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Howe: Malcolm Butler 'Ticked Off' About Media Debating Contract Status

BOSTON (CBS) -- Malcolm Butler was a participant in Tuesday's Patriots minicamp practice at Gillette Stadium. He said his earlier absence at OTAs was due to "family issues -- something like that." And he chose not to speak publicly about his contract.

Nevertheless, the status of Butler -- who's due to make just $600,000 this season despite playing a role that typically garners anywhere between $5 million and $14 million in the NFL -- continues to be a major talking point in New England.

The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe has reported numerous times that Butler in no way has been protesting his contract in the form of a holdout, and that no such actions are in store.

On Wednesday's Toucher & Rich, Fred Toucher asked Jeff a simple question: Why in the world would Butler ever play for such little money?

"Because, again, this is a storyline from everybody outside. This is not a Malcolm Butler storyline. He's kind of ticked off about the fact that a lot of people are putting a lot of words in his mouth here," Howe said. "And I think quite frankly, it's pretty fair to assume that he's only on the books for the same amount of money as Joe Vellano and Brock Vereen next year. But he's not considering making a protest over this."

Fred argued that it would be foolish for Butler to risk suffering a career-ending injury in a violent sport like football without proper compensation. It's just not worth the risk.

"Look, I agree some of that because I think universally, the players get screwed," Howe said. "Most of these guys, the vast majority of these guys do not make enough money during the course of their career to basically just go live on an island as soon as they retire for the rest of their lives. So why doesn't he want to do this? Look back to last offseason, when he -- through little fault of his own -- missed a flight due to storms down in the South, and then was a handful of hours late to the first voluntary workout of OTAs, and was then basically told he could not take the field for two weeks. That in turn led to an NFLPA investigation into the way the Patriots handled this thing. That brought a spotlight onto Butler that he didn't want at that point in his career, especially coming off the Super Bowl heroics and really one career start. So he doesn't want another offseason when his name is in the headlines because of something he's done. He wants to be known as a good soldier, as a team guy. And if he holds out, yeah he's perfectly within his rights to do so. But it's not as if the Patriots would be the only team that would be sitting here pissed off about this. If the Patriots decided, 'All right, essentially we're going to wash our hands with you, and we're gonna send you off into the open market,' then there are going to be other teams that are going to say, 'Well if you hold out now, who's to say you're not going to pull a Darrelle Revis in a couple of years when you get to the final year of your new deal and you want to do this all over again?'"

Fred pushed back, saying holdouts never prevented Revis from making money, and that as long as Butler can play, someone will be willing to pay.

"But do you really want to go cash checks from Dan Snyder for the rest of your career?" Howe said. "And look, Dan Snyder hands over some really nice checks, and that's great for certain people. But for guys who want to win and guys who want to be in a good environment and guys who don't want to be mired in mediocrity with a lunatic owner for a handful of years, that's not for everybody. So money should always be an extremely important factor for these guys, but it's not the only part of the equation.

"Some guys get screwed by this, absolutely, but other guys by being good soldiers -- Devin McCourty is a good example of a guy who played this perfectly. He was pacing, did the right things, said the right things, and then in terms of the way you want to look at it, is the highest-paid safety in the NFL right before he hit free agency. Malcolm Butler has almost no leverage right here. He could use the little amount of leverage he has by sitting out if he wants to, but he doesn't want to. The Patriots still have all of the leverage here."

Overall, Howe said it's just kind of a difficult situation for Butler to be in, but there's no real way out.

"Every which way this guy is getting screwed is because he was an undrafted player," Howe said. "You want to throw his age into it, if he signs a three-year extension, call it a four-year deal, anything through 2019 right now, then the next time he's scheduled to be a free agent, he's 30 years old. I mean, there's basically nothing that Malcolm Butler has going for him right now as he enters [this year]. He's under their control for two more years. What he wants to do is play football, be a team guy, and hope the Patriots reward him for it. Who knows -- maybe they will. I don't think we can sit here and assume they will because right now it makes zero business sense for the Patriots to overreach for Butler when he's got a $600,000 cap hit, and they've got guys like [Dont'a] Hightower and [Jamie Collins] and [Jabal Sheard] and right down the line, other guys that they would probably prefer to play in the near future. So it's just a tough situation for the guy, and I think making a stink over it is not going to do him many favors. Maybe it'll make him a few bucks down the line, but that's a big gamble to take."

Listen to the full interview below:

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