MMQB: minute-by-minute how Weddle’s deal with Los Angeles came together

MMQB

WEDDLE’S WAIT ISN’T LONG

On a 75-minute, three-way phone call Saturday night, Eric Weddle, the newest Rams safety, and agent David Canter walked me through the many cool details of how his situation played out over the last nine weeks. But one detail I thought was particularly interesting was how Sean McVay played the closer on Friday morning.

Weddle met with McVay for two hours on Thursday, and the two were in the midst of a second meeting, one that lasted two-and-a-half hours on Friday morning, watching tape, when it happened. As Weddle explained to me …

McVay: Eric, where did you learn your intuition, the movements, who taught you this?

Weddle: I did it on my own.

McVay: What do you mean?

Weddle: I didn’t have a veteran to help me, I didn't have a guy to lean on when I was early in my career, I had to figure it out on my own.

McVay: Honestly, Eric, there’s not one player in this league that could do what you do.

Weddle: Exactly. That’s why I’m here, right?

“It was cool,” Weddle said over the phone. “You want to be the best at what you do. If not, I don't want to be around you. I don’t want to be with average, with good. That's not in my DNA. So when you have one of the best head coaches have that much respect for you and want you to be a part of what they have, it’s definitely humbling.”

Shortly after that interaction—McVay was referencing Weddle’s ability to communicate and disguise pre-snap, and how he competes and makes things hard on the quarterback—McVay said to Weddle, “You tell me what you want to do. If you want to get this done, let’s get it done.” The coach offered to slow-play it too, if Weddle wanted to take more trips. But by then, that wasn’t necessary.

“This is a dream scenario for me,” Weddle responded.

Here’s how they got there:

Evening of Jan. 6: The Ravens’ season ends with a 23–17 loss to the Chargers in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs, and Weddle tells the media that he’ll either play for Baltimore in 2019, or he’ll retire. Later that night, he sees his family off. He and his wife, Chanel, decided that this offseason they would move back to San Diego, their planned long-term home. Their four kids (Brooklyn, Gaige, Silver, Kamri) are set to start school there the next day.

Jan. 7: Weddle had texted new Ravens GM Eric DeCosta (just taking over for Ozzie Newsome and a driving force in getting Weddle to Baltimore in 2016): “Hey, I want to meet with you before I go back to California.” That meeting happens the day after the loss to Weddle’s former team. The two are close enough that DeCosta had Weddle write reports at one point. So they spend an hour just talking.

Then, the conversation moves to Weddle’s future, and DeCosta is up front about it, saying Weddle will likely have to take a pay cut to stay. Weddle was up front too—he said he didn’t think he should have to. “But it was good,” Weddle says. “It was never heated. … I have a great relationship with him and the organization, I loved every second of it. I want to make sure everyone knows, there's no hatred, there's no bitterness.”

Later on Jan. 7: Weddle asks Canter to come to breakfast at the Blue Moon Cafe in Baltimore. The two are exceptionally close—Canter credits Weddle with saving his business by coming aboard before the 2007 draft, and Weddle calls Canter “my best friend.” When Canter arrives, with luggage in tow for his return trip to Florida, Weddle says, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be here next year.”

Canter responds, “What? You just had the number one defense in football. You’re going to the Pro Bowl.” Weddle says, “Eric told me that maybe he and [contract negotiator Pat Moriarty] would reach out to you and just discuss a pay cut.” DeCosta later confirms that for Canter, who doesn’t really believe the Ravens will go through with it. But the two are firm—they won’t take a pay cut in Baltimore.

Feb. 27-March 4: Canter heads to Indianapolis for the combine, and while he requests to meet with DeCosta there, it doesn’t happen. In part because of that, Canter’s thinking, Weddle’s crazy. No way the Ravens go through with it. He texts Weddle much the same—“Dude, you’re crazy. It makes no sense.”

March 5, 1 p.m. ET: While on the phone with franchise-tagged Cowboy DeMarcus Lawrence, Canter sees DeCosta’s caller ID pop up, and the agent takes the call. DeCosta cuts right to the chase: “I just want to let you know, I had a great conversation with Eric, and we’re going to release him.” Indeed, DeCosta and Weddle talked, with DeCosta telling the safety, “this may be the hardest thing I ever have to do in my career.”

“Then he was like, I’m going to call David,” Weddle says. “I was like ‘I can call him for you, it’s no big deal.’ He was like, ‘No, out of respect to you and David, I want to call him, I want to tell him. So immediately, within five seconds, David got the call.”

March 5, 1:30 p.m. ET: Weddle calls Ravens defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, head coach John Harbaugh and secondary coach Chris Hewitt to say his goodbyes. Meanwhile, Canter is calling the rest of the league with the news of Weddle’s cut and says he got responses from 29 head coaches and 24 GMs. “I purposefully made sure I counted them up,” he says. He wanted to show Weddle the reaction.

Canter says now, “I’ve never had anything close to that response,” and he told Weddle, “If you want to play, based on those responses, there will be interest there.”

March 6, morning: Canter has the Giants, Titans, Bucs, Texans, Chiefs and Bears interested in Weddle, with the Falcons and Eagles calling to say they love him but only had a limited role to offer. So Canter and Weddle come up with three criteria: a chance to win, proximity to San Diego and a baseline of $5 million for 2019.

“At $5 million, you're still in the starting safety range, and for 34 years old that that’s a significant deal,” Canter says. “There's a commitment on the team side. And in football the only way teams show their commitment is money.”

March 6, 4 p.m. ET: Weddle and Canter are anxiously anticipating his release becoming official with the release of the league’s daily personnel notice. Canter tells Weddle, “It’s gonna be get pretty crazy here at 4:05, 4:08, when the waiver wire comes out.” And then it comes out—but all they hear are crickets. Canter’s VP of analytics and research, Brian McIntyre, texts, “Eric’s not on the personnel notice.”

Canter texts DeCosta. DeCosta says there was a clerical error and Weddle would be on there on Thursday. “I was straight salty,” Canter says. “Here I am telling teams on Tuesday night, Eric’s getting cut. And now a day-plus later and there's nothing out there. My word is all I have in this business.”

March 6, 5:30 p.m. ET: Canter, who’s now at his son’s drum lesson, gets a text from Rams GM Les Snead, who says that the Ravens had just announced the move and explains that by the letter of the new law, that’s good enough to allow another team to set up a visit.

At this point, Canter had received what he thought were courtesy return texts from McVay and Rams COO Kevin Demoff, and he figured the Rams weren’t interested. But Snead—who was out of town—said they were and that he’d circle back after he got a better look at what was out there and returned to Los Angeles. Canter figures he getting the run-around, and he texts Weddle, “The Rams are out.”

March 6, 5:55 p.m. ET: Snead texts Canter again: “Where do you want to be financially?” Canter tells Snead that $5 million was the baseline, and Snead asks if he can get Weddle in the building on Thursday. Canter texts Weddle and says the Rams want to send a car and have him in the building on Thursday between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. local time. Then Canter texts McIntyre: “He’s gonna be a Ram.”

Canter had two other teams—one was the Bears—champing at the bit to get the first visit. But now, they’ll have to wait. “From the onset, the Rams were the top choice for what we wanted,” Weddle says, citing the criteria. “There's no denying that.”

March 7, 4:15 p.m. ET: Wanting to time the visit so it happened when Weddle was officially cut, the Rams’ car service arrived at 1:15 PT, or just after the personnel notice—this time with his name on it—came out. The one hang-up now? Weddle still hasn’t 100% decided whether or not he’s actually going to play in 2019. That decision comes on the three-hour ride from San Diego to L.A.

During an interview he did with Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman, he’s asked what the game means to him. “In answering that question, I immediately got the urge and the fire and the challenge to go out and be great again,” he says. “And from there on in, I knew I was playing again, whether it was the Rams or someone else.”

Weddle had one other overriding thought on the long ride up I-5 related to old buddy Phillip Rivers. “My first thought was that we’re definitely not making this drive every day.” Rivers does do it from San Diego, although the Chargers’ facility in Costa Mesa is considerably closer to San Diego than the Rams’ facility in Thousand Oaks, clear on the other side of Los Angeles.

March 7, 7:40 p.m. ET: Weddle arrives at the Rams facility and heads to meet with McVay, with his guard up. He loved the Cowboys as a kid, and talked to them as a free agent in 2016, only to walk away from an offer that wasn’t quite what he expected. As a result of that experience, he won’t put the cart before the horse, perfect as things may seem.

He and McVay were together for two hours, and Weddle saw assistant head coach Joe Barry, who was with him in San Diego, as well as secondary coaches Ejiro Evero (who went to the same high school as Weddle) and cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant. He also runs into defensive coordinator Wade Phillips; the two just missed one another in San Diego, but Weddle ran a version of Phillips’s defense for nine years as a Charger.

March 7, 10 p.m. ET: Dinner was set for 6 p.m. local time at Mastro’s in Thousand Oaks. Weddle and the Rams’ contingent get there an hour late. Weddle, McVay, Phillips, Barry, Evero, Pleasant and tackle Andrew Whitworth make up for it by spending three hours in the place, eating and talking and having a good time.

March 8, 1:30 a.m. ET: Canter reaches out to Weddle. “Dude, what’s going on?” he says, not having heard from his client all night. Weddle says, “I knew within two minutes I wanted to be here.” But Canter still hasn’t heard from the team. So he texts the Rams’ chief contract negotiator, Tony Pastoors. “I’ll send something in the morning,” Pastoors responds.

Canter had informed Olivier Vernon that he was being dealt from the Giants to the Browns earlier in the evening, and had just been waiting to hear from Weddle after that. So he’s salty again. He stayed up all night for what?

March 8, 6:30 a.m. ET: Canter wakes up and starts to jot out a deal.

March 8, 9 a.m. ET: Weddle is back at the Rams’ facility again to meet with McVay.

March 8, 11:30 a.m. ET: The car service arrives at the Rams’ facility for Weddle. The safety hits up his agent—“Did they send you an offer?” Canter says no and figures the car means Weddle is going home without a deal. The truth is, the car is there to take him to the hospital to have his physical done.

After Weddle arrives at the hospital, Pastoors reaches out with a handful of proposals. Every proposal has a picture of Weddle and Canter on it—“I give Tony a lot of credit for keeping it light,” Canter says. And simultaneously, the Bucs come out of nowhere with a substantial offer. “Don’t you just really want to get this done with the Rams?” Canter asks Weddle.

“At the end of the day, it’s McVay, it Phillips, it’s the Rams, and they were two series away from potentially beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl,” Canter says. “And Eric was like ‘Yeah, let’s just get it done.’”

March 8, 12:30 p.m. ET: As negotiations near agreement, Canter has two requests. First, he wants—in keeping with an old Rams tradition—to have palindromes in the contract. “What? Who cares?” Weddle says. “I care, and I want them in the contract,” Canter responds. So the base salary and all the incentives, as Canter requested, are palindromes.

Second, Canter wanted clauses named after family members. So the Chanel No. 13 and Chanel No. 14 clauses are incentives tied to playing time and playoff wins in 2019 and ’20. The Brooklyn, Gaige, Silver and Kamri Ice Cream Sunday clause (a tribute to his tradition of having ice cream after wins) is tied to playing time, making the Pro Bowl and playoff wins.

Pastoors didn’t fight on that one. “It was really cool for David to think of that and to think about my kids and what they mean to me and what they mean to David,” Weddle says. “I mean, that’s kind of in a nutshell is what our relationship is. To think of those kinds of things, in that moment, is definitely pretty special.”

March 8, 4:32 p.m. ET: Twitter There’s a story to that tweet, too. Weddle’s phone was broken, and he forgot his Twitter password, so he couldn’t even have Canter log in to his account to announce the deal. Canter had all those LA’s saved in his drafts for that moment, and decided to copy and paste them on his own timeline, which was how the whole thing was announced to the football world.

So it was done. Weddle is playing for the coach he wanted to play for, in the city he wanted to play in, for the team his dad grew up rooting for, at a stadium he dreamt of playing in as a Southern California kid. And as an added bonus, he and Chanel get free babysitting—Weddle’s parents still live where he grew up, in Rancho Cucamonga.

“I said this to a bunch of my buddies, just sitting back, how my career has come full circle and what amazing opportunity I have,” Weddle said. “To be back home, to play for an amazing organization that my dad was a die-hard fan of growing up. And he gets to be able to cheer for his son in that Rams uniform. Being close enough to home and the emotions of it, they weren’t really in the mix and then all of sudden things changed and boom they’re the lead dogs now. … It’s a dream come true.

“I can’t even express how I felt in that moment or even now. I wish it was April 15 and I could get to the team and get working with my guys.”

Pretty good bet, too, that McVay can’t wait to see what that looks like either.