As Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Football Night in America points out in his indispensable Monday Morning Quarterback column, Chargers-Chiefs won’t be the only game played on Monday. Between now and 4:00 p.m. ET, teams have the ability to put in waiver claims for former Patriots cornerback Leigh Bodden.
Abruptly cut on Friday, any team can make a waivers claim for his contract. (After the trading deadline, every player who is released must pass through waivers -- even players like Bodden with four or more years of NFL service.) King says that the 49ers, Bengals, Bucs, Chiefs, Bills, and Jets could make a claim.
The team with the highest waiver priority (i.e., the one with the worst record that makes a claim) will win his contract.
And it could be more than a one-year move. With a contract that pays Bodden $2.064 million for the rest of 2011 and base salaries of $3.9 million in each of the next two seasons, that’s a bargain for a veteran cover corner.
So why did the Pats dump him? (I mean, it’s not like he was photographed during the bye week with an adult film star, or something.) King hears that Bodden was going through the motions, unhappy that he wasn’t one of the top three guys on the depth chart.
I’ve got a hunch there may be something more that forced the Patriots to simply cut the cord. They could have used Bodden on Sunday against the Steelers, especially with Ras-I Dowling now in Injured Reserve.