Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports, whose Monday Rush column is every bit as entertaining as — but night-and-day different from — Peter King’s MMQB, drops an intriguing nugget in a Week One diatribe directed at unsigned 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree.
Says Silver: “I’d like to wish Michael Crabtree a happy birthday — the 49ers’ first-round draft pick turned 22 Monday — and I hope he gets a call from his mother, a yummy cake, lots of awesome presents . . . and, most important, a clue.”
Silver also confirms something about which Jay Glazer of FOX reported on Sunday. With each game Crabtree misses, money is coming off the table.
It makes sense. If the guy ultimately will be signing a five-year contract with guaranteed money and a total value premised on 80 regular-season games, the guaranteed money and the total value should drop with each game that is forever lost.
So with $16 million in guaranteed money on the table, the cost in guaranteed dollars for each lost game rightly should be $200,000.
The key factor here is that ownership, the front office, and the coaching staff are on the same page regarding the importance of holding the line. And who knows? The sense of unity and camaraderie that flows from staring down a diva who might suddenly be thinking that those new-old gold helmets and pants look a lot better after beating the defending NFC champs could provide a greater benefit to the franchise than anything Crabtree could ever do on the field.
It also might help the Niners recapture much of the national following that has scattered to other teams in the 15 years since San Fran last won a Super Bowl.