[Editor’s note: When uttering the comment pasted below regarding the CBA, Giants center Shaun O’Hara expressly said it was a joke. The fact that it was a joke wasn’t included in the tweet that contained the comment.]
On Monday, Giants center and NFLPA player representative Shaun O’Hara voted to recommend the new labor deal to all players.
On Tuesday, O’Hara lost his job.
Two days later, he was candid in his assessment of the deal for which he voted. “If I had known I was going to be a casualty of this [CBA] I would’ve voted ‘No’,” O’Hara said, per Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News.
His position isn’t surprising. Even though the new deal has a tighter cap, no veteran expects to be unceremoniously dumped.
O’Hara said he was “blindsided” by the move. “I certainly didn’t see it coming,” O’Hara said on a conference call with Giants beat writers, via Vacchiano. “Richie [Seubert] and I actually joked about it, how we were like deer or bears in the woods that were just kind of walking along and didn’t really know what was about to happen to us. I kind of had a little bit of a tip when Richie called me and told me what happened to him. I certainly wasn’t expecting it.”
Look for even more complaints about the CBA as more and more veterans get cut, and as free agents who thought that Pacman Jones would be making it rain from a cherry picker parked in their front yards realize that the money won’t be what they assumed it would be.
UPDATE: Vacchiano now says via Twitter that O’Hara added that it was a joke. The initial tweet didn’t mention that it was a joke, and sarcasm often doesn’t translate in 140 characters or less. Besides, we still think guys will be complaining about the salary cap and, more importantly, the delays finalization of the process.