PALM BEACH - Over the past eight days, the Bucs have lost defensive tackle Warren Sapp to the Raiders and safety John Lynch to the Broncos, two more examples of a long-standing league pattern.
Almost yearly, an NFL icon who spent a decade or more with one team leaves to finish his career with another. The list includes greats such as Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana, Bruce Smith and Marcus Allen, Joe Namath and Ronnie Lott.
Today, former Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith is with the Cardinals and former 49ers receiver Jerry Rice is with the Raiders.
Routinely, owners and administrators are asked to come up with a mechanism that would make it easier for players to stay with their original teams. Routinely, the answer is no.
"It's not going to happen," Broncos coach Mike Shanahan said. "That's what you have the franchise tag for, for a guy that's on his downside that you don't want to pay at that level (of compensation). They're not going to go in that direction. The union doesn't want it. The NFL doesn't want it."
Said Texans coach Dom Capers: "I always think, if you have veteran guys who have been extremely productive for a club, that most of the time you would like to see them finish with the club. But it's extremely difficult to work out."
Part of the reason is that the NFL has resisted creating a salary cap exception to allow teams to re-sign their veterans.
The league has insisted that any special treatment would create more harm than good.
"You're going to open up a can of worms," Steelers coach Bill Cowher said. "It's unfortunate for some of these players, whose careers are well recognized with certain teams. But with the salary cap, that's what's hard."
Teams face the dilemma of what to do with older players whose best days are perceived, at least by their current team, to be over. To entice free agents and reward their young players, teams are forced to make lower offers, or in the case of Sapp and Lynch no offers, to their older players.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who released veteran safety Lawyer Milloy before the start of the 2003 season in a controversial salary cap move, said there can be a solution.
"It's pretty simple: You just take a player's normal earnings from when he starts at a fairly low point, reaches his peak and then, at the point he continues playing beyond that, then relative to his play his earnings should go down," Belichick said.
In some cases, poor relations between players and organizations make compromise impossible.
"I totally understand that in some cases it's hard for the player to remain with the where he's been the high-profile player, the star, the captain, the MVP, the whatever it is," said Belichick, whose Patriots have won two of the past three Super Bowls while fostering a "no one is bigger than the team" attitude. "Now, he's faced with a lesser role, lesser dollars, and in some cases it's easier for him to go somewhere else and have that role."
Bucs coach Jon Gruden said players, coaches and fans of all sports should be used to it.
"It's weird seeing Karl Malone and Gary Payton play for the Lakers," said Gruden, who coached Oakland when Rice joined the Raiders. "I grew up a big Cincinnati Reds fan and it broke my heart that Pete Rose left. It still ticks me off to think about him playing for the Phillies.
"If they could do something that would allow it to happen, it would be great. At the same time, there are salary cap rules that we have to abide by. It's a great honor to coach those guys and a great honor to compete against them. It's exciting to give young people an opportunity to succeed guys like that."
There lies another reason the league isn't ready to change. Unlike the NBA, which implemented the Larry Bird Rule to allow a team to exceed the salary cap to sign its veterans, the NFL doesn't believe it has to hold on to its older stars.
"When one star is on his way out, another one is (evolving)," Cowher said. "We're a little different from the NBA, where Magic (Johnson) and Larry Bird were part of their identity, Michael Jordan (as well). I think the NFL has proven with its stars that when one is on his way out, another is on his way in. That's what makes our league unique."
The league also extended its revenue sharing agreement for 15 years and extended the use of instant replay for five.
