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One thing you can count on with the Detroit Lions is that they are never, ever boring. Follow the latest news including injuries, roster moves and more here daily from Oakland Press beat writer Paula Pasche. Plus you'll find regular commentary about the team.

2/19/2009

Combine coverage: Schwartz on Kitna

Lions coach Jim Schwartz said no decision has been made on whether to pay Jon Kitna the $1-million bonus he's due next month, but he also said the veteran quarterback is “expected to be” around to take part in the team's offseason program.

“You guys keep on putting the cart before the horse,” Schwartz said at the NFL Scouting Combine Thursday. “You're wanting to know if we promised the starting position to (Dante) Culpepper. From my standpoint it's like, jeez, could anything be a worse decision then promising a player that I've never seen practice, that I have no sort of relationship, promising somebody a starting position? We need guys to compete.”

Asked if he'd be willing to pay Kitna's bonus, due the fifth day of the league year, in order to keep Kitna in the quarterback mix, Schwartz said, “Yeah. Let's put it this way: I'd like to keep as many options open as we could.”

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Birk:

I thought the bonus was only 500,000 instead of 1 million

11:22 AM 
Blogger Paula Pasche said...

I was told the other day the bonus is actually $1 million. It doubled because of escalators Kitna reached on the field a couple seasons ago.

11:27 AM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks

All the other reports from the Lions "insiders" said 500,000

thanks for the clarification

11:34 AM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

^actually, i think tom first broke the news that the bonus was gonna be 1 million.^

not sure how i feel about the decision to let kitna hang around....as long as he doesn't throw anyone under the bus and/or become a cancer in the locker room, i guess i'm ok with it.

12:04 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FYI, his base salary also escalates from $1.95M to $2.95M, assuming that the criteria was the same as for the roster bonus. In addition, he has a $1M NLTBE incentive built into his contract. If that gets re-classified to LTBE (like it did last year), it will also count against the cap.

1:05 PM 

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