Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Somehow I've always been far more angry at Neil for going to the Broncos than I was at Lewis for going to the Raiders.
I feel like we wanted Neil back and he gave us the bird. Whereas the Chiefs seemed ready to move on from Lewis and the Raiders gave him an opportunity.
I think the Chiefs spurned Lewis whereas Smith spurned the Chiefs.
Maybe I'm wrong there - that's just the way I'd always viewed it. Lewis was 34, Collins and eventually Hasty were both 30 when the Chiefs brought them in (Lewis would've been 35 when Hasty arrived). I think KC just thought Lewis was at the end of the line.
|
Yeah, I've never been sure of what really happened with Neil. With Hasty and Waters and Lewis, I think the Chiefs moved on and those guys had a right to put bread on their table.
With Neil, I've never been sure. It's long enough ago that the details are fuzzy, but I think it was early in the salary cap era and we'd just paid Derrick Thomas a lot of money. Maybe the Chiefs didn't have a good feel for salary cap management yet and screwed up with the DT money. Or maybe they did and Neil simply wanted more money than the team could wrap up into an OLB and a DE when combined. It would have been a new environment for Neil and his agent as well, so maybe they didn't understand fully what was happening.
I feel like Neil didn't intentionally screw the Chiefs, and other than the fact that Carl was a win/lose negotiator I feel like the Chiefs weren't intentionally trying to screw Neil. I think Neil probably wanted money that didn't align with the salary cap era, and since the broncos were proven to be cheating on the cap in that time period they were the only ones who could give it to him.