Taylor still doesn't have a deal
From the Sports section
Mark Zuckerman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Despite four straight days of intense negotiating, the Washington Redskins and rookie Sean Taylor remained at a contract impasse last night, likely ensuring the fifth pick overall in April's draft will not be in uniform today for the start of coach Joe Gibbs' passing camp.
Eric Schaffer, the Redskins' salary cap manager, and Scott Parker, a member of Taylor's team of agents, met through the weekend at Parker's San Francisco offices. As of yesterday evening, they had not yet come to terms.
Barring a late-night agreement between the club and his agents, the highly touted safety will remain at his home in Miami while most of his teammates gather at Redskin Park this morning for three days of pre-training camp workouts.
"At this point, I don't want to rule anything out," Jeff Moorad, Taylor's lead negotiating agent, said last night. "Certainly the good news is that we continue to make positive progress. We're certainly getting close, although there's still a spread between the positions."
The two sides still have until Friday, when Redskins players officially report for training camp, to work out a deal and avoid a true rookie holdout. Both Taylor's agents and the club, however, originally said they wanted to have him signed by today, a common goal it appears they will not realize.
Though Washington and Taylor have yet to complete the deal, Moorad said the two parties have essentially agreed to the contract's basic parameters. The agent wouldn't discuss specific figures, but sources with knowledge of the discussions said Taylor likely will receive a seven-year contract that significantly exceeds the $20 million total value and $14 million in bonus money that previously had been speculated. The seventh year probably will be voidable, meaning the final contract technically will be for six years.
"Most of the financial terms have been agreed to," Moorad said. "At this point, we're still split on some of the specifics, in particular the triggers for various parts of the contract."
The holdups toward a completed deal appear to be complex details like playing incentives that, if reached, will escalate Taylor's base salary each year.
Washington also must find a way to squeeze Taylor's contract its league-mandated, $3.1 million rookie salary cap pool. With about $917,000 of cap space already allotted to their three other draft picks (third-rounder Chrisey, fifth-rounder Mark Wilson and sixth-rounder Jim Molinaro), the Redskins must make sure Taylor's first-year cap number does not exceed $2.18 million.
Redskins officials and Taylor's agents only began negotiating Thursday, in large part because the player was without representation until he hired Moorad and Miami-based Eugene Mato last week.
Washington vice president of football operations Vinny Cerrato, along with Schaffer, spent Thursday and Friday meeting with Moorad, Mato and Parker at Moorad's Newport Beach, Calif., offices. Schaffer and Parker then moved north to San Francisco on Saturday to continue face-to-face talks while the rest of the parties negotiated over the phone.
Talks apparently hit a snag yesterday morning, but a lunchtime conference call between all the participating parties "kind of re-energized the discussions," according to Moorad. The Redskins submitted their latest proposal early last evening, and the two sides planned to continue discussions through the night.
"We're still hard at it," Moorad said. "We're cautiously optimistic that we're making progress."
If Taylor is absent from today's full-squad workout, it will be the latest in what is becoming an ever-growing list of minor setbacks for the 21-year-old defensive star.
Taylor fired his first agent, Drew Rosenhaus, just two days after the draft, giving no reason for his decision. Late last month, he left the NFL's mandatory rookie symposium in San Diego after one day, saying he had to clean out his Miami apartment before getting evicted.
The Redskins tracked Taylor down and flew him back to California for the seminar's final two days, but his unauthorized absence was penalized by the league in the form of a $25,000 fine. It was the largest punishment the NFL has levied on a rookie for missing the symposium.
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