[Preds]

First off I've stated my support of not trading the "decline" soley for some sort of compensation. However as part of a package deal I have no problem with it.

As for the "value" the player has, it is most likely that if you are gonna extract value out of a pcakage deal on a tendered guy that has sold for a price where the reward outweighs the risk, and you are going to match.

It's hard to extract value in a case where the player sells at a price that supercedes his value, or a guy where it's clear cannot afford to match, or whereby by matching you will be screwing your team with the cap.

A guy like Favre, or Henry, or Barlow, all those guys can easily outearn their contracts. If Jake woulda said hey Mike, I know you really want Favre, but I'm matching... if you REALLY want him however, would you be interested in talking about a package deal? I woulda been all over that. Favre IMO is worth far more than he sold for. Jake got a great deal in matching, but could have gotten different value by declining the match to me and making a package trade.

As for your last scenario, if you're not the winning bidder your not getting or giving any value, your using the threat of extortion. If you want to bid my guy up go for it, maybe your price gets raised, maybe it doesn't and I still match. Maybe you bid the guy too high and I stick you with him. Your scenario isn't nearly as realistic. If you came to me with something like that I'd tell you to go ahead and bid away.

In the Barlow case, the player SOLD at market value. Nothing prohibited him from selling at that value. It's just that IMO, and apparantly that of the Derby Cars, Barlow sold at a price where the reward significantly outwieghs the risk. After he sold I was already intent on matching, I wasn't threatening the Cars telling him give me value or else, I told him hey I'm going to match (and I was), but if you're interested maybe we can work something out and both get what we want / need.

Seriously, I think we're on polar opposites on this one.