Texans cornerback Dunta Robinson, who has been slapped with the franchise tag but who has yet to sign the one-year offer that goes along with it, plans to show up not long before the start of the 2009 regular season, accept the tender, and receive the full amount of the base salary despite missing the entire offseason, training camp, and preseason.
He’d show up much sooner than that if the team merely promises not to use the tag on him again in 2010.
“I’d be on the way to the airport while we were talking, and be the first one at the next practice if they did that,” Robinson told Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle.
But Dunta shouldn’t buy a plane ticket just yet.
“We’re not inclined to agree to that,” Texans G.M. Rick Smith said. “It has less to do with Dunta Robinson, and more to do with organization. We don’t feel comfortable doing that, so we’re not going to.”
Robinson, however, doesn’t think he’s being unreasonable.
“It’s what other teams do and have done,” Robinson told Solomon. “It’s not a crazy request. I’m trying to meet them in the middle, but they won’t come halfway. I would have been at all the offseason stuff, and at training camp from Day 1 if they just agreed to that.”
Robinson and the front office have been at odds ever since Robinson concluded based on discussions with Smith that the team wouldn’t use the franchise tag on him if a long-term deal couldn’t be worked out. Once the tag was applied, Robinson became upset.
And even though Smith says that Robinson needs to be at camp, he’s fully within his rights to stay away from all preseason activities, and then to show up just before Week One and apply his Herbie Hancock to an offer that would then become a one-year, fully-guaranteed deal worth nearly $10 million.
The only potential risk is that the Texans could rescind the tag at any time before Robinson signs it, which would make Robinson an unrestricted free agent.
Though it’s unlikely that the Texans would do it, it wouldn’t be unprecedented.
