TJ Houshmandzadeh is taking a beating for not having a deal by now. People are saying that he overvalued himself and the money that he thought was going to be there, isn’t there. They are also saying that TJ is old and people don’t want to pay him the money he wants. I don’t think that is completely true. The fact is, this is TJ’s first taste of free agency. As a player, you never know what your value is on the open market until you get on the open market. You hear that certain teams like you and are interested and you hope that it’s a team that you want to play for. So now TJ is getting a  a true sense of the teams that are interested in his services and he can make the decision off of that instead of what his agent has told him before free agency started.  

In TJ’s case, he has to decide whether it is worth leaving the Cincinnati Bengals. He is getting attention from a number of teams right now and it is going to feel good, but I think TJ’s decision is going to be a gut feeling. He is a smart guy. He never had much before he played football and he remembers that. So once he accepts the reality of the money his next contract is going to be worth, whatever that is, he will then decide where he wants to spend the rest of his career. Playing is Cincinnati will probably mean more money because the Bengals structure contracts in a way that players rarely become salary cap casualties. Also he has a top QB in Carson Palmer, so he will have plenty of opportunities to catch the ball. And he is comfortable in the city. If he chooses another team, he will have to prove himself all over again and worry about things not related to football. TJ is a west coast guy but I don’t think that will play much into his decision as people think. He will have enough money to go there as much as he wants.  He also is weighing whether or not things will change in Cincinnati.  Will he come back to the same team?  Can he make a difference?  

So like I said Friday morning, if the Bengals want TJ, they can get him right now.  But as each day passes with him on the market, more and more teams will jump into the TJ derby because they think they can get him.