Running back Steve Slaton is showing every bit of the tremendous rushing and receiving skills in practice that he displayed last season. Slaton ranked second in the AFC last season with 1,282 yards on 268 carries, and also caught 50 passes for 377 yards. He’d like to have about 20 touches a game, and would have no problem if half were pass receptions. “I warm up, the more I touch the ball,” he said. Slaton reported to camp at about 224 pounds, 9 pounds heavier than he was last year, but figures that most of it will be gone by the end of camp.
DeMeco Ryans is an unhappy camper after not being able to land a new deal this offseason. Unlike cornerback Dunta Robinson, who was designated as the franchise player, Ryans reported to training camp. Because he is under contract, he would have been fined.
“It’s a bad message when you look at it because you have top guys on the team not getting deals,” Ryans said. “If they want to reward me, they’ll reward me. If not, there are other teams out there that’ll like to. I can’t make them give me the deal.”
GM Rick Smith is in charge of contract negotiations and he says that there will be no talks between the team and TE Owen Daniels.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t get a deal done, because that’s something that’s important to me,” Smith said about Daniels. “We’re going to build this team through the draft, and that means that we’ve got to get our good players under contract long-term. That was a big goal of ours this offseason that we didn’t accomplish. He’s under contract this year, and we’re not discussing his contract at this time. But we’ll have another opportunity to sit down and try to get him under contract long-term. I’m not putting a timetable on it. He and I had a long conversation (Thursday) night, and I expressed our feelings to him, and he expressed his feelings to us. We walked out of that meeting with an understanding about where we each sit.”
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