Chargers tight end Antonio Gates has always been open with his opinions. So when he was asked recently about defensive end Joey Bosa’s holdout, he did not pull any punches.
“Obviously we want him here,” Gates said this week after a training camp practice. “We try to control what we can control, which is the guys that are here, the guys that are working, the guys that are here putting in the time. Hopefully everything will work itself out with Joey and he’ll be here ready to go.”
Gates then offered a word of warning to the unsigned 3rd overall pick in the NFL Draft.
“The biggest thing is you just don’t want to lose the trust of your teammates. You don’t know how your team will accept you when you come back," he said. "You don’t know how they view you based on the circumstance. I think, to me, that was something that was bothering me the times that I did sit out and the times I did have contract negotiations.”
Gates has experience with a holdout himself.
“After my Pro Bowl year I held out and I got suspended, actually,” Gates said chuckling.
That was in 2005 when then-general manager A.J. Smith played hardball and suspended Gates for four weeks for not signing his contract. But that was a very different situation. Gates was not a rookie at the time, he was coming off one of the best seasons a Chargers tight end had ever had and his teammates welcomed him back with open arms.
“I was already here. I had already played and I have already proven myself. I had been to the Pro Bowl.”
Gates eventually signed his $380,000, 1-year contract, went to the Pro Bowl again, and soon became the highest-paid tight end in the history of the NFL. He knew how good he could be and let his play on the field show how much he was worth.
“Eventually I ended up saying I need to get ready. To me, it meant a lot for me to go out and perform. The money was going to be there. I’ve always felt like as long as I was in the best shape and ready to play those opportunities of maximizing financially were going to be there so I tried to make sure I was ready to play.”
Bosa wants his money sooner. Gates says there is really no way to duplicate the kind of preparation time Bosa is missing and the rookie-to-be is eventually going to reach a crossroads.
“Sometimes you’ve gotta just, as a man, you’ve gotta step in and say this is what it’s going to be. Because sometimes, whether or not the miscommunication with the general manager and the agent, or whatever it is, at the end of the day it’s your life. It’s your career. You know what’s best for you and you know what you need.”
Gates says the NFL is a business and understands contract negotiations can be difficult to navigate.
“You try to maximize your financial earnings as much as you can and not somehow cause some kind of frustration with the team.”
But at the end of the day, Gates believes this about Bosa … and anyone else in the NFL.
“My advice to any player that’s going through any kind of contract situation is at one point you’ve got to be a man and you’ve got to understand that you’ve got to get ready to play. It’s harder for a younger guy to try to duplicate something that he’s not aware of, that he’s basically oblivious of.”
The Chargers first preseason game is Saturday in Tennessee and it’s looking like an almost guarantee that Joes Bosa will not be there for it.
