Interesting take on Holliday out of Green Bay. Below is the article.
Holliday's gamble cost him millions
Last Updated: March 14, 2003
Rick Braun
Green Bay - Vonnie Holliday rolled the dice last summer.
They came up snake eyes.
Now, Holliday is looking at the possibility he may have cost himself millions of dollars.
And the five-year veteran is now in the position where he'll probably have to uproot himself from his professional home if he is to recoup as many dollars as he can.
Simply put, Holliday's big payday is apparently not going to be as big as he'd hoped, or where he'd hoped.
Holliday turned down a sizable offer from the Packers last summer, believing he was deserving of a contract similar to the six-year, $33 million deal the Packers signed free agent Joe Johnson to roughly a year ago.
Maybe it's a shame that Holliday may not finish his career with the Packers. He is a class act in the locker room and a class human being all the way around.
But in the cold, cruel world of the National Football League, sentiment takes a distant back seat to business concerns.
And it takes an even more distant back seat to performance concerns.
When you break down Holliday's five seasons in Green Bay, the numbers don't add up to the reputation.
It may be a bit harsh to call Holliday injury-prone, but in three of his five seasons, he missed at least four games.
He missed four games in 1998, his rookie season, with an ankle injury. He missed four more games with leg and ankle injuries in 2000. Finally, he missed six games in 2002 - four with a torn pectoral muscle, two with torn knee cartilage.
Yes, football is a rough and violent game. Injuries do happen. But durability must always be factored into a player's worth.
It's almost impossible to calculate how much Brett Favre's legend is enhanced by the fact that he's never missed a start since taking over as the starting quarterback in September 1992.
Durability is part of Favre's legend. It's not a strong point thus far in Holliday's five-year career.
And while Favre has put up Hall of Fame numbers and led the Packers to two Super Bowls and one Lombardi Trophy, Holliday's numbers don't tell the tale of a player who gets a knock-'em-dead free-agent deal.
He's never recorded more than eight sacks in a season, and his career-high of eight came in his rookie season. He had six in 1999, just five in 2000 and seven in 2001. He had six last season, but five of them came in one game. Granted, he was playing injured much of the time, but having just one sack in the other nine games he played is simply not enough production from a starting end.
The Packers have touted Holliday as one of the game's best run-stopping ends, but the team's average of 4.8 yards allowed per rushing attempt does not support such a notion.
One thought that remains from the 2002 season is that the defense inexplicably played better from Week 4 through Week 7 than it did from Weeks 1-3. By far.
What is the significance of those time frames?
Holliday played the first three games before getting hurt in the third game at Detroit. Rookie Aaron Kampman filled in for the next four weeks, and the Packers went from allowing 34, 35 and 31 points to allowing 14, 21, 10 and 9.
That could be entirely a coincidence. It could be a matter of who the competition was (Atlanta, New Orleans and Detroit in the first three, Carolina, Chicago, New England and Washington in the next four).
It may have been a complete fluke. It may have had more to do with the other 10 players on the unit. It all may mean nothing at all. But then again, it might.
The Packers might believe they're a better team with Holliday than without him.
But when they placed the transitional tag on Cletidus Hunt and not Holliday, they may have spoken volumes about what they actually thought.
They're still talking as though they'd like to retain Holliday. And when / if they don't, they'll probably say it was simply a matter of the numbers. Maybe they believed they couldn't get Holliday for the amount they were able to sign Hunt at.
But one could easily surmise that they decided that Holliday was not worth as much money as Hunt.
And with the Packers also trying to get together on a long-term contract with rush end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, Holliday could be looking at being only the fourth-highest-paid player along the defensive line behind Johnson, Hunt and Gbaja-Biamila. A little more than a year ago, he seemed in line to be the highest-paid defensive lineman.
Although Holliday has been an admired player in Green Bay for his five seasons, he may not be worth the money he's been seeking.
In the end, the Packers may be lucky he turned them down last summer.
