewhere.
Romo is due $ 13.5 million in fully guaranteed base salary in 2014 and has a $ 21.773 million cap figure. Romo’s cap number is scheduled to increase to $ 25.273 million in 2015. Romo has a $ 17 million base salary in 2015 and currently $ 15 million of that salary is guaranteed for injury only. Half of that injury only guarantee — $ 7.5 million — will become fully guaranteed if Romo is on the Cowboys’ roster on the third day of the 2014 league year, with the remaining $ 7.5 million becoming fully guaranteed if Romo is on the Cowboys’ roster on the third day of the 2015 league year.
Getting back to Ware, the 2005 first-round pick is looking forward to a more simpler role as the team moves to a 4-3 defense, in which Ware will play defensive end.
“It’s a 4-3. It’s maybe a little bit more simpler for guys,” said Ware. “I just have one job now, getting to the quarterback. Holding the edge is still the same like the 3-4, but the cornerbacks can be a little bit more diverse in knowing what’s going and maybe being a little bit more aggressive can create a little bit more productivity.”
Giants CB Aaron Ross says season playing for Jaguars was like a ‘paid vacation’
Cornerback Aaron Ross spent five of his first six seasons in the National Football League with the New York Giants before parlaying his most productive season in the NFL (four interceptions, 12 passes defensed) into a three-year, $ 9.75 million contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Ross started nine of 14 games with the Jaguars, recording 46 tackles, three passes defensed and zero interceptions while playing in less than 60 percent of the defensive snaps for a Jaguars team that would finish the season with a 2-14 record. The Jaguars released Ross after the season and the veteran is back with the Giants, who signed the 2007 first-round pick out of Texas to a one-year, “minimum salary benefit” deal worth $ 780,000, of which just his $ 65,000 signing bonus is guaranteed.
While Ross says that he doesn’t regret signing with the Jaguars last offseason, he’s glad to be back in New York and jokingly referred to his stint in Jacksonville as a “paid vacation”.
“It was a nice paid vacation to Florida,” Ross said of his season in Jacksonville during a Friday morning appearance on “NFL AM” on the NFL Network (via Marc Sessler of NFL.com).
While Ross and Co. laughed about the situation, there were likely few chuckles emanating from Jaguars headquarters. The Jaguars paid Ross over $ 2.6 million last season and treated the newcomer like family, giving him a few days off during training camp so he could travel to London to watch his wife, sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross, win a gold medal in the Olympics.
Ross, whose five-year rookie contract had a maximum value of $ 13.5 million, admitted that signing with the Jaguars was motivated by finances.
“I had to think about the family, setting us up long-term, so of course the money comes to mind,” Ross said. “But winning is everything, man. It takes the joy away when you’re losing, and the only thing to get you through it is the paycheck when you’re losing.”
It could be argued that Ross played as if he were on leave in 2012 — he was Pro Football Focus’ 89th-ranked cornerback last season.
AMD Radeon HD 7990 says hello, plays a bit of Battlefield 4 at GDC
Gamers were down-right spoiled at this year’s GDC with a full 17 minutes of beautiful Battlefield 4 in-game footage. Minds blown, AMD took responsibility for the part it played in the mess, admitting the demo was running on its Radeon HD 7990 graphics card. It’s the first time the company’s confirmed the existence of the long-fabled card, and went as far as calling the case-busting monster “the world’s fastest.” All we know is the card combines two of the HD 7970′s Tahiti GPUs — AMD’s not sharing the full specs — but the eagle-eyed folks at AnandTech have plucked a few extra details from the limited pictures available. They note the open-air cooling, which would require a drafty case but mean the fans should run fairly quiet, and that power consumption is likely to be no more than 375 watts. Not much to go on, we know, but we’ll be waiting eagerly for AMD’s full reveal. Now, your BF4 video awaits. (Warning: the game dialogue contains a few naughty words).
[Image Credit: AnandTech]
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Peripherals, AMD
Via: AnandTech
Source: AMD Gaming (Facebook)
iPhone 5S expected to launch late June, says analyst
(Credit: CNET)
Apple will likely kick off its next iPhone in late June, projects Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
Assuming that forecast comes true, Munster believes Apple will sell 4 million units of the new phone before the month and the quarter are over. That estimate compares with the 5 million iPhone 5 handsets sold during that model’s opening weekend.
The analyst expects Apple to sell 30 million iPhones over the June quarter, a 15 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago.
What will the iPhone 5S offer over its predecessor?
Like most analysts and Apple watchers, Munster expects the phone to include a faster processor, better camera, and new software features tied into the hardware. He thinks there’s an “outside chance” the 5S may come with an NFC (near-field communications) chip to open the door for mobile payments.
Apple’s purchase last year of security technology provider AuthenTec could lead to a biometric security feature, aka a fingerprint reader, for the 5S. But … [Read more]
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Robert Kraft says keeping Wes Welker was Patriots’ first choice
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft met with the media on the opening day of the owner’s meetings in Phoenix, Arizona and one of the main subjects of conversation was the departure of wide receiver Wes Welker to the Denver Broncos in free agency.
[Also: Michael Silver: Time for Roger Goodell to show the MLB who's boss | Baltimore's scheduling snafu]
According to Mr. Kraft, the Patriots were willing to go above market value to pay Welker, who opted to take less money than what New England was offering to join Peyton Manning in the Mile High City.
“In Wes’ case, we were willing to go what we considered above his market value,” Mr. Kraft said via Mike Reiss of ESPN Boston. “For a couple years, we tried to get a long-term deal done with him. We couldn’t do a deal and we wound up franchising him at a very high number [$ 9.515 million]. In retrospect, I wish we could have wrapped that into an arrangement where it was part of a longer-term deal. But I really believe in this case, his agents misrepresented, in their mind, what his market value was.
“When you come right down to the bottom line, he accepted a deal in Denver which is less money than what we offered him. In fact, he has a one-year deal in Denver for $ 6 million. Our last offer, before we would have even gone up and before we thought we were going into free agency, was a $ 10 million offer with incentives that would have earned him another $ 6 million if he performed the way he had the previous two years. But in Denver, he’s going to count $ 4 million against the cap this coming year and $ 8 million the second year. There is no guarantee that he plays the second year there. He will get $ 6 million the first year. Our deal, he would have gotten $ 8 million the first year – our last offer to him.”
Mr. Kraft states that New England’s last offer was for $ 10 million. Welker’s two-year deal with the Broncos is worth $ 12 million, which is either full or partially guaranteed. The deal with the Broncos could be a one-year, $ 6 million deal, as Mr. Kraft suggests, but if Welker produces as consistently as he has over the last six seasons, that is unlikely to be the case. That the entire amount of the contract is not fully guaranteed at the time of signing gives the appearance that the deal only spans one season, but few teams fully guarantee base salaries in future seasons in multi-year deals as doing so would require the club to fund that amount in an NFL escrow account. That may not be an option for owners with cash flow issues.
The Patriots did not fully guarantee the entirety of Danny Amendola’s $ 3 million base salary in 2014 ($ 1 million is non-guaranteed) nor did they fully guarantee the 2013 base salaries that Jerod Mayo or Aaron Hernandez will earn in their recent multi-year extensions.
[Also: Tennessee Titans release Matt Hasselbeck, agree to terms with Ryan Fitzpatrick]
Speaking of Amendola, Mr. Kraft makes it clear that keeping Welker was the top priority and Amendola, who signed a five-year, $ 28.5 million contract on March 15, was the alternative.
“When free agency came, and his agents kept on insisting on a very high number that was beyond our number, we had to go work alternatives. Our second alternative was Danny Amendola. He had offers from other teams. So we made a judgment that Wes, unfortunately probably wouldn’t be with us. We made this commitment to Amendola,” Mr. Kraft said.
“Wednesday, I personally got a call from Wes and he told me about this offer from Denver. He called Bill as well. We met and we chatted. We have a lot of people, we’ve committed a lot of money to this inside position – you have Gronk, you have Hernandez, you have Danny [Amendola] now – it was just unfortunately a little bit too late. If he had called one day earlier, he would have been with us. And so that, is the Wes Welker story. I’m very sad about it and I wish he would have been with our team.”
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Brian Urlacher says contract offer from the Bears was an ultimatum
The Chicago Bears announced on Wednesday that they were unable to reach agreement on a new contract with longtime middle linebacker Brian Urlacher and that the two sides were moving on from one another in 2013.
That news came as a surprise to…Brian Urlacher, Vaughn McClure of the Chicago Tribune reports.
“My phone was blowing up, and I had no freaking idea what was going on,” Urlacher said. “I had 10 messages in 20 seconds. Then I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ It was crazy.”
According to the report, the Bears offered Urlacher, who earned $ 8 million in 2012, a one-year contract worth $ 2 million, with only $ 1 million in guaranteed money. Urlacher’s camp had been seeking a two-year contract worth $ 11.5 million, but they would offer the Bears a counter proposal worth $ 3.5 million for one season.
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The Bears, who currently have around $ 6 million in cap space, weren’t interested in paying the eight-time Pro Bowler and the emotional leader of their defense $ 3.5 million for one season of work and are now in the market for a middle linebacker.
“It wasn’t even an offer, it was an ultimatum,” Urlacher told the Tribune. “I feel like I’m a decent football player still. It was insulting, somewhat of a slap in the face.
“They came back with the offer and said, ‘This is what it is, take it or leave it.’ It was, ‘If you want to play for the Bears, you’ll play for this. If not, then you’re not playing for the Bears.’”
Urlacher may have been surprised by the timing of the press release, but he is not surprised that his days patrolling the middle of the Bears’ defense has come to an end.
Urlacher, who turns 35 in May, suffered a serious left knee injury in the 2011 regular season finale and missed the final four games of the 2012 season with a hamstring injury. With the Bears changing general managers after the 2011 season, and head coaches this offseason, Urlacher sensed that his time in the Windy City was coming to an end.
[Also: Ed Reed agrees to terms with the Houston Texans]
“This whole offseason, I had a bad feeling about this situation anyway,” Urlacher said. “I just wish they would have said, ‘We don’t want you back.’ I think this whole thing is just about them saving face and trying to say that they made a run at me.”
Urlacher plans to continue his career and hopes to play for a team with a shot at winner the Super Bowl. The veteran linebacker has been linked to the Dallas Cowboys, where former Bears defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli is the defensive line coach under coordinator Monte Kiffin, who is implementing the Tampa 2 this offseason. The Cowboys have shot down adding Urlacher as a free agent, which is a bit of a shame as Dallas will play the Bears in Chicago during the 2013 regular season.
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