Troy Williamson's Wallet Is a Bit Lighter

by Christopher Gates on Nov 8, 2007 12:33 PM CST in News

The Vikings are withholding Troy Williamson's pay check for last week after he left the team to be with his family following the death of his grandmother. Williamson expressed no hesitation about leaving the club to return home but obviously the Vikings were not on board.

Players are paid on a 17-week basis (16 games plus the bye week). Based on that formula, Williamson lost $25,588.24 by leaving. His base salary this season is $435,000.

Wow. . .I'm pretty surprised by this move. After all, Thanksgiving is coming up. . .based on the Marcus Robinson precedent from last season, I figured that the Vikings would wait until then to do something like this.

Troy Williamson chose to put his family ahead of football, and it's costing him a cool $25K. Well played, Vikings front office. And by "well played," what I mean is "what a selfish, callous move." I guess while we're borrowing everything else from the Eagles, our players are supposed to emulate Andy Reid's "football uber alles" philosophy, too. After all, that philosophy allowed Reid to raise two sons that turned out to be fine, upstanding young men. . .how bad can it be?

I won't say anything bad about Troy Williamson for taking extra time with his family, not with everything they've been through over the past couple of months. Yes, he has a committment to keep to the Minnesota Vikings. . .but family comes first. Family always comes first. To express otherwise is a terribly silly sentiment. Like Zulgad's blog entry says, this might be the beginning of the end for Williamson in Minnesota. That would be unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as the way he's been treated in this situation.

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Troy Williamson

I'm not ready to jump to conclusions on this one. This may seem like the Vikings are giving T-Will a big middle finger here, but maybe there's something else going on. Childress is all about character and I doubt he'd ever punish someone for caring about their family. Maybe Troy just didn't let the coaching staff know he was going to be gone in time, maybe he was gone longer than he told them he'd be gone. There's got to be more to the story.
Some people criticized Chilly for how he treated Koren Robinson, but that turned out to be the best thing for Koren. I agree that this could be the beginning of the end for Williamson, but I don't think many are surprised that T-Will's days as a Viking (or as an NFL WR) are limited.

by Danielle on Nov 8, 2007 3:12 PM CST reply actions