It's my understanding, although I may well be wrong - Mr Clean will know - that Wally intends to sit out the first 11 weeks, and then play the last 6 so that he becomes a free agent. If he chooses to come into play after week 11, then Miami make him inactive for those 6 games, or puts him on the PUP list - after all this is a guy that will have not been in camp and not played - then I'm not sure that he is eligible to be a FA after all that.
I may of course be talking out of my backpassage and if that's the case then let me apologise in advance.
I believe the short answer is you are wrong in this case. In order to be placed on the "Physically Unable to Perform" list, or on the "Injured Reserve" list, you would need to be well, physically unable to perform, or injured. Unless Miami hires a turk to go run Ogunleye over in front of his apartment, break his leg or something, Ogun will be neither injured nor unable to perform so he would just be on the roster and whether we activate him or not, he accrues the season.
Ogunleye SAYS he'll hold out. But I don't believe him. Too much to lose from his end compared to our end. He holds out he loses $1.6 to $1.7 million bucks of his own money in 2004. From our end, we just lose the services of our 2nd best DE on the team...and we replace him with a rotation that may or may not be just as effective as Ogunleye.
Not to mention, in 2005 and beyond he may lose considerably more money because teams could view him as a 27 year old malcontent problem player with reconstructive knee surgery in his past that hasn't played a down in over a year (because Miami should and probably will threaten that even when he comes back, he sits, unable to flash his wares to other teams). That just adds to the questions about Ogunleye. Teams already question whether the 25 sacks in 2 years is a fluke, because they saw almost the exact same production from Trace Armstrong before heading to Oakland and doing practically nothing after signing a big money deal.
Ok, you don't believe its Jason Taylor that makes our LDEs look good? Fine, then its the secondary. Either way, Miami has a knack for making DEs look good, and when they sign big money deals elsewhere, they TANK (Rich Owens, Lorenzo Bromell, Kenny Mixon, Trace Armstrong, etc).
This is mainly why no team was willing to give a 1st and 3rd for Ogunleye. Add a holdout to his resume, and he could see his value on the UFA market drop considerably instead of increasing. He wants to up the ante, play a little hardball now and threaten holdout, then the front office needs to let him know whats up.
If he holds out he'll be awefully lonely. Jason Taylor said it. He expects him to sign the one year tender. JT did it. Just about all other RFAs do it. Thats the way the system is set up. Why is Ogun special? If Ogun abandons his team, he'll lose a lot of friends and a lot of money. I insist that the holdout threat is not credible...its just a sign of desperation.
