The word according to Barrows and Maiocco is that Kurt Warner has now lowered his demands to return to Arizona. He still wants more than they initially offered, but he lwoer his request to a 2-year offer for $23 million with $12M guaranteed. He also said he's sacrifice another $1M if they re-worked Anquan Boldin's deal.
Given that at the end of the day, this is all about business (and not just football), it's certainly a strong move on his part. I found one of the more amusing and spot on comments in Maiocco's post by Indiana Jim:
I'm sure some folks will feel used, and maybe a little dirty, but in the end it's not really surprising. One might refer to this as a game of chicken, but I think in the end it was a pretty low stakes game. Yes it was a lot of money, but I found it hard to believe Kurt Warner would leave such a great situation in Arizona.
The deal is certainly not done at this point, but I think it's safe to say the 49ers are out of the picture. I don't know if the Cardinals will do the Boldin part of the deal, but I think they'd be foolish to not take Warner's $23M offer.
This leaves the 49ers back at square one. Barrows thinks the 49ers don't look good coming out of this, but I would disagree. I don't know if they look better, but I don't think they look all that bad. This isn't the first time a person gave his current team a bit of discount to come back and it won't be the last. It would've been nice to really drive up the price, but it doesn't seem to have worked out. That's life. There are still some free agent QB options out there so time to look to option 2, whether that be through free agency or the draft.
FOOCH'S UPDATE 1:27PM: I was tooling around the Internet and came across some hater-ade from the folks of PFT.
Based on the latest developments, we’re prepared to announce our opinion that he’s a fake and a phony and we wish we’d never laid eyes on him.
. . .
At best for Warner, the fake and the phony is agent Mark Bartelstein, but since Warner has employed Bartelstein to do his bidding, the stink clings to Kurt, too.
. . .
So he’s a fraud, in our opinion. He’s a nice guy not because he wants to do nice things in the quiet, anonymous way nice things are supposed to be done, but because his motivation is to be known as a nice guy.
I'm not saying Florio's wrong on this, but it comes across a little like he's riding the bitter bus. While I did think there was a chance the 49ers might land Warner, I also realized the business side of things is still out there. I may be misinterpreting PFT, but they seem to come across as almost a little shocked. What do you think?