“Handshake Agreement” In Place Between Pats And Jason Taylor?
Posted by Mike Florio on May 8, 2009, 10:51 a.m.
There’s a phenomenon in old-school journalism that, in this age of the never-ending news cycle, can at times be misinterpreted.
With space to fill and nothing else really happening right now for teams that don’t have minicamps this weekend, newspaper writers need to write something for placement in their newspapers. And so sometimes they’ll write news that isn’t really based on, you know, news.
But the headline will suggest that it’s, you know, news.
The content then will indicate that it’s primarily a rehashing of stuff that anyone with an Internet connection has known about for at least a week.
And so we’ve received multiple e-mails today from readers who saw the item in the
Providence Journal titled “
Signs Point To Jason Taylor Landing In New England” and who in their apparent excitement regarding the much-anticipated move didn’t bother to realize that there’s not really anything in the article that advances the ball or suggests that anything is going to happen any time soon.
The one new assertion we noticed in the article from Shalise Manza Young (and we really don’t intend this to be an indictment of Shalise or her well-written item — she was merely filling the space that her editor told her to fill) was that “some . . . believe” a ”handshake agreement” already is in place between the Pats and Taylor. And so we’ve opted to use that as the headline for this blurb
Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly obvious to us that Taylor plans not to put pen to paper until the season of the underwear practices has ended. The guy gave up $8.5 million from the Redskins because he didn’t want to spend 25 days of his offseason working out with the team; surely, he won’t be signing a contract for far less than $8.5 million until all mandatory and voluntary involuntary workouts have concluded.
