FOXBORO -- Last season, Matthew Judon wasn’t psyched about his contract. Until he got the bump he desired on August 4, he attended practice but worked mainly on conditioning. He was never a full participant in a padded practice.
This year, Judon -- again unhappy with his deal -- participated much more in the Patriots first five workouts than last year. But when the pads came on Monday, Judon opted out. Conspicuously.
As his teammates did dynamic stretching at the start of practice, Judon sat watching from a big pile of pads on the sideline. When positional drills began, he sat on a blue, overturned garbage can like a man waiting on a park bench for a bus.
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From Judon’s vantage point, a sit-in is understandable. His contract isn’t guaranteed until the first week of the season. If he blows a knee on the slick turf he’s out of luck.
The same situation plays out all over the NFL and has for years. But for first-year head coach Jerod Mayo, seeing his best pass rusher in a red hoodie sitting on an upside-down trash can watching his teammates practice apparently didn’t sit well.
As the team was doing positional drills, Mayo approached Judon. They had an animated discussion and surprisingly lengthy conversation. Then Judon walked off the field.
A few minutes after that, Judon returned. He went directly to personnel czars Eliot Wolf and Matt Groh for another animated discussion along the sideline while practice unfolded.
Judon frequently sent up the universal signal for “What am I supposed to do?” -- palms turned to the sky and shoulders in a shrug. Ultimately, Judon trudged off the field a second time.
All this follows a scene last week when owner Robert Kraft was out at practice, had a long conversation with Judon and then made his way to Wolf for a long 1-on-1 conversation.
Not wanting to mischaracterize any of the the exchanges, I asked the Patriots if there was anything they’d like to add. Because the easy inference from each conversation is that there’s a pissed-off player and we’re watching him plead his case in real time.
The Patriots passed on giving further context.
So we’ll reasonably assume if Judon’s contract was A-OK, we wouldn’t have seen the exchange we did.
Still, there’s a lot we don’t know. Was Judon asked to stay away from padded practices if he was just going to sit and watch? Was he defying a request by going out anyway? Was there no conversation at all?
Did Judon feel like he was actually being a good teammate by being there? Did Mayo feel the optics of Judon sitting on an overturned trash can while his teammates worked was bothersome enough to ask him to leave?
Was it a good old-fashioned disrespect-off? Judon being disrespected by the Patriots. Mayo being disrespected by Judon showing him up. Judon being disrespected by having to leave. Judon trying to regain respect by giving Wolf and Groh a piece of his mind.
What got accomplished by Judon returning to seemingly plead his case to Wolf and Groh? And why couldn’t Kraft last week find a nice time inside the stadium to have his conversations with Judon and Wolf (again, assuming there was some contract talk involved)?
To sum it up, is this what the Patriots are looking for?
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Bill Belichick might not have the all-time wins record, but no one will ever break his mark for number of players pissed off about their contract.
Belichick’s approach was -- generally -- to quarantine the issue, minimize conversation and make sure the player didn’t make things worse by bitching in the media. It worked well.
Proof? This is what Judon said last year about his deal when asked why he wasn’t participating much.
"It's more working on my conditioning and running, and making sure where I need to be,” he said in July. “I'm happy to be here. I'm definitely not going to talk about contracts with y'all. Wherever that goes, it goes. The market changes every day."
There’s no way to know where things would be between Judon and the Patriots if Belichick were still here. He might already have a deal, for all we know.
But we do know it wouldn’t be playing out so publicly. Literally IN public. A sideshow is worst-case scenario.
And while this falls well short of Terrell Owens doing sit-ups in his driveway, it’s still a sideshow. First-year head coach on the first day of padded practices exiling his best defender -- and a really solid and charismatic leader -- from practice? What are we doing?
So far, Mayo has given all his players plenty of space to be themselves and speak their minds. And they have. But Judon clearly went over a line Monday that Mayo didn’t want crossed.
If Judon knew it was there and did it anyway, well, that’s on Judon.
If he didn’t know where the line was? Or that there was a line? That’s on Mayo.
Meanwhile, I have to ask again, where’s Eliot Wolf in all this? The de facto "final say" personnel man is the one negotiating the contract, not Mayo. Yet Mayo’s the one out front juggling grenades and seeing a pissed-off Pro Bowler wandering the field at his first big-deal practice of camp.
That’s 878 words. None about the actual football the team is trying to play. All because a sideshow hijacked the day. (Football summation: lots of run game stuff … Brissett pretty good … Maye not as good … offense sloppy with unforced errors … Javon Baker remains intriguing …).
As the ancient warrior Sun Tzu once wrote, "Never let your enemy see your best pass-rusher on an overturned garbage can, speaking hotly with head coach then returning to ream out GM. It looks sloppy as hell."