Cerrato's Response

[PennSkinsFan]

and you will like it;

Offered him @2 million base pay with a little over a mil in incentives, virtually giving him what he would make for certain perofrmance levels. Sounds fair to me

Said the money saved will go toward resigning Champ and that when Snyder is ready and the time is right, they will sit down with Champ.

He also stated that the door is open for Big Dady's return.

They are looking at guys on the squad to fill the hole, but are open to trade as well.

[JoeDaSchmoe]

Very good to hear. I'm glad they're thinking about Champ now. And I wouldn't entirely bet against BD not being in a Redskins uniform come September 4th, as it's gonna be hard for him to get a contract offer that will pay much more than the minimum by now. If he comes back and we offer to give him, say, a million in salary and about 3/4 of a million in incentives, that could very well be the best offer he gets.

[TexSkin]

Woot was glad they did not burn bridges with BD..I was thinking this exact same scenario. If I had been at the bargaining table with him I would have told him that we respect him and feel if he can get a better offer somewhere else then what we are giving him then good luck to him. If he cannot he is welcome to take the offer. The Champ part has me really excited though.

[PennSkinsFan]

Official response from Redskins.com:

Cerrato Weighs in on Wilkinson's Release
07/29/2003

Editor's Note: Redskins vice president of football operations Vinny Cerrato spoke Tuesday afternoon about the team's release of veteran defensive tackles. Here is a part of what Cerrato said at Redskins Park.
"We've released Dan Wilkinson today, regretfully. We attempted to restructure his contract. We felt like we offered a very fair package. We just couldn't get it worked out with his agent.

The door's open for Big Daddy to come back if he goes out there and can't get what he's looking for. We'll keep the door open. This will give us the opportunity to look at the guys that we have. We'll always look to see if there's anyone out there who can upgrade us. We just have to move forward. We couldn't continue this any longer. We didn't need the distraction anymore. That's why we've done it when we've done it. We made the decision to made forward.

You only have so much money, and you only have so much cap space. For us to do the things we need to do in the future, with other people's contracts, we could not afford to pay Dan Wilkinson the money he was after.

He realizes this is a business decision. And like we told his agent, Brig Owens, the door's open. You go out there and explore and if you can't get what you're looking for, come on back.

We're moving forward. It gives the opportunity for Greg Scott, Bernard Jackson, Bernard Holsey and some others to get the opportunities and get the looks. We're just trying to upgrade the run defense. Over the past five years, we haven't been that good on run defense. So we need to make some improvements in that area.

I'd imagine he'll have a lot of offers, and that he'll want to get into camp rather quickly. We just said, if it doesn't work, come on back.

This enables us to take that money and maybe sign guys who will be coming up. Champ Bailey would definitely be in that category.

Training camp and the preseason are for evaluating what you have. To watch the improvement of guys. To watch the young guys who have been working out and improving their bodies. I think we need to give them the opportunity.

If there's someone out there who becomes available that would improve any part of our depth, we would definitely look at him. Would we give up a draft pick for somebody? Absolutely we would if there was someone who would help us out.

We have to be patient. There's nothing out there right now. We're going to be a patient group. We feel comfortable with the group we have right now, but we want to see them. We really don't know what we have yet."

[bgordon]

We offered 2 million guaranteed, and he refused.....He is an idiot!

[TexSkin]

I DID NOT LIKE the part about giving up a draft pick for someone....it made the hairs raise on the back of my neck. We just dumped a guy we paid a 1st and 3rd for!

[hail2skins]

I agree TexSkins, I didn't like that statement.

[SkinsKY]

Originally posted by TexSkin
I DID NOT LIKE the part about giving up a draft pick for someone....it made the hairs raise on the back of my neck. We just dumped a guy we paid a 1st and 3rd for!

I worry about that too, but we were never gonna get that worth out of him anyway. We have a different FO than when we got him, and they did well with the draft picks we traded, so I think we will be okay although I am a bit nervous about our d-line now

[Hailyeah]

I liked the overall statement and the mention of taking care of Champ. Still worried about the middle though. He mentioned improving run defense. Hell, I'd take a repeat performance of last year with the yahoos we have up there now.

[truant]

Last years D wasn't all that great. We gave up a ton of points, which is more telling than yardage IMO. I say give some new guys a chance and see if they can play.

Even Powell played really well when given the chance, i know that Gardener getting doubled had a lot to do with that, but he was more effective than BD.

I think that the D should be better this year, if nothing else, the D-line just has to take up space and let the LB's make plays. I'd be nice if BD does come back, but if not i'm happy that we are going to use that cash to take care of our boy, #24...
i think it's great news

[bfauble83]

I heard BD on The John Thompson show and he sounded like he was ready to move on and didn't really have much interest in returning...he did say that he was going to continue to live in the area though...

[Skins57]

I wish him well but I doubt he makes anything near what we offered, let him crawl back and give him the min