The decision of Browns receiver/kick returner Josh Cribbs to stay away from a three-day voluntary minicamp that opened Tuesday has not sparked contract talks between the team and the player’s agent. “We remain cautiously optimistic that they’ll make a good faith effort to address this,” agent J.R. Rickert, told Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “We haven’t seen it yet, but we are ready to discuss this in a reasonable manner.” But Rickert isn’t the only one talking. Cribbs released a statement Wednesday night, and a copy of it was sent to us by the Cribbs camp. Titled “Josh Cribbs’ Statement In His Own Words” (which, frankly, would be a first for any pro athlete whose handlers issue such a statement), the full text of the statement is right here. “Contracts are one-sided in favor of the team, yet we as players are told to honor our contracts without the team honoring them,” Cribbs says in a portion of the statement. “We are not doctors and lawyers, we don’t get paid for 25 years of work. If we are lucky, we get 10 years at best to make all the money we can to last the rest of our life.”
He’s right, but at the same time his situation is a product of the system to which the players’ union agreed.
Cribbs is in the same position as Anquan Boldin, Sheldon Brown, Thomas Jones, and every other player who wants to tear up a contract that the player signed because the player believes he has “outperformed” the deal or, in some cases, because the contract has been leapfrogged by deals given to other players.
And so any frustration that the player is feeling needs to be directed not also at the team that is benefitting from what has turned out to be a contract tilted in favor of the organization, but also: (1) the union for agreeing to a system that allows teams but not the players to cancel contracts early; (2) the agent who advises the player to sign the contract; and (3) the player himself, whose signature was added to the bottom of the last page of the deal.